Mastercard Case - Prof Ram PDF

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Prof Ram...

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Devin Dillingham

Overall, I find Raja’s priceless campaign to be quite impressive in terms of creativity and the wide variety of programs. There is however, one main problem that Raja faces as he looks to getting further spending approved by Mastercard. Continuing with the priceless campaign is extremely costly, and Mastercard is not going to take on giant expenses for an extended period unless they are proven valuable in their return on investment. To get future spending on Priceless approved, raja will have to prove that the campaign’s competitive advantage is sustainable and that it will make for a profitable Mastercard post-program. In Exhibit 1, we see that revenues have increased even despite an overall decrease in spending on marketing/advertising, suggesting that efforts had been and still may be focused in the wrong direction. While I see that Raja is making moves in the right direction, the company still seems to struggle with some of the same issues it did when Raja joined (page 2). Being a B2B2C business, Mastercard should be aware of the end consumer, but should focus its efforts towards its direct customers: banks. We can see the results of this issue specifically through exhibit 7, in that while the Mastercard brand image has increased greatly, the perceptions of the issuing bank have increased at only half that rate. Another issue that we see still at play is the fact that Mastercard does have access to the end-consumer data that the banks have. I believe that it is in in Raja’s best interest to propose a move to focus their efforts on programs that increase engagement with their middlemen: the banks. Since the banks are the ones issuing the cards, not Mastercard, it is vital to “keep them happy”. In the end, brand recognition does not help us if our direct customers are not being recognized as well. One way that would help Raja in this endeavor would be to organize a deal to get ahold of consumer data from banks, that could be used to better focus programs in the right direction....