Brand Case Study Klarna AB
Klan ABA provides services in the form of payment solutions via the internet for private individuals as well as online stores. The service that Calendar otters means in practice that it enters as a third party in transactions between the customers companies to ensure safety in both directions (Klan.
Com/SE). In the current situation, the services of Klan have become increasingly popular, at least in the I-J where Klan has made a huge effortlessness proved to yield good results. Klan has therefore chosen to move the very knowledgeable and experienced staff from the Sweden office to England.
This was to facilitate the expansion. Klan has also for some time ago, decided to begin to work more with project teams to facilitate the development.
Or the customers’ advantage Klan offers a simple and a secure payment solution Inhere customers can pay indirectly connected to the purchase or desired shop by using an invoice and a pay later occasion, a credit issued thus in practice. Skylark’s services for the companies mean that they ensure that they get paid for their goods that will Bessel to customers. If a customer does not pay, Klan takes the role of the risk-taker and papayas amount of the sales minus a fixed fee.
Statistics indicate that approximately 20 percent of all purchases made over the internet in the current situation are made via Klan and their services. Klan has done a tremendous expansion in the recent years, both in sales and in the number femaleness.
In the current situation, Klan ABA is the parent company Ninth sales of more than 1. Billions approximately with 800 employees. This compared to 2012 when they had sales of over 750 million and nearly 430 employees. In the current state 45,000 online extraterrestrials services as a payment solution did the internet.
Klan has in the recent years also tried to work intensively to simplify the use functions for its customers through their website. This is to make it easier for the customers to use their payment solutions over the internet.
By doing this, they realms trying to get closer to the customers and also create a sense of security and trust for the customers. As the company has expanded enormously in the recent years it has also tried to reach out more into the community with its brand. Most of the large web stores in Sweden now have Klan as their payment option.
This is something that has proven o generate some security according to investigations. Customers see the web store more reliable as they can avoid worrying about any problems with the payment.
Studies have also shown that customers tend to pay more for the product if they do not have to take the risk of payment problems. Something that Klan with its product and service facilitates not only for the customers but also for the companies. Our contact, Ole Rainmaker, who is currently working at Skylark’s headquarters in England, believes that the future looks bright for Klan. The company continues to expand, but simultaneously. Arks towards making their various existing payment solutions even simpler.
The company also tries to find new solutions to facilitate customer payment options. In the Scandinavian market, Klan is seen as very stable and to have a superior market share in their payment solutions. Large stage and a huge effort will be put on growing the company in the United States. Something that demands very large amount of cash and knowledge about the US market. 2. Case Study 2.
1 The Market Segmentation Strategy of Klan in Sweden. Identifying customers is the key factor to marketers to create an advantage over their imitators.
It is also important to identify how certain customer groups differ from each other in different offers according taker (2010, p. 26) and Keller(2013, p, 511). Nat we can deduce from Skylark’s annual report is that their goal is to provide a simple, improved way for consumers to pay for their e-commerce. By creating this service which stands out better against competitors creates loyalty among customers.
Those customers who Klan chooses to focus on are all e-retailers and their stores Agrarian, AAA), and therefore also all the consumers who choose to shop on the e- tillers shops (the end consumers).
After an interview with Klan (Personal Communication, 2015) we believe that the geographical part is completely independent because almost every person in Sweden has access to the Internet. MaJor focus is however on segments “Behavioral”, ‘Demographic” and “Cryptographic”. In the “Behavioral” segment, we can focus, according to (textbook page 80), on user status, usage rate, usage occasion, brand loyalty and benefits sought. The biggest advantage for Klan is that it has a high loyalty and that customers often prefer Klan instead of ordinary card payments if he website feels unsafe.
We then turn to the “Demographic” segment, we can clearly see that there are users aged 18-75, a category in which people are that age that they are allowed to shop in the internet.
Len the “Cryptographic” segment we see more “hat is the attitude customers have about shopping on the internet and how they feel about paying on the internet. For example can partial payment be considered to be something negative especially in the older target group in Sweden. Ere groups we have been able to locate: Security, apprehensive or novice trader. Easy option. Cheap. 2.
The Target Marketing and Positioning Strategy of the Klan in Sweden To be seen as a brand is important for Klan, Just as it is for many other companies also. Relatively recently Klan hired a new head of department, Nikolas AngerҐrd. He was hired to further develop Klan as a brand and to be responsible for their company’s marketing. His main responsibilities touch the Scandinavian market but it will Obviously detect also the marketing abroad . Keller describes that some to the strongest brands in the world today are born online.
A market that easily spreads over the word in an effective way.
According to Keller (2013, p. 43-44) successful companies are constantly working to appear on a professional way in the media and in the society. He describes how the companies wish is to be seen in the web stores Introit implementing large and intensive amount of money on marketing promotions themselves. Keller also describes that companies desire that consumers talk positively about the company and about their products and by doing that they could spread the good reputation of the company’s operations. As mentioned earlier Klan has expanded enormously as a company in the recent Hears.
Both through its sales but also by the number of employees and operations in different countries. By helping companies to increase their revenue by online selling, it may also help Klan to appear on the online stores in a discreet way but also efficiently. Klan has with its various forms of payment solutions, given the web stores a form of quality assurance. The quality of the hedge that provides customers trust towards website they shop. In this case, it gives the customer a guarantee that they can trade in a safe and convenient way.
In many cases it is also prospected as a payment method to pay with Klan.
Something that gives Klan the opportunity to be more visible towards the final consumer. Ninth these kinds of forefathers is a possibility that Klan appears as mentioned before. This without having to carry out intensive advertising campaigns themselves. Something that would be very expensive for the company. Something that can be compared with what Keller (2013, p.
43-44) mentions concerning the spirit how companies get others to talk good about their brand. Ere shops would of course make customers feel secure when they shop through their website.
Equally so, Klan is keen to radiate security and trade online without avian any problem with the payments. Something that is fairly unique to the Scandinavian market. This is something that can be compared with what Keller (2013, p.
43-44) describes on how companies want to be seen by the customers from outside and why customers should choose their product, or in this case the solution to security when they are trading online. 2. 3 The services of the Klan & their implications on the Brand in Sweden. According to Keller (2013, p. 3) service companies have a large variation in quality depending on the personal meetings. Because Klan is available only on the internet, this factor comes increasingly relevant regarding to customer service.
We have chosen to Check whether Klan believes that the quality of the product may affect the perception of the brand. But at first we look at their products. Ere services that Klan provides are different payment solutions, most of which are adapted to e-commerce. These payment solutions are then divided into four services that are Klan Invoice, Klan Account, Klan Checkout and Klan Mobile.
All these services are directed towards the customer to make their purchase immediately and then afterwards pay the item when it is delivered.
Klan Invoice is (Klan, IEEE) a payment option where the customer receives a credit usually for 14 days without having to use their credit card or other sensitive information. In doing so, the customer gets a chance to review his product before it is paid. In Sweden the purchase is carried out so that you only need the information about the customer’s social security number. After that Skylark’s system checks if the purchase is approved or not.
The item is then delivered to the customer together Ninth an invoice either by email, mail or SMS.
Klan Account is (Klan, ICC) a payment service where the customer can choose he amount of money to be paid monthly and how long these payments will go on. All the customer’s purchases made via Klan Account will be gathered unavoidable then sent out to the customer once a month. If the case is so that the customer wants to terminate the installment he may do so at by paying the remaining amount in the account to Klan. Klan Checkout is a comprehensive solution for e-retailers, who could have access to all popular payment methods.
With the help of the so-called “Incremental Identification” customers have to give out only very little information about themselves, only their address and the zip code.
Klan, 14th) This provides Salinas customers an easier and more secure way to make purchases online. Klan Mobile is composed of two different services. One is created for on-demand services, micro-payments and services where an immediate access to the product is important (Klan, off). Buying process may differ between different products and services, however, the customer is always verified by Klan through his mobile number. He second part of the Klan Mobile service is all about trading via mobile APS, so that the customer is allowed to shop in different APS without having to disclose any insensitive information. The verification is done by Klan background, which compares the phone with its own database.
To date, these services are only active on the Swedish market. Klan considers themselves to be high standard in the quality of their services Agrarian, Bibb). This is because Skylark’s services reconsidered to be both safer and easier to use compared to credit cards and direct payment when shopping on the internet.
Klan is constantly working to improve its quality and it can also be seen that they do not care much about the competition but only about their own product and its development. That matter can affect more or less on Salinas entire WHOM.
Also security flaws could be devastating to their business. But according to Keller 2 p 79), it can also help to strengthen the “brand association”. 2. 4 The Pricing Strategy in Sweden& its implication on the Brand. Companies who use Klan pay a fee to be able to use Salinas services. The cost is divided in three steps.
He first step is an initial fee to get started and get access to the service. After this registration Klan takes a fee per month from each user. Finally, charges per purchase via Klan payment services where prices in itself can vary depending on he sales and marketing of e-retailers and are therefore difficult to enter in this study Agrarian, 2015). Ole Rainmaker, a man working in Skylark’s Sales Department, clarified that prices for services can vary. This may partly depend on how the pricing generally looks at the market for similar services. It may in some cases also vary with different forms of risks within the country.
Generally, Ole says that Klan does not aim to be the cheapest on the market with its services. They want instead to be competitive to be able to offer a simple and secure payment solution for its customers. Something that is heavily described with their slogan, “simply buying”. This is something that greatly describes Klan and its business idea. (Klan. SE) Salinas target, as mentioned earlier at their website and by Ole Rainmaker, is not to offer the cheapest payment solution on the market.
Instead he wants to highlight the qualities he believes Klan stands for and tries to highlight in its market life.
Just so that the product and their payment solutions are flexible to use and that actions are taken care of with great level of security when customers use Skylark’s products and services. 2. Salinas MIMIC Strategy in Sweden & its implication on the Brand. Integrated Marketing Communication can be defined as a management concept which ties up different communication tools like for example advertising, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing together to spread the wanted message better and to Nor as a voice of the brand.
(Lake) (lecture 4, slide 17).
To be successful in MIMIC marketers must really know who their customers are and understand their wants, needs and expectations. Basic communication tools like TV, radio and newspapers are losing their value for different kind of digital devices and that is why marketers doodads have to face a complex environment of communications. That is the main reason for marketers to fully understand the basic components of MIMIC. (APRS, 2015.
) Ninth a good understanding of MIMIC marketers can achieve the best possible results for their clients as well as for themselves.
New trends in marketing have created new Nays for consumers to talk about the brands with companies as well as with each other. New trends have also created a demand for “synchronized communication campaigns that are displayed across multiple platforms” (APRS, 201 5) and these factors are something that every company should take into serious account. APRS, 2015. ) Or make cutlets I MAC marketers must consider all possible communication options and choose the most effective one to reach their customers and also to set goals.
It is also important to remember while choosing the communication options that different channels have different strengths. Keller (2013) states that the core purpose of communication is to serve company’s brand-equity. When a company chooses its communication options right that strategy can for example “create positive brand awareness, link points-of-parity and points-of-difference associations to the brand in nonusers’ memory, wake up positive brand Judgments or feelings and facilitate a stronger consumer-brand connection and brand resonance. ” (Keller, 2013, p. 219).
Platforms like Backbone and Twitter where companies are connected with their mass audiences have also broadened the reach and also lessened the costs (Richards, Chronic. Com). As mentioned earlier Klan has two types of customers. Skylark’s customers are all those e-retailers with their stores who use Skylark’s paying solutions and therefore also all the end consumers who decide to shop on these e-retailers shops. This is NH MIMIC strategies are extremely important to Klan.
In their official web site Klan has provided a customer service services for both companies as well as private customers.
For companies thinking about Salinas paying services, the website provides tons of information about their services and solutions. Klan promises that their services will work on all platforms and devices and they also promise to keep their quality as high as possible with continuous tests. (Klan. SE) At “My Klan” page private customers can smoothly, at any time, check their payment information and everything related to that. All the press information can be found on their official web site.
Klan also has a Klan Checkout blob, where customers can read the latest news and updates and get all the needed information about the Klan Checkout service. We believe that these services that are available at their web site make Klan more reliable and more desirable for customers of every kind. Klan is also very widely spread on the social media and therefore internet can be seen as their most used platforms for communication. In addition toothier official web stellar also uses Twitter, Backbone, Linked, Mainstream and Youth.
These are all channels where Skylark’s customers can get more information about the company, get answers to their questions and follow what is going on with the company.
Len Skylark’s Youth channel customers get a change to get closer to the company by Matching “Meet the people at Klan” -videos. Their Youth channel is also full of educative videos about Skylark’s services as well as interview videos, lecture videos and also some fun videos like for example videos of Skylark’s employees taking part in the ALLS Ice Bucket Challenge. At Skylark’s Backbone page, customers can easily contact the company by posting their question on their wall.
Salinas Twitter account is a platform of all kind of information. There they provide links and announce different types of news and even publish new Job openings. Skylark’s Mainstream account is the newest platform tort them, and that is mainly supposed to be as a “supporter” or a “reminder” of their events and etc.
Some of the platforms (for example Mainstream) have quite low number of followers, but this we think might be caused of Skylark’s young age and that it is not a worldwide company yet. Klan has little of “traditional” (TV, magazine or radio) advertising, due to the environment where it operates.
Skylark’s environment is the internet and therefore most of the communication is located there. Often Salinas ads can be Shawnee a customer is unclothing store site or on some other stories and ready to pay. 2. 6 Overall Branding Strategy & the Brand Equity in Sweden Building brand equity is considered an important part of brand building (Keller et al.
, 1998). Brand equity is supposed to bring several advantages to a firm. For example, high brand equity levels are known to lead to higher consumer preferences and purchase intentions (Cob-Walgreen et al. 1995).
Firms with high brand equity are also known to have high stock returns (Asker and Jacobson, 1994). Building a successful brand can also bring advantages such as creating a competitive advantage for the firm over its competitors, hence better understanding of brand equity is essential for an enriched practice of brand management (Pappy et al.
, 2005). There are numerous definitions of brand equity found in the literature, and there is a little agreement on what brand equity exactly means, however the definition of brand equity can be broadly classified into two categories.
Some definitions are based on the financial-perspective and emphasize on the value of the brand to the firm. Other definitions are based on the consumer-perspective, which define brand equity as the ‘alee of a brand to consumers. When reflecting to brand equity from a consumer or marketing perspective, it is called consumer-based brand equity (Pappy et al. , 2005).
According to Keller (1993) customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to marketing of a brand, and it consists of two dimensions brand knowledge and brand image.
Klan focuses on creating strong relationships and building trust with its customers. Ere firm relies primarily on advertising its security and safety, so Skylark’s overall branding strategy is to build a strong service brand that is considered to be one of the leading brands in the e-commerce security sector. Klan promises to provide simplified buying online and at the same time it offers the most secure service. Klan works very hard on creating a brand image that is based mainly on consumers feeling safe and secure.
The main objective for the company is to reach a point when he consumer sees Skylark’s logo in a website he instantly feels that it is safe and secure to purchase from that website. Ere basic premise of customer-based brand equity concept is that the power of a brand lies in what customers have learned, felt, seen and heard about the brand as a result to their experience over time(Keller, 2013. P. 69). Klan tries to make its customers experience its services remarkable, easy and simple.
Klan also tries to make online shopping as simple as possible, so online buyers can use Klan every time they want to shop online. People may have their concerns when shopping online especially when they stumble pony websites that are not very familiar to them or are not very secure looking and they don’t want to enter their personal information on these sites. So what if those Inebriates had Salinas logo? The firm is working hard to make the answer of this question an unthinkable (SECURE), the company’s brand strategy is to position its brand logo as a sign of security the minds of all online customers/shoppers.
Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer has a high level of awareness and familiarity with the brand and holds some strong, favorable and unique brand association in memory (Keller, 2013. .
73). That is exactly what Klan is trying to do. It is trying to create strong brand awareness and to convince its customers that its services are different from other brands or competitors. The company is working hard on establishing a positive brand image and strong, favorable and unique brand associations based on the ease of use, safety and security.
Skylark’s creation of brand awareness strategy is based on the creation of two other factors that make up brand awareness, these factors are brand recognition and brand recall.
According to Keller, (2013) brand recognition consumers’ ability to infirm prior exposure to the brand when given the brand as a cue or the ability to recognize the brand in the store among other brands. Klan tries to make its brand recognizable all over the internet especially in Sweden, so it is trying to enhance its brand recognition by concentrating mainly on Swedish customers, due to the emotions Swedes have for firms originating from Sweden.
Skylark’s marketing efforts are focused on that when customers see its logo they will directly recognize it and tie t with previous experience with the brand. By doing this Klan wants to get as much inline users/shoppers as possible. Rand recall’s known to be the consumers’ ability to retrieve the brand from memory “hen given the product category, the needs fulfilled by the category, or a purchase or usage situation as a cue (Keller, 2013.
P. 73). We think Klan has made significant progress in brand recall so far because Klan is identified in Europe along with companies such as Papal.
This can be considered as a positive sign when taking underestimation that Klan is considered as a young company, because it only started in 2005. However brand recall is a very crucial factor for Klan because it is noninsured an online brand and consumers make their decisions away from the point of purchase, so the firm needs to work on increasing its ability to make customers retrieve the brand from their memory when appropriate. 2.
7 The SOOT Analysis of the Marketer and the Brand in Sweden. 2. 7. Strengths Klan is a young, but rapidly growing company Witt a strong brand associated Witt agility and security in e-commerce. Klan is also considered to be an innovative company that adapts to their customer’s needs by developing new services that facilitate e-commerce, for example Klan Checkout.
Which is a form of adaptation codebook). Klan takes good care of its staff and wants to educate them and give benefits to them. Klan considers its personnel to be loyal. Skylark’s revenue has risen sharply from the start and has been steadily increasing each year.
Therefore it can be seen that they have a good economic foundation to build their brand further. 2.
7. 2 Weaknesses Ere weaknesses we can localize is to Salinas rapid growth leads to organizational and administrative difficulties which the organization needs to develop at the same pace as its growth. This can lead to the issue of different messages in their various Hansel which may negatively influence their brand image. Skylark’s young age means that the line is not as experienced as its competitors, Inch may lead to small mishaps that can be enormously costly.
Communication between management and employees, we think could be improved, this is based on an interview with an employee, where precisely he had no idea of the vision of the company.
This reflects probably not on all employees at Klan, but we believe it is important that everyone knows the objectives of the company (Appendix 3). But above all, all contact with the customers needs to be customer focused, so that the customer does not experience different quality treatment at different times. 2. 7. Opportunities As mentioned previously, the internet is something that is spread widely in today’s society, at least in e-commerce that allows trade in many ways easier than it has been before.
The probability that e-commerce will itself increase we think is very high because we have seen defector internet selling’s before Klan was founded in 2005 (Internationalists, 2013). Because the world will, with an overwhelming probability, focus more on the internet in the future, this will nutrition as a bright future for Klan and an opportunity to expand their business.
Increased use of Klan will also build its brand as more customers come in contact Ninth the company. Cause shopping on the internet means saving time, customers may spend more time on other things. With this opportunity we believe that in the future people may even want to shop their groceries on the internet, to avoid having to go to the grocery store. With this increasing demand for different payment solutions over the Internet, Klan could get a huge opportunity to grow as a company and gain bigger market share.
