Nowadays, lighting is becoming more important not only for daily use but also for other purposes such as decoration, quality assessment, workplace enhancement, etc. Its applications, therefore, can be found in various areas, ranging from residential to architectural to industrial usage. However, due to quick development of technologies, especially the advent of LED, and diversification of products, customers find it much harder to choose suitable lighting fixtures or professional lighting services with their limited understanding about technical issues in this field. Besides, a significant increase in the number of “me too” companies in the lighting industry has created several challenges for both consumers and existing suppliers in terms of differentiation and benefit maximization. The reason is that users might not be able to distinguish between similar offerings while manufacturers cannot make themselves outstanding among their competitors. In addition, demand for customized products is growing sharply as many customers would like to have specific solutions to their lighting issues in order to optimize its usage. For example, it will be difficult for hoteliers to figure out which lighting options from which brands should be used in different rooms to bring uniqueness to their infrastructure without expert consultancy. This is why professional lighting service providers are gaining their positions as trustful partners and designers for many customers in different industries. The competitive landscape, consequently, is significantly affected with a lot of new entrants hoping to gain more market shares in this promising field. In general, the intense environment raises the question of how to smartly survive in the lighting industry for both big and small companies. Founded in 2009 by Mr. Gaiser Martin, Amviso GmbH is an SME working as a professional service provider and independent trading company in the field of lighting applications. Having realizing the fierce competition, the firm decides to focus on B2B markets by providing extreme LED lighting solutions to harsh working environment instead of concentrating on residential applications for B2C customers. Even though this direction might help the firm to avoid strong rivalries, it still challenging due to great efforts and investments required to dominate these niche markets. First of all, it cannot be denied that Amviso GmbH is still a young company in the lighting industry, especially in the extreme LED segment. Not many current or potential customers know about its existence and actively come to it unless Amviso team approaches them to introduce their services via phone calls or personal emails. These activities are certainly time-consuming and less productive because of uncertainty as well as costly resources. To partly deal with this issue, Amviso GmbH has launched two websites, one in Germany and one in Switzerland, to increase its presence on the market. However, the results are not really impressive as these websites do not contribute much to the company’s customer acquisition process as well as its position improvement in search engines. Besides, Amviso GmbH sometimes attends lighting trade shows like the Light + Building trade fair in Frankfurt or smaller exhibitions in Germany and Switzerland to promote its brand and to meet new customers. But these events are very costly nowadays. As a result, the company needs to find other effective and cost-efficient ways to attract customers if it wants to expand the businesses in the near future.

As a mentioned above, Amviso GmbH is having difficulties in finding and approaching potential customers. This thesis, therefore, is intended to help Amviso GmbH efficiently gain more customers as well as improve its presence and image in the lighting industry. In other words, the authors are going to answer the company’s remaining question by delivering a new marketing strategy: How to find and inform potential customers about the existence of Amviso GmbH as an independent and specialized company which offers customized LED extreme lighting solutions? To propose the best marketing strategy for Amviso GmbH, the thesis is going to be divided into two main phases. First the author will evaluate different markets that the company is already in or wants to exploit, mostly in Germany and Switzerland. The evaluation is based on the product-market matrix provided by Amviso GmbH and is analyzed with information from desk researches. The GE/McKinsey Portfolio Planning Grid is the guiding tool for this part. Markets are assessed for their attractiveness while strategic business units are weighted for their competitiveness. Then the authors will calculate the weighted results to figure out the most potential combinations of product-market and Amviso GmbH can choose a limited number of market(s) to target at. The second phase of the project is about creating suitable marketing concepts consisting of four aspects of the marketing mix (product, place, price, promotion) for the market(s) picked in the previous phase. The authors will dig deeper in customer demands and company’s competitive advantages to decide a suitable positioning, new marketing concepts and matching deployment tools that increase the company’s reputation and presence on the marketplace. However, due to the expectations and the current situation of Amviso GmbH, the paper will mostly focus on product and promotion strategy as these two aspects play important roles in answering the firm’s remaining question above. All findings will be summarized accordingly to theoretical frameworks and recommendations on a new marketing strategy for Amviso GmbH will be issued at the end of the paper.

After careful researches and studies, the authors come following considerable findings for Amviso GmbH: For the market evaluation, generally, the Amviso GmbH’s portfolio matrix that is constructed based on the GE/McKinsey Portfolio Planning Grid indicates that most of its SBUs are located in “invest/growth” cells. Among the existing markets including the hospitality lighting, the shopping center lighting, and the museum and art gallery lighting, the first one is the most promising segment in terms of market attractiveness and harmonious conformity to the company’s product units. Concerning the industrial applications with “lighting for machines” and “lighting for working places”, the former also demonstrates better captivation. Hence, the result reveals that the two best segments for Amviso GmbH to penetrate are “lighting for hospitality” and “lighting for machines”. Owing to their’ significant sizes with stable growing rates and suitable macro environmental trends, those markets assure a positive outlook for Amviso GmbH. In addition, when analyzing the product’s competitiveness, Diana Electrics and RCL/Precision Lighting show the most optimistic advantages. Those offerings will be the most suitable for the “lighting for machines” and “lighting in hospitality” segment since their strengths perfectly meet customers’ needs and demands. Although other units such as SZ Good Lighting for lighting in working places, Wisvaled for customer-specific solutions are highly potential, DIANA Electrics for lighting in machines and RCL/Precision Lighting for lighting in hospitality are recommended to be invested more heavily. For the marketing strategy, with a conscientious investigation on the current situation of Amviso GmbH and selectively references to marketing experts’ suggestions, the authors’ focuses have been placed on the product concepts and the communications mix. Regarding strategies for products, the most appropriate unique selling points (USPs) for the Diana Electric product line are decided to be “Innovation, Robustness and Cost effectiveness” and for the RCL product line are “Convenience, Smartness and Aesthetic”. The company, hence, can emphasize on those USPs to “grow, seek dominance, and maximize investments” in the RCL unit; and to “identify growth segments, invest strongly, maintain position elsewhere” for the Diana Electronics unit. These activities are what McKinsey suggests firms follow to successfully manage their product portfolios. The communication concept is designed with a core message for the whole company and two single messages for each market segment. Online and social media marketing, and direct and database marketing are recommended as guiding instruments for Amviso GmbH’s plan. In which website and email marketing, together with catalog marketing should be stressed and considerately executed. Besides, sales promotion and advertising can be regarded as supporting tools to resonate the marketing results. These instruments, when concisely applied, will raise customer’s awareness about Amviso GmbH and help it gain more prospects while still retaining the loyal. In a nutshell, this research paper encompasses a broad scope of works from the situational assessment to the strategy formation and the implementation. To come to any conclusion, the authors have done thorough studies. This assures the credibility of any suggestion for Amviso GmbH concerning its development strategy and marketing concepts. Those plans are expected to be practical and helpful. Therefore, the company can considerately apply the recommended strategies to complete its marketing programs and benefit from that.