1. How is Virgin unique in its quest to be a socially responsible and sustainable company?

Nowadays, more than ever before, business organizations align their short-term and long-term
marketing strategies to their corporate social responsibilities as well as emphasize on sustainable
business development to attain a whole corporate success.

Virgin’s unique quest to be a socially responsible and sustainable company is by starting to tackle the
global, social, and environmental challenges by having an entrepreneurial approach. To achieve that
Virgin Group has taken following initiatives which are mentioned in the article;

Virgin Unite:
Virgin Unite is a non-profit concern of Virgin group. In such a setup, a team of scientists, entrepreneurs,
and environmental enthusiasts address global, social, and environmental problems and change the
way of businesses performing to make people’s life better.

Virgin Green Fund:

Earth Challenge:
Virgin is not only practicing social responsibility and sustainability through various measures and
activities; but also, they are encouraging other to be socially responsible to protect our environment.
Virgin introduced the Earth Challenges in 2007 to encourage personal and group level sustainable
innovation. Virgin awards $25 million to any person or group who developed a safe, long-term,
commercially viable way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Additionally, the core business of Virgin Group has categorized into eight socially responsible and
sustainable groups, with each of the groups expected to do remarkably good things in its industry.

2. Discuss the marketing management orientation(s) Virgin follows to attract and win the
consumer responses when it introduces a new market offering. Critically analyze them and
provide your suggestion for better impact.

There are several management orientations towards marketplace based on marketing realities, which
are Production, Product, Selling, Marketing and Holistic.

In the Production concept, it is believed that consumers prefer more widely and inexpensive products.
Businesses concentrate on attaining mass production capacity, low cost and efficient distribution
according to production concept. The product concept proposes that the most quality, functioning, or
innovative products are favorable by the consumers. On the contrary, hard selling approaches of
overcapacity products or unsought goods are preferable according to selling concepts. However,
marketing concept proposes that offering customer centered and sense-oriented response to a
competitive market helps business to achieve its goals. Holistic Marketing concepts is a contemporary
philosophy of 21st century for a marketplace. In this concept, it is believed that everything is matter in
marketing and ever thing should be integrated while offering something towards a marketplace. Four
broad components characterizing holistic marketing: relationship marketing, integrated marketing,
internal marketing, and performance marketing.

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By the reading the article of Virgin group and based on understanding of the marketing concept, it is
clearly understandable that Virgin Group deeply believes in the Marketing concepts and acts on that.
While introducing new products or business, Virgin Group offers customer centric and sense-oriented
response to a market which is underserved, overcharged customers and complacent competition.
Furthermore, Virgin group always tries to get customer attention and out runs their competition
through strategic massive publicity. For example,

“When Branson launched Virgin Cola in the United States in 1998, he steered an army tank down New
York’s Fifth Avenue and blew up a Coca-Cola sign, garnering interviews on network TV news shows the
next morning”

“Although Branson avoids traditional market research, he stays in touch through constant customer
contact. When he first set up Virgin Atlantic, he called 50 customers every month to chat and get their
feedback. He appeared in airports to rub elbows with customers, and if a plane was delayed, he handed
out gift certificates to a Virgin Megastore or discounts on future travel.”

Though, Virgin group is a well establish Company and third most respected brand in Britain, sometimes
they failed to attract market with their new offering and some marketing and financial critics
responded to these. Such as, Virgin Cola, Virgin Cosmetics, Virgin Vodka, and Virgin Brides have all
resources and efforts but failed to succeed.

Rather than focusing on Marketing concepts, Virgin group should have followed the Holistic Concept
as it focuses on all aspects of market offerings and trends to have more success over marketing
concepts. Virgin Group should have recognized and reconciled all the scopes and complexities of their
marketing activities for better impact on the market.

At first, Virgin Group should aim to build mutually satisfying long-term relationships and marketing
network with not only customers but also with employees, marketing partners (channels, suppliers,
distributors, dealers, agencies), and members of the financial community by understanding their
capabilities and resources, needs, goals, and desires in order to earn and retain their business.

Moreover, Virgin group must have an integrated strategy to create, communicate, and deliver value
for consumers in a such way that implies “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, rather not
having different set of massive marketing campaigns while introducing new offerings to the market.

Furthermore, Virgin group should focus on hiring, training, and motivating able employees to serve
customers well. When all departments work together to achieve customer goals, better customer
services will be assured.

Lastly, Virgin group should also focus on financial accountability of marketing expenditures in terms
of financial returns alongside with their ethical, environmental, legal, and social activities.

Thus, they can achieve better impacts on attracting and wining the consumer responses when it
introduces a new market offering.

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