Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Dinh Thi Thanh Thuy

CURRENT SITUATION AND
ACTION TO PLAN FOR ASCENDASPROTRADE SINGAPORE TECH PARK
ID: 22130076

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Supervisors: Dr. Tran Ha Minh Quan
And Dr. Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016


Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Abstract........................................................................................................................................................ 2
Chapter 1: Problem Identification ............................................................................................................ 3
Company Introduction and Background ................................................................................................... 3
Problem Symptoms ................................................................................................................................... 4
Problem Identification .............................................................................................................................. 6
Verifying The Existence of The Problem ................................................................................................. 8
The Importance of The Problem ............................................................................................................... 9

Potential causes ....................................................................................................................................... 11
Cause and Effect Map ............................................................................................................................. 15
Chapter 2: Alternative Solutions ............................................................................................................. 16
Root cause ............................................................................................................................................... 16
Alternative Solutions .............................................................................................................................. 18
Establish relationship with strategic partners and retain customers’ relationship .............................. 19
Applying technology to business ........................................................................................................ 19
Penetrate the market deeply ................................................................................................................ 21
Chapter 3: Selected Solutions and Implementation Plan ...................................................................... 23
Selected Solutions ................................................................................................................................... 23
Implementation Plan ............................................................................................................................... 24
Chapter 4: Supporting Information ........................................................................................................ 27
Transcript 1: Interview with Sales and Marketing Manager to get the symptoms of the problem ......... 27
Transcript 2: Interview sales and marketing staff to find obstacles they face up in their sale and
marketing activities ................................................................................................................................. 30
Transcript 3: Interview Mr. Han – General Director and Ms. Eriko – Head of Sales and Marketing
Department to find out the central problem ............................................................................................ 33
Questionnaire 1: Survey to confirm the central problem ........................................................................ 40
Questionnaire 2: Survey to confirm the root cause ................................................................................. 47
Questionnaire 3: Tenants Feedback ........................................................................................................ 47
Literature Reviews Summary.................................................................................................................. 49
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 52
References .................................................................................................................................................. 53


Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

Acknowledgements
This study builds on reality of a joint venture Vietnam Singaporean real-estate
company which I am working for. I should therefore begin my acknowledgements to my

colleagues and partners who supported and provided useful information so that I can
analyze and find out the root cause of company problems to complete this paper.
Acknowledgment for permission to use materials and data from Mr. Han, the general
director of Ascendas-Protrade Co., Ltd. It’s my grateful to Ms. Thuy, sales and marketing
manager, who spent her time to exchange information, joined the interview and help me
realize problem symptoms, get the potential causes and find company problems.
I am also indebted to my supervisors; Dr. Tran Ha Minh Quan and Dr. Nguyen
Thi Nguyet Que, for their valuable comments, instructions and advices to help me
understand the thesis structure more fully and complete this thesis.
I also express my appreciation to the members of the group and staff of ISB for
their friendliness and enthusiastic. My thanks, too, to my family and friends for their
motivation and supports.

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Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

Abstract
The existence of appropriate marketing strategies in industrial land lease is
generally attributed to the successful of deal close and occupancy rate in industrial real
estate field. This study is identifying the Ascendas-Protrade Co., Ltd.’s core problem,
finding and prioritizing capacities as well as examining the use of high value added
strategies to allow firm get higher performance then enable pushing Ascendas-Protrade
Singapore Tech Park occupancy rate. Key members of the company have been selected to
respond a questionnaire and their answers have been use as data for analyzing to figure
out the company’s problem. From the point of view of experts, Board of Director and
managers of the firm, the results of the interview inclines toward strategic marketing and
integrated customer solutions. Therefore, they deserve special attention in relation to
brand, marketing campaign and image deal with market communication that aims to

strengthen the brand, the image and the reputation, to increase the company's awareness
and to promote the customer's emotional engagement. In this study, raising solutions
reflect various capacities of understanding customers’ needs, product differentiation, and
competitive advantage so that such solutions can associate and align to corporate
strategies to meet the firm’s challenges and goals in upcoming years. The study provides
practitioner insights into the practices and trends in the use of valuable strategies in
industrial land market. In determining appropriate marketing plan for industrial landlease, many factors need to be weighed as to the influence on a particular subject
properly.

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Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

Chapter 1: Problem Identification
Company Introduction and Background
As an Asia's leading provider of total business space solutions with more than
30 years of experience. Ascendas specializes in master planning, developing, managing
and marketing IT parks, industrial & logistics parks, business parks, science parks, hispecs facilities, office and retail spaces. Leveraging on its track record and experience,
Ascendas has introduced new business space concepts such as integrated communities
and solutions which seamlessly combine high-quality business, lifestyle, retail and
hospitality spaces to create conducive human-centric work-live-play-learn environments.
Ascendas has established a strong regional presence, settle up Ascendas Vietnam
Co., Ltd. in Vietnam and cooperated with a Vietnamese state-own company, Protrade, to
invest and develop an industrial park in Southern Vietnam, named Ascendas-Protrade
Singapore Tech Park (APSTP), primarily serving multi-national companies, leading local
companies and research institutions. The project is set within 500 ha and consists of 6
phases in which the area of phase 1 and phase 2 is 150 ha, fully completed infrastructure
and launched into market to sell. It offers a vibrant work-live-play-learn industrial hub
that blends high quality business space and reliable solutions with a conducive business

lifestyle and provides customers with excellent range of options for industries in
electronics, precision engineering, IT, pharmaceutical, food and beverage and general
industries.
There are plenty of competitors running their businesses in this industry in
Vietnam. Some of them are successful and assessed as mature industrial parks such as
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Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

VSIP, Amata, Long Duc, Nhon Trach, Kizuna, etc. while some other parks operated for
long time but their positions in the market really matter. The most appeared failure is low
growth rate. APSTP is one of them and is a perfect case to study on this kind of failure.
Problem Symptoms
According to sales reports and financial statements from the date the project
opened for sale (2007 to 2016), it shown that company has spent a lot of money to run
marketing campaigns for branding and attract prospects to push sales but it still couldn’t
meet break-even point and the project can be sold to another development while it
probably made profit in the first 5 years as planned. During 9 years, from 2007 until
2016, the occupancy rate of the first 2 phases of the project is about 36%. They
encountered an issue of pushing land sales though their team is skillful and worked
extremely hard and enthusiastic.
After interviewing financial controller, sales manager and staff, parameters were given as
follows:
Sales (ha)

Before

Project target sale (ha)
Project Cumulative

(ha)

73.8
73.8

Q1
2014
20
93.8

Actual Sales (ha)
Actual
Cumulative
(ha)

25.5
25.5

1.5
27.0

Q2
2014
12.2
106

Q3
2014
9.5
115.5


Q4
2014
15
130.5

Q1
2015
24.2
157.4

Q2
2015
11.6
169

Q3
2015
17
186

Q4
2015
11.5
197.5

Q1
2016
18.5
216


2
29.0

5.5
34.5

3.5
38.0

2.0
40.0

3.5
43.5

5.0
48.5

3.5
52.0

1.7
53.7

Table 1: Sales Target and Sales Actual from 2014 to 2016 of the project

The actual sale compare with the plan is a big gap. In 2014, project target sale is
56.7 ha while actual sale is 12.5, equivalent to 22% of expected goal. The sales volume
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Solutions To Build Effective Marketing Strategies For Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park

is very low despite of the team’s effort. The value of contract is not big, below 3 ha. The
project hardly finds a queen bee to attract other supplementary industries to build up a
supply chain. Big customers often get aware of APSTP at the last minutes of their final
decision. Normally, oversea investors get information of industrial parks in Vietnam
through consultants or agents website or meeting and have them help in analysis before
going further steps. Ascendas-Protrade hasn’t built strong and close relationships with
agents, consultants as well as advertised the project on their websites.
Besides, working with marketing department (Head of Marketing Department,
Marketing Manager and Marketers) to get more information, a collection of data was
given hereunder:
Items
Visual Branding
Collateral
Event
Advertising
Website
Digital
Sponsorship/Exhibition
Festive Gifts

Budget (USD)
30,000
15,000
20,000
30,000
3,000

10,000
80,000
12,000

Table 2: A&P Budget FY2016 (Provided by Marketing Department)
Annually, the marketing department spends USD 200,000 on marketing
campaigns for investment promotion activities and hosting. However, the outcome
obtained is not satisfactory and the team doesn't have enough qualified leads. According
to transcript 1, they stated that the team worked very hard with passion and enthusiasm,
applied to many channels to market the products, on an average, there were about 14
prospects came to visit the project each month but the real buyer is just a few. Asking of
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which channels to approach prospects, the Head of Marketing Department shared that,
they signed contracts with International Property Companies (CBRE, Savills, Colliers,
etc.) sub-brokers to get more chance to increase leads and customers. However, this
channel is very week. Besides, the number of 14 prospects visiting APSTP each month
derives from their relationship with associations, the real demand is nearly equal to zero
and the name of the project is really not familiar with them. Each year, company set up
balance-scored-card to monitor their activities and target. The prospects they expect to
come to their site is 175 per year. They spent a lot of money to host groups of investors
from consulates and associations to reach the site visit target but the contracts signed is
just 2-3 each year and the land plot sold is not big.
Compare with other competitors in the same industry like VSIP, Long Hau, the
sales volume of APSTP is much lower and slower. Besides, there isn’t any local investor
locates in APSTP. Although there’s a budget for marketing activities, they don’t get high
achievements of sales and awareness, for instance, when a consultant or partner of them

take prospects to APSTP, the prospects know Amata, VSIP, ect. but do not know this
project. Each year, they tried to find more channels to approach more prospects but they
were still caught in a vicious circle.
Problem Identification
Entering Vietnam market at the end of 2007, one year later, they faced the
difficulty of economic recession. At that time, Ascendas-Protrade was a young company
without strong relationships with relative partners, agents and government; they couldn’t

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find their first customers. Moreover, they were lack of knowledge of nation culture and
local market to catch up with other strong competitors in industry.
Asking more about company marketing activities, a fact is that the firm has budget
to do marketing but they break the plan. They have an amount of money for visual
branding and advertising but they didn’t use it, they take it to events, exhibition. This
leads to serious consequences; no one knows what APSTP is and what its offerings.
Marketing supports a lot for sales. According to Paswan, Blankson, & Guzman (2011),
the key marketing objective is to meet prospects’ needs and aspirations; therefore, the
firm should have appropriate strategies to enhance products and organization value.
For events, exhibitions the company hosted, each year they organized six to ten
investment promotions in many countries which the investment rate is high. However, the
result is not as expectation, the team spent a huge amount to obtain only one or two
prospects. The direct consequence is waste money low outcome; the indirect consequence
is it makes the team frustrated. Digital marketing and social media are not used to
promote their brand name in the market though for current trend, social media's effects
can represent a revolution in communication (Patino, Pitta & Quinones, 2012). Their
website is also out of date and lack of information. Clearly, they haven’t had a proper

marketing plan, haven’t created the awareness buzz in the consumer minds (Rios &
Riquelme, 2010) to gain the desired differential response. Managing marketing channels
is very important for successful implementation of marketing strategy (Paswan et al.,
2011). It can help ensure the effective and efficient flow of goods, information, and
revenue.
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Market penetration to understand the market and analyze it is very important. A
clear and logical market analysis identifies a long-term market potential and the most
significant sources of market risk (Malizia & Howarth, 1995). Every marketer before
building marketing strategy needs to understand deeply the market overview and grasps
the market trend. However, in Ascendas-Protrade, they didn’t pay attention to this
activity. Each year they got 2 market reports from the head-quarter and the information is
not enough to reflect the right situation of current market. This can lead them not to
propose a good sales and marketing strategy to promote their brand name and products.
Through interviewing and data collection, a problem has been identified; their
marketing plan is not proper and does not focus on right channels to get desired
prospects. This study is to provide solutions in order for marketers to implement
marketing plan more effective and feasible to improve land sales.
Verifying The Existence of The Problem
After diagnosing, the central problem is inappropriate marketing plan, to verify
and confirm the existence problem, an interview with related party and a questionnaire
has been made (see transcript 3 and questionnaire 1 in chapter 4). The questionnaire
consists of 11 questions, the main content of the interview and survey focus on how the
audiences feel and see about the marketing activities, information updated and events of
the project. Survey data are collected from associations, partners, agents, etc. From the
result, following the table 5 in chapter 4, about marketing activities, 37.6% of participants

feel it poor, 33.8% think it’s lack of creative and 28.6% feel it’s normal though they give
high appraisal for the professional of the team, 42.3% agrees that the team is professional
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and 23.4% agrees the team is very professional. Compare with previous year, the level of
acknowledgement of project information is 46.2% the same and 38%. Information to
update to partners are also not enough, just 17% know well, 55.3% know the general
information, 29.3% feels dissatisfied with marketing campaign and 46.9% feel not
impressive with upcoming events, 42.4% knows a little of the project, 15.2% knows the
project very well. Based on the above result, the project needs a better marketing plan.
The Importance of The Problem
As a culture of Singapore based company, the pace of work is very speedy and
load of information is fairly huge. In a short time, employees have to process
information, filter to assign to appropriate purposes so that they can adapt with the high
speed of economic growth and the information explosion. During many years of
operation, the company’s members from junior to senior levels have spent a lot of their
time and resources to push up their land sale and sale leads to come to the site. However,
though the team keeps trying to work very hard, the expected goal cannot be achieved
and they felt fed up with the job. The companies’ revenues stem from appropriate
strategies concerning market orientation, recognizing the different opportunities to offer
differentiated products for the right market segment (Ribeiro, Brashear, Monteiro &
Damazio, 2009). Without any good direction and strategic marketing campaigns, it can
easily make employees depressed time after time. The employees’ working motivation
will be down or disappear and leads to high turnover rate. If the firm cannot deploy
strategic marketing activities, they cannot create various business opportunities to get
profits and survive in the market. Customers need to understand the concept of the park,
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feel the potential of the location as well as the integrated solutions that the site offers
through strong marketing plan. From that, the company can reinvest and develop new
phases of the project, retain their business and innovate their products and services as
well.
According to Sengupta & Chattopadhyay (2006), stronger market orientation helps
better business operation which creates satisfied customer base and improved
profitability. Effective marketing strategies can enable the team apply marketing concepts
to their work to develop to appeal target market by positioning specific customers, help
the company save their cost and focus on their target. The team should periodically
evaluate and control their marketing strategies, measure the result and adjust accordingly
to boost their performance and outcomes.
Appropriateness and feasibility of marketing plan might be considered
as the market offerings of a set of products and services and its corresponding prospects
perception amongst its target segment (Sengupta & Chattopadhyay, 2006). Focusing on
right approaches, offering excellent integrated customer solutions and unique products,
marketing and sales staff of Ascendas-Protrade can obtain more potential prospects with
minimum time and optimize their skills in negotiation to close deals. Construct and using
an appropriate marketing plan is a critical element for business success (Shaw, 2012). It
can help position brand of the firms and develop sales growth and market share,
moreover, it can coordinates company’s activities to maximize its profits, helps getting
supports from other departments, makes sure all team members are aware of what each is
doing. Besides, it seems that the team has a compass in hand, a marketing research can be
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carried out at the beginning stage to consider optimal target customers, observe
competitors’ activities and recognize what trends might be, and then base on this, they
can understand the customers’ demands and how to differentiate their product or service
from the competition. They also easily set the right price for products and services based
on their findings in the market research or determine which marketing channels should
account for to fit the sale plan.
Managing marketing channels is critical for successful implementation of
marketing plan (Paswan et al., 2011). In fact, choosing the right channels can enhance the
effect of implementing marketing plan. Having proper and strong marketing plan,
departments in company can work closer and better with each other as they all work from
the same plan. Without right direction followed by a marketing plan, the more land the
company owns the more loss they get as the land tenure decreases each year and the
value of the amount they obtain is less. They cannot optimize their service charge and the
central water treatment plan is easy to be out of work. Addition, the fewer tenants are in
the park the lower interaction between tenants exists, hence, the owner cannot establish
their planned model of industrial clusters and supportive industrial chain.
Potential causes
From the reality, the reasons for the situation can be from many factors, yet when
synthesize all situations and contexts; the cause is mainly of weak and inappropriate
marketing plan. The marketing plan outlines how a company will reach certain future
goal. It begins by setting realistic, obtaining objectives. The most important things to

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consider when developing a marketing plan is market research, competition analysis,
market plan. However, the company got failure of this and lead to low sales performance.

Potential cause 1: Failure to understand market
At the beginning joining the market, there weren’t any expert to analyse the local
market. They got the agent to do such job, however, the research given was quite general,
lack of detailed information to help them understand market deeply. Market research can
help the company get greater insight from the market and meet their objectives. The
marketing research can provide an overall picture of the industry, competitors and
business environment; understanding of how market interactions will affect the project. It
is very crucial as with good market research and analysis as a foundation, appraisals can
be used to help market participants make better decisions to implement marketing plan
(Correl, 2003).
Potential cause 2: Failure to apply technology to business
Information has exploded, technology developed in a very fast pace, and today's
marketing activities are impossible with the help of information technology (BerishaNamani, 2013). Information technology is making possible and creating connections
between businesses and organisations, support marketing activies. too. With
information technology, companies possess the potential to reach more customers,
introduce new products and services quickly, and collaborate with suppliers
and business partners from all over the world. Through interview with Sales and
Marketing Departments, sadly, Ascendas-Protrade didn’t utilize this kind of mean
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completely in their business. Their website is poor and lack of information of products
and services. The channels they focus on normally are traditional channels and lack of
modern ones such as digital channels. Social media and digital marketing nearly exclude
in their budget and activities. Nowadays, these channels are very important and are the
number one assistant in helping furnish brand name and attract more customers. With
rigid working style, they omit taking initiatives into works.
Potential cause 3: Failure to segment the market

Ascendas-Protrade develops their project base on the work-live-play-learn concept
and they try to create integrated customer solutions and professional working
environment as one of their unique selling points for their products. However, the
concept has been raised but how to get right prospects is still the hard question they need
to find the answer to find a way.
According to Peters (1993), one of the steps to implement marketing plan is to
segment the market, choose the right customers the company is aiming to. How to get
people know about the project, can the customers in the segmentation be reached? It’s
very difficult for the company as they are lack of market analysis and research hence they
define their target so broadly. Through the interview, the company approach customers
via events, exhibitions, roadshow, networking but there are not many potential prospects
come from these channels.
Potential cause 4: Failure to communicate with right intermediaries.

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A fact has been shown after interviewing company’s staff and Sales and
Marketing Departments, due to the characteristics of the industry, selected channels of
customer approach has been applied. The investors from oversea usually find a consultant
in the country they intend to invest to investigate and examine all required aspects for
them. Therefore, staff from industrial park should connect to consultants, agencies to
introduce and advertise their project. Unfortunately, the sales and marketing team hasn’t
established a strong network with agents, sub-brokers, associations to get in-time
information to approach new leads.
According to Simoes & Mason (2012), what an organisation wants to achieve will
affect the type of relationships it needs to establish and the way they are developed.
Indeed, to get the sales leads and close the deal, the company should establish

relationship with strategic partners who can connect them with real customers. AscendasProtrade has signed contract with sub-brokers, international property companies,
agencies, build relationship with banks and associations. However, the relationships are
not strong and close enough. In an inter-organisational context, collaboration relationship
between business to business is vital. The sales and marketing team didn’t pay attention
to collaborate with international associations (Amcham, Eurocham, Thai Associations,
Japanese Business Associations, Singapore Business Group, etc.) and local associations
(VCCI, Vietnam Textile, packaging association, etc.), so the relationships are not strong
enough for associations to think of APSTP if they have potential investors. Dyer & Singh
(1998) suggested that “a firm's critical resources become embedded in interfirm relationships and the practices that underpin such relationships can lead to
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competitive advantage”. In fact, many industrial parks has succeeded with full occupancy
rate thanks to the relationships.
Cause and Effect Map

Due to the specific characteristics of the products, the approach channels are also
different from other industries and products. The company is trying to reach the real
customers and to get them to purchase its offerings. The choice of a suitable channel of
marketing is also affect decisions in the marketing of products because channel affects
the time, costs and the volume of sales. With the potential causes mentioned above, the
problem is stated in the cause and effect map as below:

Lack of Market
Research and
Analysis

Technology (Poor in

events, activities, IT,
website…)
Marketing Plan
Low Sale
Problem

Target Segmentation

Poor Relationship
with Intermediaries

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Chapter 2: Alternative Solutions
Root cause
Based on the list of potential causes got from reviewing the literatures which are
failure to understand market, failure to apply technology in business and failure to
segment market and communicate with target prospects that supposed in above sections,
it is necessary to combine these potential causes with the circumstance of AscendasProtrade to find out root causes of the problem. In order to do this task, a quantitative
evaluation method is preferred to use. A survey (refer to Questionaire 1 in Supporting
Information section) contains of 8 questions is delivered to 15 staffs in Sales and
Marketing Department of the company. The survey is Questionnaire-Likert with scalerating 1-5, has a total of eight questions, and focus on verifying root causes from four
potential causes of marketing plan problem. This survey is revised from the reference of
survey from Wu (2011). There are 15 questionnaires are successful collected, giving a
response rate of approximate 100 percent.
For the first potential cause, the first three questions are about market research, the
average score is around 3.64 while the percentage agree with lack of market understand is

quite high (see in Table 3 for percentage rate display and Figure 1for graphical
visualization). These figures reflected that failure to research market is one of the causes
of the problem but the level of influence is not clear. Keep going with the next questions,
this relates to the technology and social media. 26.67% disagree, 6.67% has no comment
and 66.67% agree that customers contact the company from website and other social
media. So this is also not a root cause of the problem.
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For the third potential cause, the result stated that the cause does not have clearly
influences to the company. The rate of staff agrees with getting customers from
exhibitions and events is 33.33%, and the one agrees with customers survey to segment
the market is 53.33%. The average score is 3.03, it is insufficient to be the root cause of
the problem.
For the last potential cause, communicate with right intermediaries is significantly
performed its role through the survey (Table 3 for percentage rate and figure 1). The
result of the two last questions stated that the fourth potential cause has strong impact on
problem for the project. 60% and 26.67% of staff of sales and marketing department in
turn strongly agrees and agrees that there is a lack of strong relationship with partners and
associations, 13.33% is neutral. Additional, 20% and 53.33% strongly agrees and agrees
in turn that they don’t receive good support from intermediaries; just 26.67% disagrees
with that. The average mean of this is 4.17, very high compare with other causes. The
figures prove that communicate and establish relationship with the right intermediaries is
the root cause of the problem of the project.

Please select one choice for each item

1. There is a lack of understand of

market
2. There is a lack of competitors
overview
3. You don’t have much information
and activities of competitors
4. Not many customers contact you via
website and other social media
5. Events, seminars were organized
regularly but didn’t brought real

Strong
disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strong
Agree

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)


(5)

6.67%

20.00%

6.67%

66.67%

0.00%

3.33

6.67%

20.00%

0.00%

46.66%

26.67%

3.67

6.67%

6.67%


0.00%

60.00%

26.67%

3.93

0.00%

26.67%

6.67%

66.67%

0.00%

3.40

20.00%

26.67%

6.67%

33.33%

13.33%


2.93

Mean

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customers to your project
6. You don’t periodically make
customers survey for project
awareness
7. You don’t have good supports from
the partners and associations
8. There is a lack of strong
relationship with partners and
associations

6.67%

26.67%

13.33%

53.33%

0.00%

3.13


0.00%

26.67%

0.00%

53.33%

20.00%

3.67

0.00%

0.00%

13.33%

26.67%

60.00%

4.67

Table 3: Result of identifying root cause of Ascendas-Protrade

Figure 1: Results of identifying root causes of the problem

Alternative Solutions
Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park would like to offer an ideal business

environment to their customers and the concept of work-live-play-learn is the key factors
they aim to develop to differentiate their products and services from its competitors and
desire the occupancy rate of the project quickly reach 100%. After finding the central
cause of the problem, the researching and developing possible solutions for the problem
need to be executed. Based on the finding of literature studies, three possible solutions
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are proposed to improve the current situation of the project. There are penetrating deeply
the market, applying technology to business and establishing relationship with strategic
partners and retain customers’ relationship.
Establish relationship with strategic partners and retain customers’ relationship
A solution provider changes business-to-business marketing is to shift strongly to
a more relationship-based marketing. According to Gebauer, Wang, Bernold, & Krempl
(2007), the general focus of relationship marketing is on building long-term relationships
with customers. The relationship not only builds with customers but also establish with
partners, consultants, agents and associations. The reason is when Ascendas-Protrade
develops strong and close relationships with the above mentioned objects, the in-time
information and precious data could be given; open up business opportunities to the
company, or even a priority introduction from partners could be made for AscendasProtrade. The regular visit and connection from Ascendas-Protrade to partners and
associations can maximize their chance to approach potential customers. Moreover, retain
a good long-term relationship with existing tenants can help bring more tenants to the
project by word of mouth.
Applying technology to business
Technology is also important to improve sales volume. Technology has drastically
changed the way people work, communicate, and receive information (Goodwin &
Stetelman, 2013). To help promote images and information of tenants’ products,
Customer Service department can fulfill to design a slide which shown all products from

Ascendas-Protrade’s tenants to project on the screen whenever sales apartment host a
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visitor to the site. This can create a modern environment at the park and impress the
visitors who come to inspect the project. Nowadays, website is very important and is an
effective channel to attract more clients. According to Bond, Seiler, Seiler & Blake
(2000), the website is the tool for customers first look to study products and services and
the real estate industry is not an exception. Ascendas-Protrade should notice their
webpage to ensure that all information about products and services as well as related
procedures which are helpful to the prospects should be shown in their website. It needs
to be redesign properly and update helpful information to the page. To do so, a person in
charge needs to be assigned and take care of it. This person needs necessary skills and
knowledge of this field and understands SEO, forum seeding. Besides, the website should
be more interactive so that the prospects can communicate with the company when they
need to require more information.
For the social marketing, Ascendas-Protrade needs to create facebook account,
Fanpage, twitter, linkedin to connect with potential prospects and to update information
to their audiences, create appearance frequency i.e vision ratio to the target customers.
The role of the marketing mix model in social marketing is a more suitable to
approach (Gordon, 2012). Choosing and focus on the right channels including
advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion to the target customers
to develop market share and position their brand. Alternative models of marketing of
product, packaging, brand, price and services and the respective methods of marketing
channels especially social marketing to be applied can help improve much the company’s
problem.
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For advertising, Ascendas-Protrade should push advertise on digital channels,
social media, forum and website of real-estate and investment. On traditional channels,
they should carefully study the appropriate newspaper to periodically post articles of their
park and industry news to create an interesting column to attract reader to frequently
follow. For internal news, company should publish quarterly newsletter to disseminate
updated information of the park to their partners, agents, consultants, associations so they
can rapidly update new information to potential clients.
Penetrate the market deeply
Any organization wants maximum sales acceleration and before creating and
implementing their plan, they need to penetrate the market and seize the competitive
initiative (Robertson, 1993). Penetrate the market deeply to understand the business
environment and competitors and to get greater insight from the market then the team can
adjust their channels to approach customers and see what other competitors are doing.
Other competitors create a comfortable and free-hassle working environment for their
clients, create integrated customers solutions for their tenants and attract more prospects
to come. Indeed, integrated products and services to customized solutions can help firms
to differentiate from their competitors (Bonnemeier, Burianek & Reichwald, 2010).
Ascendas-Protrade should provide their customers well-integrated customer solutions
with clear functions such as industrial clusters, supporting industries, transportation
service, human resource service, etc. to free hassle business start-up for investors.
Creating an industrial park with industrial clusters can create a community in the park
which firms in the area can affect competitors in positive ways by increasing the
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productivity, driving innovation and stimulating new businesses in the field. This helps
significantly more innovation takes place in communities which have stronger interpersonal networks (Porter, 2000). Supportive industries in the area are also necessary.
Business-consulting capabilities, referring to the ability to understand customers'
problems and being able to evaluate alternative solutions are considered essential
for firms providing customer solutions (Jalkala & Keranen, 2014). For many firms, the
presence of related and supporting industries is very crucial to the growth of that
particular industry. It is widely recognized that the supporting industries will play an
important role in the success of the park.
Human resource is one of the biggest assets of an organization (Cherian & Faroug,
2013). Understanding the importance of human resource and leveraging integrated
customer solutions, Ascendas-Protrade can solve the problem of workforce by
associating with universities and vocational schools in Binh Duong as well as Ho Chi
Minh City to assist their customers in this matter. Besides, they can bring added-valued
services of shuttle bus to their tenants in the early stage of the park when just a few
tenants to come to operate here.

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Chapter 3: Selected Solutions and Implementation Plan
Selected Solutions
From above alternative solutions, the company needs to choose the most
appropriate, effective and cost saving solutions to implement. The strength, weakness,
opportunity, threat (SWOT) analysis is used to determine the most suitable solution for
APSTP. As the result of exploration of three possible solutions in SWOT analysis (see in
Table 8 in Supporting Information chapter), the solutions of market penetration and
relationship establishing take a longer time to execute than the last one. However, the
SWOT analysis of relationship establishing (Table 8 in Supporting Information chapter)

shown that the final outcome from this solution is much better than the other two, and it
just takes a time to maintain so relationship establishing is marked as top priority. As
mentioned, expanding networking is extremely important, Ascendas-Protrade has to
focus on building and maintaining strong relations with partners, agents, consultants,
embassies and associations. APSPTP logo should be put regularly on Associations’
websites, booklets, and directories to attract more investors from hot markets.
Pay attention to this solution, events, seminars in local and oversea should be organised
or even celebrate factory tour for partners, international property companies, associations
as well as prospects to come to visit the park to understand more their products and
services to promote and attract more investors to come to the project.

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