Case for the promotion of tourism services in social networks (megabambarbia, sagp). What was done
The challenges ahead of us
But this time we worked "on a grand scale". Customer: "A network of last minute travel agencies" is one of the largest travel operators in Ukraine, which has more than 150 franchisees and more than 20 years of experience.
Objective: to receive leads within the "Bambarbia" campaign from the social Facebook networks. The promotion takes place every half a year and these are always “very tasty” prices that can be obtained by fulfilling certain conditions. This time, the condition was a “clean passport” (that is, the absence of border crossing marks), which gave the right to buy a ticket at prices up to 50% lower than usual.
Additional tasks from the usual SMM diet: get new fans per page, promote “brand awareness” and generally stimulate the promotion of tourism services in in social networks. Abstract? Undoubtedly. Therefore, leads are above all.
Before we start retelling the mechanics of our actions, let's show a small spoiler with the results. What was achieved in 10 days of the advertising campaign:
- Budget spent: $1,083.86.
- Received clicks: 21957.
- Average cost per click: $0.049.
- Tracked conversions: 415 (Yes, there were still untraceable ones - we will tell about them separately).
- Average cost per conversion: $2.61 (by the way, according to the customer, this is almost 3 times cheaper than the contextual advertising).
Here's what the customer side says:
Please read the information on the slide (including the diagrams) carefully - it's worth it
Additional bonuses to case efficiency:
- Reposts of advertisements: 391 pcs.
- New subscribers: 485 (by the way, this was not stimulated by anything - not a single advertising campaign of the "getting likes" format was launched).
What was done
Well, at this point, let's move on to the most interesting: the answer to the question "how?". Let's go in order - for all 14 running advertising campaigns.
Launch #1. Banal and effective.
In the settings: travelers, men and women in the range of 25-45 years. Excluded are people who returned from a trip 1-2 weeks ago.
- Spent: $142.54.
- Number of clicks: 3471
- Cost of 1 click: $0.04.
This one worked best:
Pay attention to the text. And make sure that people who have returned from a trip have been removed from the settings - that is, those who definitely have marks in their passports (which means they are not the target audience).
Launch #2. See Paris and… not get sick.
In the brief, the customer indicated that his client is “an average entrepreneur who cares about his health.” So we decided, without further ado, to test the hypothesis "travellers and entrepreneurs who lead a healthy lifestyle, aged 27-45 years." Again, people who returned from a trip 1-2 weeks ago were excluded. The lyrics focused on tours to Paris.
As you can see, there is nothing stunning in the settings, they are just targeted - Spent: $160.00
- Number of clicks: 3684
- Cost per click: $0.04
Most Successful Creative:
Again, note that for the second consecutive campaign, the key message of the teaser is focused on the "clean passport" - that is, on the essence of the action "Bambarbia". Your advertisement- a tool that acts as a kind of filter that separates users according to the principle of friend / foe. For advertising purposes, this is good.
Launch #3. Would you like to go to Italy, Signorita?
Again travelers and healthy lifestyles; 25-45 years old. But this time only women. The exceptions are the same. A text about Italy:
The next time you ask yourself the question "how to promote a travel agency on Facebook" - remember it (of course, along with the classic ODC advertising formula).
Also note that the message is aimed at girls, so there is a man in the picture (this works about 80% of the time).
Launch #4. Prague for 33 euros!
Audience: travelers and entrepreneurs aged 25-45, boys and girls. Excluded are people who returned from a trip 1-2 weeks ago. Offer: a trip to Prague for 33 euros (with additional sales, of course).
- Spent: $40.03
- Number of clicks: 626
- Cost per click: $0.06
That teaser:
All four of the above ad groups were launched within the same advertising campaign! By the way, this is a damn important nuance. If you work from one Facebook account with different advertising campaigns to the same audience, at the same time - you almost inevitably begin to compete with yourself. And as a result: warm up the auction and out of the blue start spending more money than needed.
As a bonus, in addition to the campaigns listed (and we, alas, cannot show everything in detail), delicious offers were worked out: “Paris for 210 euros” “Prague for 80 euros”. We got 790 clicks on them for $76 spent. Cost of 1 click: $0.09-0.1. The launch was in rotation for only 2 days. Of the interesting settings: in Paris, they targeted not only travelers, but also people who dream of going to Disneyland.
Launch #5. Winter types of targeted advertising.
Audience: men and women, healthy lifestyle, snowboarding and skiing… Guess three times what they tempted users in teasers this time? In the meantime, you think - a few screenshots.
- Spent: $127.25
- Number of clicks: 2341
- Cost of 1 click: $0.05
The best (in the sense of the most effective) ad:
Targeting is also in a sense a "cable car" You may have noticed that the text in the description of the link (this is what is written in small print: “20 years on the market, 630,468 happy tourists…”) is repeated from teaser to teaser. This is a conscious measure. The fact is that the “link description” is not displayed in all types of Facebook placement (for example, it is not displayed in the right column). Therefore, it is better to add branded information here, which is not of tactical importance, and if a potential client “slips through” it, it’s okay. But the requirement for a “clean passport”, for example, is definitely not worth posting here.
Audience 6. Señor or Miss - save up for a cruise!
Audience: men and women, healthy lifestyle, interested in cruises and vacations on sea coasts. Guess what the offer was about?
- Spent: $67.64
- Number of clicks: 1169
- Cost per click: $0.06
Most Tanned Workable Teaser:
Launch #7. Videos that we will not show you.
- Spent: $131.05
- Number of clicks: 2667
- Cost of 1 click: $0.05
At the same time, the same video was shown to the Lookalike audience. Here we spent another $72 and got 1,373 clicks to the site. The cost per 1 click turned out to be the same as that of the previous audience – $0.05.
P.S. You noticed that the video was launched not by the “video views” goal (otherwise the price for the target action would be much lower), but by the traffic format. Have you fixed the difference in costs with the teaser ad format?
In addition to this, 2 more videos were rotated for the purpose of advertising "reach". For $54, 61,180 people were reached, which brought 8 conversions on the site. The cost of one is $6.75. It's funny that although the lead turned out to be too expensive to continue - the conversion rate on the site here turned out to be higher than that of campaigns launched with the goal of advertising "traffic".
Launch #8. Egypt - it didn't work. Egypt is a classic.
Frequently traveling lovers of the same country from the subtitle. Men and women 26-45 years old. A banal photo of a palm tree against the sea worked best. Egypt is a strategically important destination, so the advertisement was running 5 days out of 10.
Targeting by interest to a specific country As always - an ad group of 6 image options.
The very best teaser:
- Spent: $55.00
- Number of clicks: 2331
- Cost of 1 click: $0.02.
Yes, yes, we also laughed at the “very hot tours”, but it works! Exactly the same creatives worked onlookalike-audience, the cost of a click came out almost twice as expensive.
You have already seen the conclusions at the very beginning of the case. Therefore, there are few (very few) proofs, that is, evidence of effectiveness with the help of your favorite printscreens.
Google Analytics:
Facebook. Screenshot from the account with the results of reposts and subscribers:
A fly in the ointment: landing pages for specific areas appeared right in the process of work, and programmers did not always have time to set goals in analytics correctly. Therefore, we were unable to track some conversions using our utm tags.
There were 2246 untracked transitions. They concerned tours to Egypt, Paris and Prague. If we count by the average case conversion, then there should be about 50 more unaccounted leads (of course, we didn’t display them in the conclusions, because we can’t prove it at the analytics level).
The same applies to the purpose of advertising on Facebook “conversions” (a pixel with event tracking, the client, alas, did not have time to deliver) and tools (neither on the site, nor, moreover, on landings, it was not installed, so how much our advertising converted into inbox calls, we can also only assume).
If at the level of the customer each step was planned in advance (and this is done realistically), we undertake to assert that the numbers could be literally many times more impressive. When most of the effort is focused on trying to get ahead of your own time pressure, there is no time left to perfect the details.
We sincerely hope that in the next Bambarbia all this will be taken into account and the tourist services market of Ukraine will shudder from advertising ecstasy.
Why can't you repeat this case on your own?
The effectiveness of contextual advertising to promote MegaBambarbia And here is the data on the effectiveness of targeting (note that the conclusions in the footnotes are made by the customer himself, without our participation).
And, of course, in the comments we are waiting for your questions, wishes, opinions and in general. Don't be shy, friends!
It is no secret that tourism is one of the most competitive topics. It is incredibly difficult to take a leading position in the search results, leaving behind the sites of hundreds and thousands of other travel agencies. However, our specialists never give in to difficulties and always find the best sources of attraction. target audience to the website. Even in competitive topics.
Representatives of a travel company that needed targeted traffic from search engines and new clients. We were faced with the following tasks:
- increase targeted search traffic from Google and Yandex;
- increase overall website traffic;
- increase sales through the travel agency website;
- turn organic traffic into a steady flow of customers.
Initial data of the "patient":
- The domain is 7 years old.
- Promotion region - Kazan.
- The subject is tourism. Travel company offers its clients individual, group and business tourism.
- The site has a lot of pages divided by countries and types of tourist trips (shop tours, business tourism, outdoor activities, wedding tours and much more).
How we saved the site and brought it back to life
After a thorough analysis of the website of the travel company, our optimizers identified one of the main problems of poor traffic and low conversion: the landing pages did not offer the opportunity to book a trip to a specific country. Simple informational text and a few thematic photos placed on landing pages cannot be effective tools for attracting customers.
You can push the user to make a purchase/order only with the help of a specific offer with a list of favorable conditions. Otherwise, the visitor will return to the search results to find a more concise offer with undeniable advantages.
As a result of the audit, our specialists found the following shortcomings, which significantly hampered the development of the site and increased traffic:
1) Availability a large number obvious technical errors.
2) Poor internal optimization, including page linking.
3) Very low quality content (ineffective texts without a selling component and the lack of specific tour offers, which we mentioned a little higher).
4) Low level link profile. Links from business directories, job sites, various profiles, non-thematic resources and from some other sites owned by the client were introduced to the site of the travel company.
All this needed to be fixed as quickly as possible so that the client's site would finally become effective tool sales and attracted more interested travelers.
What have we done for this? Let's go through the work we have done step by step.
Site audit
Having studied the site of the client's travel company inside and out, we identified serious problems with internal page optimization.
- Headlines were not "sharpened" for the main keywords, there were no descriptions metadescription.
- All the texts stretched like a continuous canvas, there was not the slightest hint of the formatting that search engines love so much. In one of our articles, we already wrote about how to properly format the content on the site.
- The pages were loosely linked, internal linking left much to be desired.
- The whole structure of the site was not worked out very well, which caused problems with indexing and full crawling of the site by search robots.
After conducting a full audit of the site and identifying weaknesses in its structure, the experienced specialists of Yula Group immediately began to correct the errors.
Technical tasks and bug fixes
Our programmers removed duplicate pages that appeared on the travel agency website as a result of creating pagination pages, incorrect operation of the content management system (CMS) in sections and subsections, and also due to the presence of URLs with different parameters (for example, /?ct=1540 and /?co=76 ).
In URLs, capital letters (site.ru/Kipr ) were replaced with lowercase letters (site.ru/ k ipr ). It turned out that search engines indexed both types of pages - both with capital letters in the name of countries, and with lowercase ones. And this threatened the site with the imposition of filters or the exclusion of important pages from the search results.
We also optimized all addresses, giving them a “human” look, that is, we replaced unaesthetic krakozyabry with CNC (“human-friendly URLs”).
Having carefully worked on the structure of the tourist resource, we improved the site loading speed by optimizing the code and images. The loading speed of a web resource is one of the most important ranking factors in search engines, and this should not be neglected.
Our developers also restored the integrity of the site by getting rid of the 404 error. To improve the indexing of the site, we compiled the correct robots.txt file and set up the sitemap.xml.
Semantic core and structure
After creating the texts, our content managers added them to the site, formatting each article according to all the canons of search engine optimization. It's no secret that the more pages on the site, the greater the coverage of search queries and, accordingly, the higher the traffic on the site.
Yula Group optimizers carefully analyzed the texts on competitors' websites, which made it possible to create more concise and useful content.
Internal optimization
For each group of requests (clusters), we prepared meta tags and implemented them on promoted pages. For some sections, we implemented the generation of meta tags according to a template, after which everything was corrected manually and brought to the ideal.
In addition to the new, well-formatted articles that we gradually added to the site, our copywriters and content managers have significantly improved the quality of the old travel site materials. The texts were completely redesigned: for better readability, the articles were divided into more paragraphs, divided by subheadings, bulleted and numbered lists were added.
How the structure of the site looks like with study for one specific country, you can see in the screenshot.
It should be noted that this structure can be extended even further. For example, add customer reviews about holidays in a selected country, create a section with weather by country and city, create a selection of attractions for each state (or even for each city), add relevant excursions, etc.
Off-page optimization and link buying
Despite the fact that the role of the link profile has greatly decreased in recent years, external links are still among the top main ranking factors (along with content, loading speed, adaptability and behavioral factors). This is evidenced by the Google employees themselves, and numerous practical experiments of domestic and foreign SEO specialists. However, now it is necessary to select donors for placement of advertising links even more carefully.
We immediately excluded the purchase of rental (temporary links) in exchanges and directly. The advertising budget was directed to the acquisition of eternal links only on trusted, spammed thematic sites with good traffic.
To avoid falling under the Google "Penguin" filter, all anchors were made as natural as possible, and the webmasters of these advertising sites organically inserted links directly into the body of the articles (no sidebars or footers).
The result of our work on the tourist site
What success has been achieved by our team, and what benefit has our client, the owner of the website of a travel company, received from cooperation with Yula Group?
The work carried out allowed us to significantly increase search traffic and the number of orders for tours of all kinds without exception. The increase in attendance is clearly shown in the screenshot from Yandex.Metrica.
True, if our client managed to create such a proposal for tours that would be more interesting and profitable than that of competitors, targeted traffic from search engines would increase even more. This possibility has been realized by almost all competing firms. Therefore, if you are not limited by the budget, try to follow all the recommendations of professional SEO optimizers in order to achieve the maximum return on promotion.
I liked the case, and you have a travel site or a resource of any other subject that does not please with abundant traffic? Order website promotion in the company "Yula Group" and make sure that your project has much more potential than you think!
Situation 1. Nikolai P. - Leading Specialist travel agency. Six months ago, on the recommendation of Nikolai, Sergey was accepted into the agency - a promising young man, a student of the last year of study at the University of Tourism and Service (RGUTiS), and besides, the son of his friend. After a few months of work, Sergey began to use for non-official purposes the means of logistics and information support of his unit and did not even hide this fact in front of other employees. Nikolai worries that this information may reach CEO. Nikolai understands that this problem will fall on his shoulders, since he is responsible for Sergey's actions. In addition, it was on his recommendation that Sergei was hired. Task: Help find a way out of this situation. Propose a solution to the case by answering the following questions: 1. What should Nikolay do when he found out that Sergey was using the means of logistics and information support of the post for unofficial purposes. 2. What method of management in relation to Sergei as a method of influence would you give priority in this case? Justify the answer. 3. How can Nikolay organize his work so that such situations do not happen in the future? Situation 2. Mikhail Shmilovich formulated a typical set of quality indicators for a company providing services: - the number of customer complaints - the customer satisfaction index - the level of return / retention of existing customers - the ease of establishing contact - the courtesy of service personnel - the responsibility of service employees - the cost of quality (the ratio of costs to quality to loss due to poor quality). Task: 1. What do you understand by the indicator "customer satisfaction index". Justify the answer. 2. Propose measures to ensure and improve the quality of service for tourists and increase their satisfaction. Situation 3. One employee of a travel agency experienced a decrease in motivation to work. At first he tried very hard, performed large amounts of work, worked without a break for lunch. Often brought various suggestions to the manager to improve work efficiency. Over time, the employee realized that his activity did not lead to anything. The leader, instead of approving, constantly scolded and criticized. As a result, the employee began to work in the same way as all his colleagues, "from call to call." Task 1. In your opinion, what mistake did the manager make when interacting with this employee? 2. What would you do if you were the leader? How would you help motivate your employees? 3. What theory of motivation is present here?
n1.doc
Case 10
E. V. Novatorov, E. V. KalashnikovCollection of training cases. An experience Russian companies., St. Petersburg, 2003 - 232 p. from 161-191
on the topic "Business level"
The case can also be used for discussion in study groups in the courses "Marketing", "Marketing of services", "Tourism marketing" when considering the following topics:
Marketing Management
Marketing planning
Marketing strategy
Segmentation and positioning
Service quality
10. 2. Purpose of the case
The case is intended to discuss the choice of alternative marketing strategies in an unfavorable environment. external macro environment marketing.Case Study Objectives
1. To enable students to understand the features of marketing in the tourism market.
2. Learn to weigh the pros and cons when choosing alternative marketing strategies in the tourism market.
3. To study the specifics of the marketing of territories and attractions.
4. Acquire skills in developing a marketing mix for various market segments.
10.3. Problem situation
At the macro level, the problem lies in the fact that the Administration of the Arkhangelsk region is not fully aware of the role of tourism in the development of the economy of its region. Budget revenues from tourism occupy the penultimate place. In addition, the administration regulates the tourism market inefficiently, allowing the existence of unlicensed tour operators and unfair competition. As a result, it is unprofitable for small tourism businesses to engage in inbound tourism compared to outbound tourism.At the micro level, the problem is right choice marketing strategy of a travel company in an unfavorable external environment. The Arkhangelsk region has a sufficient set of sights and resources to attract domestic tourists.
10.4. Directions for case discussion
For the purpose of effective discussion, the case presented the organizational structure of the firm as a red herring. The organizational structure of the firm does not take seriously the problem of the case and helps students to exclude other unimportant facts and data presented in a small amount in the case. This will help students develop the skills to focus on useful data and facts to make better decisions.One of the methods of group discussion of a case in a study group can be the division of students into four groups. Each group is invited to analyze and justify the choice of one of the four strategies according to the “grid of product and market development” by I. Ansoff:
Group 1 and Rationale for Strategy Choice 1. Deeper market penetration (existing customers and existing tours);
Group 2 and justification for the choice of strategy 2. Development of new tours and services (new tours and existing consumers);
Group 3 and justification for choosing a strategy 3. Expanding the boundaries of the market (existing tours and new consumers);
Group 4 and rationale for the choice of strategy 4. Diversification (new tours and new consumers).
Issues for discussion
1. How can the volume of sales of existing services and tours be increased to the existing market segments of Pomor-Tour?2. What new markets for the sale of services and tours of the Pomor-tour company can be found and attracted?
3. What new tourist tours and services can be offered to existing customers of Pomor-tour?
4. What new markets can be developed and offered to potential consumers for new travel services and tours?
Question 1. How can you increase the sales volume of existing services and tours to the existing market segments of Pomor Tour?
The choice of such a strategy provides for a certain status quo. Possible tactical decisions will focus on such elements of the marketing mix as price and promotion. In choosing such a strategy, the main goal would be to increase sales of existing services and tours to existing customer segments through high advertising and promotion spending. An interesting discussion of this strategy may be the discussion about the role of customer relationship marketing. With such a philosophy, the company could significantly save on advertising, achieving its commercial goal - increasing sales.
Question 2. What new markets for the sale of services and tours of the Pomor-tour company can be found and attracted?
When discussing the choice of this strategy, it is necessary to study and analyze the applications of the case (especially Fig. 1, and Table 1). Applications clearly show the market preferences of the elderly, businessmen and youth. It is very important to discuss possible markets for organizations and comprehensive service corporate clients. Of greatest interest may be the discussion of new geographic markets, such as residents of other regions and foreigners. Students may be asked to define market segmentation criteria and directly conduct segmentation analysis and selection of target segments. When discussing the results of segmentation analysis, it is possible to compare the advantages and disadvantages of classical segmentation criteria (gender, age, income) with behavioral criteria (VALS-I, VALS-II).
Question 3. What new tourist tours and services can be offered to existing customers of Pomor Tour?
Discussing the choice of this strategy involves a creative discussion about new types of tourism services and tours. For example, students may be interested in discussing the climatic conditions of the Arkhangelsk region and their impact on the development of new tourism services. For pessimistic students who would cite climate as the main barrier to marketing, the examples of a Disney park in France, a water park in Finland, and a water park project in St. Petersburg can be cited.
Question 4. What new markets can be developed and offered to potential consumers new travel services and tours?
The discussion of the choice of this strategy can be linked to the discussion of non-traditional market segmentation according to the Stanley Plog system and the VALS (Values and life styles) of consumers. S. Ploug divides tourists into “thrill seekers” and “search for a relaxing holiday”. Segmentation by lifestyle can reveal segments of tourists who prefer exotic, single or small-group types of recreation. For example, according to some studies, very wealthy tourists often try not to advertise themselves during the holidays, being in the “shadow”.
In this case, it may be interesting to discuss the marketing mix and the content features of tours and services. Of course, in this example, the promotion strategy should be narrower and more targeted, while the price is significantly higher compared to prices for other clients of the firm. In this case, the discussion of the strategy can be combined with a discussion of the concept of the quality of the tourist service, the quality of service and its measurement. The result of the discussion of this issue may be new options and concepts of tourist services for recreation and entertainment proposed by students. In this approach, students can be asked to develop new exotic tourism services and describe them using the service process development methods (consumer scenario, touchpoints, diagrammatic design) contained in the process strategy of the services marketing mix.
Case 11. Timber industry complex of Karelia.
V. N. Tishkov, M. N. RudakovCollection of training cases. Experience of Russian companies, St. Petersburg, 2003 - 232 p. pp. 195-227
The case is recommended for discussion in study groups:I know " Strategic management» - on the topic "Corporation Level and International Strategies"
The case can also be used:
In the course "International Management" - on the topic "International Business Strategy" for the specialty management, specialization international Management;
In the course "International Trade" - on the topics " Foreign trade regulation- tariff and non-tariff methods”, “Pricing in international trade» for the specialization of State Medical University and Management, specialization in International Management.
11.2. Case Study Objectives
The case is intended to discuss the situation in the timber industry complex of Karelia, evaluate the activities of timber mining and timber processing enterprises and develop an alternative strategy that allows these companies to more effectively realize their competitive advantages both in the domestic and foreign markets.11.3. Problem situation
As a result of the changed situation in the timber industry complex of Karelia in the early 1990s. there have been dramatic changes in the composition and organizational structures of the enterprises of the complex. The lack of any coherence in their activities led to the disorganization of the emerging market, the loss of a significant part of income, an increasing focus on exports, and dependence on the strategy of Finnish companies.11.4. Issues for discussion
1. Describe the new situation that developed in the initial period of economic reforms in the timber industry of Karelia. Assess its positive and negative consequences for the enterprises of the complex.3. The problem of attracting direct foreign investment in the timber industry complex of Karelia for the purpose of technological re-equipment of the enterprises of the industry.
4. How do timber industry enterprises of Karelia form competitive productions?
5. Formulate the main directions of state policy designed to create conditions for the Russian timber industry to take its place on a par with the fuel and energy complex, the metallurgical complex?
Question 1. Describe the new situation that developed in the initial period of economic reforms in the timber industry of Karelia. Assess its positive and negative consequences for the enterprises of the complex.
Institutional reforms designed to change property relations, the management structure of enterprises, the motivation of its leaders, took place in the timber industry of Karelia more slowly and with results far from expected. Of course, the peripheral location of the region, the qualifications of personnel, primarily managerial, special position industry as a source of an important national economic resource, which became more and more significant as a source of foreign exchange
receipts.
The macroeconomic situation was aggravated not only by the general decline in production in the republic, but also by the special processes that took place in this industry. Previously, a single complex broke up into hundreds of economically independent units, the number actors in the market of forest products in Karelia has increased dramatically due to intermediaries aimed solely at making a profit, while as soon as possible. There was a sharp reduction in domestic demand, while at the same time a multiple increase in prices for inputs and equipment. Among the lost opportunities of the forestry enterprises of Karelia, one should also mention the prevalence of such a form of privatization, in which the enterprise remained in the ownership of its staff, and after a certain time, by buying up shares, it passed to the management of the enterprise.
The spontaneous export orientation of Karelian timber industry enterprises to the Finnish market is a survival strategy, primarily for timber enterprises. Meanwhile, neither the emerging market environment nor the export orientation of the industry's enterprises had any serious impact on their activities. Organizationally and functionally, the timber industry enterprises continued to maintain management structures that were far from market ones - see below. organizational structure CJSC "Shuyales" (Appendix 3). Non-market motivation continued to dominate in the activities of enterprises.
Undoubtedly, the capacious Finnish timber processing market "saved" the timber industry of Karelia at first. However, the consequences of such a geographical choice cannot be unequivocally assessed. The difference between wood prices in the Russian and Finnish markets is seriously disconcerting Russian market. Everything is subordinated to the current result, momentary profit, strategy as a component of management has disappeared from the list of tasks of enterprises. To a certain extent, this is facilitated by the widely practiced short-term lease of logging sites - for 3 years. There is a fierce competition between numerous small-scale loggers and no less numerous intermediary timber exporters to Finland, the result of which is the supply of mainly roundwood abroad, which often does not correspond to Russian standards applied to exported products; undersupply of timber domestic market Russia, worsening the situation of domestic timber processing enterprises.
This is reflected, in particular, in the content of foreign trade contracts, the main part of which is for the supply of raw wood (pulpwood).
It is possible to offer students to give an approximate estimate of the losses incurred by the timber industry complex of Karelia, based on the data in Table. 5 and fig. 2.
The absence of any kind of coordination between Karelian companies, as well as the undoubted dictate of Finnish companies, due to their monopoly position as importers, leads to a significant spread in contract prices, forced by domestic exporters to choose the least favorable basic terms of supply for themselves, forms of payment for exported wood. It affects not only the low qualification of the personnel concluding foreign trade contracts, but also the insufficient supply of working capital, forcing them to actually either abandon the creation of a greater share of the added value in Russia, or advance payments to Finnish buyers, worsening the already difficult financial position enterprises.
Question 3. The task of attracting foreign direct investment in the timber industry complex of Karelia for the purpose of technological re-equipment of the industry's enterprises.
At present, timber industry enterprises of Karelia occupy an extremely unprofitable niche for themselves in the global (regional) market, the possibility of changing the situation is to a decisive extent connected with attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) in order to increase the level of processing of exported products, replacing the export of roundwood with timber, as well as improving the quality of export lumber. The arrival of Western professional management, which is able to reorganize the management and production structure of enterprises, and rationalize them, is also important. financial flows. An obstacle to attracting significant FDI in the timber industry complex of Karelia is not only the traditional foreign investors In Russia, there are inefficient forms of corporatization of enterprises, the lack of priority of the law, the weak interest of the state in attracting foreign capital, but often, as in the case of the Karelian timber industry, the unwillingness to create full-cycle enterprises on Russian territory that can compete with Finnish enterprises.
Question 4. How do timber industry enterprises of Karelia form competitive industries?
The aggravation of contradictions between the goals of loggers, woodworking enterprises and pulp and paper mills, manifested in the growing lack of raw materials for enterprises at higher stages of processing, the quality of sawlogs supplied to woodworkers is only a small part of the internal problems of the republican complex. Large enterprises, first of all, Pulp and Paper Mill, in order to create a stable operating environment, develop a strategy for its development, they have taken the path of creating integrated holding-type associations designed to unite all the previously disconnected links in the technological chain, as well as significantly increase the level of centralization of ownership, especially in the field of logging.
Students can be asked to characterize the benefits of creating a holding company instead of the currently prevailing disunited, disorganized structure of the republic's forestry complex.
Question 5. Formulate the main directions of state policy designed to create conditions for Russia's forestry industry to take its place on a par with the fuel and energy complex, the metallurgical complex?
In conclusion of the discussion of the case, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that without serious state support, the timber industry complex of Russia as a whole will not be able to achieve the position that it should occupy in the near future, including as a likely source of significant foreign exchange earnings in the country.
Among the measures of state protectionism should be called:
A sharp increase in export duties on unprocessed timber;
Significant increase in the lease term for forest plots;
All-round assistance to the centralization of capital, primarily in the field of logging;
Creation of conditions for attracting FDI in the industry with a high degree of wood processing.
The main collections of cases:
1. Strategic management Russian companies. Collection of training cases. St. Petersburg 2004 - 248 p.;
2. Collection of training cases. Experience of Russian companies., St. Petersburg, 2003 - 232 p.;
3. Kazantsev A.K. etc. Fundamentals of management. Workshop. M. INFRA-M. 2002 - 544 p.
4. Russian management: theory, practice, education. Issue. 1. St. Petersburg 2001 - 272 p.;
5. Private materials.
1 1 In addition to the company's own information, the case uses information from the magazines Expert and Expert. North-West" (1999-2003) and the newspaper "Vedomosti" (1999-2003).
Some names and data in the case have been changed.
3 Case authors: Doctor of Economics, Professor, Head. A. K. Kazantsev, Department of Information Management, Faculty of Management, St. Petersburg State University; Director for the implementation of the CIS of OAO Baltiysky Zavod E.E. Minevich; Candidate of Economics, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Management of St. Petersburg State University L. S. Serova.
In the case, in addition to the company's own information, materials from the magazines "Expert" and "Expert. North-West", "Secret Firm", "CNR/RE IT-Business". Some names and data in the case have been changed. This case was developed by the authors as educational material for educational programs and cannot be used to evaluate the activities of JSC "Baltiysky Zavod" in the field of information technologies management.
The authors are grateful to A. K. Simonov, Deputy Director for Management, Head of the Information Technology Development Department of OAO Baltiysky Zavod, for his assistance in writing the case and providing the necessary material.
"All names and surnames in the case have been changed.
