Beyond the Deliveries: The UPS Success Story

The United Parcel Services

The United Parcel Services has its origin back in 1907 when it started as a company that provided simple messenger services and was named the ‘American Messenger Company’ (Ross, 2012). The organization has evolved throughout the decades including the provision of mergers, changing the company name, as well as the inclusion of a myriad of services for both their businesses as well as their customers. Notably, the expansion of the United Parcel Service company has also led to the inclusion of the provision of air services, carrier services, logistics solutions, as well as the various international services. Markedly, the cause of their success in the business, as well as their expansion, is the investigations the company carried out years back to find out the potential of e-commerce and assigning an internal team to enable the e-commerce (Soupata, 2014). Besides, the company in question’s success has also significantly relied upon its ability to redefine its core businesses, change its structure in favor of their businesses as well as evaluate the existing opportunities and create new businesses that take advantage of such new opportunities.

What are UPS’s business customers looking for when committing to work with UPS?

The business customers seek to find the highest level of reliability as well as steadiness with the UPS’ work as well as the company’s deliveries. Furthermore, the customers look for the superior products besides trustworthiness upon their delivery of the promises (Ross, 2012). The business customers look for the ability of the UPS to be reliable such that they can be strategic partners that can be counted on when help is required in solving the problems as well as helping these business customers to win new clients to their businesses. It is notable that the most significant feature that business customers look for is the reliability. For instance, UPS may have superior products compared to other companies like the FedEx, which will be significant to market against. However, if UPS’ reliability is questionable and the basics are not covered in a satisfactory way and in accordance with the customer’s standards, the businesses would opt for other shipping companies.

Both the large as well as the small-scale businesses

Both the large as well as the small-scale businesses also look for professionalism in their partnership with the UPS with the bid of simplifying the several complicated processes in those businesses (Soupata, 2014). Besides, such businesses are also likely to be looking for the products as well as services that can be tailored to their various individual needs of the businesses. The biggest question posed by the businesses whether large, small or medium is if UPS is able to meet these businesses at their level. Obviously, various businesses have a myriad of goals as well as values that act as the backbone of their operations. Hence, they will also expect to find dependability as well as flexibility in UPS’ partnership to enable them to respect their values and achieve their goals simultaneously.

How do UPS’s marketing and sales to business customers differ from working with its residential consumers?

UPS, through its think tanks, recognize the importance of building a superior customer value as part of their company culture (Soupata, 2014). Therefore, with the customer value as its target to achieve in the process of marketing as well as selling, the company is able to create a deep understanding of the needs of the customers that it deals with and come up with various marketing strategies that are customer-driven. Notably, UPS, in its process of selling as well as marketing to the customers opts to strategically sell their products to relatively few but substantial buyers as opposed to selling to many small-scale buyers. On the flip sides, the company in question, besides moving the products across the country for the residential clients, it also ensures it works closely as well as deeply with these types of clients to ensure the company achieves its aim of becoming a strategic problem solver (Ross, 2012). Further, working closely with residential customers also helps the company to avoid poor performance as a partner that can result in a huge loss of revenue. Intensely working with residential clients also enables the company to go through the business processes that could be hectic sometimes and make the decision-making processes that are involved in carrying out the business easy.

How does the UPS story relate to the major concepts of Kotler & Armstrong Chapter 6 on business buyer behavior?

The story of UPS offers the best opportunity that an individual may seize to explore the nature of the various business markets (Ross, 2012). Besides, it is also crucial in finding out the types of situations in which products can be bought, helps in the exploration of the influences that impact the business buyers and the buying participants (Soupata, 2014). Moreover, the story in question is also significant in the exploration of the whole process involved in the business buying through its exhibition of the various complexities that may be met during transactions that occur between business and another business as well as the relationship that are essential in the final consumer buying.

References

Ross, J. (2012). United Parcel Services: Delivering Packages and E-Commerce Solutions. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.305714

Soupata, L. (2014). Managing Culture for Competitive Advantage at United Parcel Service. Journal Of Organizational Excellence, 20(3), 19-26. doi: 10.1002/npr.1003