Santander's Differentiation Strategy for Customer Value and Market Growth - Essay Sample

Introduction

Banco Santander currently follows differentiation, customer-enter and marketing strategies based on the focus on promoting customer value. The organization has key strategic resources like developed technological tools. Besides, it holds a strong position in a fast-growth market so it has other strategic choices to choose from, namely like product communication, prudence, and blue ocean strategies. Possibly the company can exploit strengths; having loyal customers, superior technology tools and wide reach of customers, to execute new strategies to win in the market and expand its share.

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Alternative Strategy Generation

Banco Santander is a leading financial institution in almost all aspects of its operation. It has therefore developed and emerged a reliable business organization with effective customer relationship management hence remaining a premier bank group in all the countries in which it is set up. For Banco Santander to have a continued superiority and thrive in the dynamic and competitive market there is the need to establish new business strategies; this will be important for the organization in many ways including obtaining new customers while retaining the existing ones (Sarkies et al., 2017, p. 35). As much as the organization has loyal customers, selecting, developing and implementing more strategic approaches is necessary as a way of promising them ore superior services. Besides, the current strategies, there are many other alternative strategies, a few of which can be best applicable for improving the strength of the organization in terms of service delivery. It would be wise for the organization to generate the strategies by considering the information from both the external and internal factor.

Market Development Strategy

Market development occurs as a concentration strategy that provided that an organization takes the existing products and services into the new markets. The strategy is applicable in the context of the organization based on its ability to many people willing to be customers, in the whole world. The development of the market as a strategy is possible however; the success of the approach requires more effort while considering several factors.

One factor to consider, which will make the strategy effective, is the digital nature of the organization. The operations organization including the services offered to the customers are based on the digital platforms and approaches. According to Sarkies et al. (2017, pp. 37-40), his makes it possible for the given financial institution to focus on market development as a strategy because of the availability of more improved media channel for conveying the marketing information to the prospective customers whom the bank is looking forward to serving. The use of digital tools and platforms can make it possible for the organization to streamline its marketing content to reflect their services to obtain a substantial effect in the end. The given strength of the bank group will be important in gaining more customers due to the possibility of addressing the targeted audience more professionally rather than merely creating awareness. For the case of the organization, the use of the relevant digital media can be used to guarantee more effective marketing communication to the customers.

Bank Expansion Strategy

This strategy is based on establishing more bank locations or branches in other countries. Another applicable strategy for the organization is the establishment of more branches in many other counties. This will enable the company to gain more dominance in terms of the number of customers. Even though there are several banks under the management of the bank group, there is a need for the organization to consider the expansion of the bank. Concerning this strategy, the organization can focus on the expansion in terms of establishing more branches for more efficient services to customers. Currently, Banco Santander is located in only Spain and a few countries in America and the UK. This can, however, occur as a way of limiting the ability of the organization to each the global domain in terms of offering its services to customers all over the world. This will possibly influence the customers that the bank is tying their countries besides just focusing on service to them.

Blue Ocean Strategy

A blue ocean strategy is an approach to business to business functions and service delivery whereby an organization emerges unique and makes the roles of others in the same industry less relevant to their common customers. This can be applicable for the company since it operates in a competitive industry where there other existing and emerging financial strategy giants which can potentially outcompete Santander. In such a situation, it is recommended to develop and implement services unique to its setting which promises and secures superior customer services. This will possibly make the company distinguished among the similar institutions in the banking industry. The company should choose wisely regarding sophisticated technology, which will ultimately improve the mode of customer service. The customers will, therefore, realize that there is an emerging trend in the field of banking which mat, however, be missing in other bank service providers (Sarkies et al., 2017, p. 48). Consequently, Banco Santander will create a situation whereby the traditional approaches to service delivery by the competitors may be deemed irrelevant.

Prudence as a Strategy

Embracing and implementing prudence can be an effective strategy that is applicable in the Banco Santander as a way of promoting the nature of service delivery to the customer service and the ultimate achievement of the defined goals. Prudence is a logistic concept, which covers the ability of an organization to restrict behaviors and interventions by governing and disciplining them by using proper reasoning as the major and only basis for making a decision. It is meant to ensure that the steps that an organization makes are determined primarily virtues. Prudence is relevant in the area of operation of the organization and can be applied in the loaning services; for instance. According to Sadeghifar et al. (2017, pp. 73-75), this is important because the bulk of the amount of money that the bank is operating on is others' therefore there is the need to remain skeptical to ensure that every decision on the same is well informed. Therefore the banking activities and services involving lending the customers should, for instance, involve reliable records which ensure that customer behavior is maintained under constraints to ensure that the financial goals of the organizations are always up to date. Cook, Rao, and Collins (2017, pp. 35-37) felt that ensuring this will enable the company to achieve the concept of prudence, which is a very critical success-determining factor in the event of focus to attain success in the banking industry.

Product Communication Strategy

Proper approaches to management and handling of products and services of the organization is also a key concept regarding the attainment of the organizational goals. This strategy can be applied by considering the relevant information that ensures that the transaction of a banking product is strategic. The end-user of the product communication, are customers who are expected to gain adequate knowledge about the service related to the given product. It, therefore, follows that a product communication strategy presents the information concerning information on particular product clients already uses but may need more strategic information to improve their ability and the ultimate experience. According to Sadeghifar et al. (2017, p. 75), a product communication strategy aims to enable the customers to become smarter about the associated deliverable. The bank is constantly developing organizational products based on innovation to improve the delivery of customer-based services. Clients need updated communication to ensure that they are updated with any changes incorporated in the new system features.

Strategy Prioritization

One of the greatest ability that any leader needs to have is prioritization to ensure that the project is carried towards success. To be aware of a way of sorting activities that need to have been done to accomplish a project, it becomes significant that there is a good understanding of the prevailing business and most importantly understanding the project drivers. According to Chong et al. (2018, p. 975), he project drivers that can encourage the execution of the project may be abundant hence helping the organization in the assignment of the appropriate budget. It is important to keep in mind that while prioritizing goals and tasks, they should be in line with the strategic drivers and the project drivers that are underlined by the company. There are therefore various foundations upon which strategy prioritization can be done:

Complexity Based Prioritization

The main task should be broken down into small pieces that are manageable and measurable pieces that represent the business process portion. The division allows strategists to easily identify the existing constraints that exist between the tasks that need execution and different business entities that need the implementation to have an understanding of their contribution. It is, therefore, a common practice to prioritize strategies following varieties of well-recognized methodologies (Chong et al., 2018, p. 975). Banco Santander Company needs to prioritize on issues that are deemed to be very complex to minimize risks and dodge falling into unforeseen problems. If the Banco Santander Company can manage to deals with very complex issues from the beginning then it will likely not have many struggles with complex problems in the final stage. Prioritization is not a standalone practice but rather goes in hand with observing budget costs, business needs and expected quality which might be part of the company's strategy and might be a project driver. The market for a company's product is very wide and complicated and therefore needs to be given higher priority.

Risk Management Based Prioritization

Banco Santander Company needs to also prioritize on the risks. The most common activities associated with risk management include cost-impact analysis. Each risk that befalls a company regardless of its type and nature may lead to a negative economic growth on the company. The strategy to combat risks and risk management has to be incorporated into the project's cost. If for instance, the company tries to avoid having any risk in its projects then the cost of managing risks would be above the project cost. This, therefore, implies that risks have to be prioritized and the associated budget for managing the risks should be assigned based on priority. By considering the economic loss for every risk multiplied by its occurrent probability the outcome will be the needed budget for controlling each risk. Taking each risk and the sum of its outcome will lead to the total amount required to support the entire risk management activities. This case, therefore, requires the concept of prioritization where risks and their associated budgets need to be prioritized not only based on economic loss and cost but also by taking into account the negative impacts on the goals of the company as well as its strategies. Market development is characterized by a lot of risks and therefore needs to be given higher priority.

Strategy Selection

Deciding on the appropriate strategy to implement among the few available lists of options of the alternative strategies that a company has come up with is a very crucial task. The project strategists, therefore, need to have the necessary skills and knowledge needed to come...