Essay: Oman and the Extreme Paintball company

Introduction:

Oman is a developing third world country. In the past 38 years Oman has been opened up to the world. Businesses started to open, competitors started to appear and a real business world got created. During this development market was not discovered until the last 10 years where cinemas started opening and in the last 7 years malls were built. So the entertainment market is in rapid growth.

According to Extreme Company, the idea of paint balling came from a personal observation that the entertainment industry is lacking quality here in Oman. Though, the company started its services and a solid marketing plan for first time in Oman not long ago, the company has managed to come up with a strong marketing and a good management system. Nevertheless, difficulties and challenges are normal to every organization, especially a new organization. However, below I’m giving a brief and details of the product and services provided:

• Nature of the service & customers.
• Description of the marketing and management system and an explanation of how it works.

Nature of The Service:

Paintball is a game which provides thrill and gives the players an adrenaline rush in a safe environment. It was ranked as one of the safest sports in the USA. Paintball has started in the 1980’s in the USA. It has spread around the world quickly in the past 20 years; it is played by 9 million people in the United States each year.

Extreme Paintball is an entertainment service company that provides the paintball game. The company’s services are driven by customers demand. However, the company’s services and management are continuous due to the fact that demand is very high and it’s further increasing as more people get familiar to it.

The company consists of many departments which work together throughout the day to accomplish customer satisfaction. Departments are interconnected because they are all involved in providing the better service possible.

Extreme paintballs current services are based on renting the equipment for a period of a given time to experience the unprecedented thrill. Today, Extreme Paintball offers an unforgettable experience in the customers which will drive them to come again, especially that this kind of thrilling entertainment is not available in the Sultanate, nor most of the people has experienced its feeling.

The company offers a wide range of profiles to suit safety applications ranging from quality of guns, quality of the paintballs themselves, up to the safety dresses and uniforms, to the helmets gloves and other body protections. Extreme Paintball also offers to develop new expansion plans for the business, in case the service selling’s slows down.

Customers and Regions Served:

Due to the increase in the real estate sector, Extreme Paint ball managed to lower its initial costs which is hard to find in Muscat as all prices are rising, in the same time the company doesn’t want to make the distance an issue to the customers, therefore, renting a land might be a solution for the company to reduce initial costs. The company was established to serve a certain age group of people (+12 to 30 years old), however, Extreme Paintball managed to attract customers from many countries around the world. However, their main customers are based in Oman itself.

Quality Control:

From its early foundations, Extreme Company has always given quality a great deal of importance. Quality control is being done through different ways:

Company’s Goal

Extreme Company’s goal number one is to assure a growing quality of entertainment that no activity but paintball can offer. The company values the term customer satisfaction and ensures it customer through high quality of entertainment. The increasing demand for paintball memberships has proven that the quality of entertainment the company offers is highly qualified.

Quality of costumes and equipment

In every step of the service delivery process, Extreme Company assures the satisfaction of customers through providing branded costumes, helmets, guns and other accessories. The guns that are used for the paint balling purpose have high standards, like a brand called “Spyder”, of safety. In addition the balls used from substances that disappear with a wash or dry clean so that customers don’t fear to lose their clothes after the balling.

Description of Extreme Paintball Service System:

Extreme Paintball services are set in a very organized way so that quality of both products and service is assured and by that comes customer satisfaction. The company’s marketing and management systems are mainly involved with the selection of products, such as wide research.

• Wide Research:

Since Extreme Paintball Company cares for the quality of its products, which are to be used by the players on the field, the company follows international standard requirements in regard of the types of the equipments used. Therefore, the company conducts a thorough research over the world wide web, the internet, and consumes an intensive effort in reading and reviewing about the most efficient and the most temperature resisting quality paintballs, guns, and other useful equipments, making the financial concerns the last thing to think about, since the company aims to assuring the highest possible safety, and efficiency rate. They would then choose two or three out of hundreds of brands, qualified as to fit the requirements needed to maintain the desired quality.

The Process:

The process of delivering this service is fairly simple though, they come in the following steps:

1. The customers enter the building to pay (in the reception area).
2. They are then instructed to the changing room with a guide.
3. The guide explains the safety rules and regulations of the game.
4. The first round begins, for 20 minutes.
5. Players take a break of 10 minutes.
6. The second round begins, for another 20 minutes.
7. Finally, the players are escorted to the changing rooms, mean while another group prepares for their first round.

A marketing plan Evaluation of Extreme Paintball Performance:

The marketing plan evaluation of Extreme Paintball was based on 2008 measurements supplied to me by the Marketing Manager. In this analysis I found out the following information about Extreme Paintball:

• Strengths:

1. First company to introduce paintball in Oman.
2. No direct competition in the market, which gives Extreme Paintball the competitive advantage.
3. Approximately 10 workers will be needed to run the entire field, which means not much of labour costs.

• Weaknesses:

1. The customer’s would request for a bigger place within a short period of time, few years after establishing Extreme Paintball, which will put the company under pressure, to satisfy its customers.
2. Unexpected climate disturbance while the shipment is on its way from US or UK might cause in loosing the entire shipment.

• Opportunities:

1. The government might give Extreme Paintball privileges for starting a new sport in the country, once the paintball is well known around the country.
2. Extreme Paintball will be the official representatives of GCC paintball leagues and international paintball tournaments of Oman.
3. The annually held festival in Muscat, can be a promising opportunity to market the service and products to people.
4. Tourism is a growing market in Oman, and is still in its early stages. A lot of foreigners would want to experience the paintballing in Oman.

• Threats:

1. Oman is a third world country, so not everyone in the country knows what paintballing is.
2. The cinema, beach, new malls with new coffee shops and restaurants are strong competitors, and can be an alternative to the customers.

Profitability:

The business would not have been constructed if it would be a non-profitable business. For every 10 RO paid by a customer as an entrance fees (along with 100 paintballs), 40% of it is net profit, which is 4 RO, while the other 60% is distributed between shipment costs, salaries and other expenses. The additional paintballs required from the customers are calculated as for every 50 paintballs, the customer has to pay 4 RO, where 49% is net profit, while the remaining 51% is paintballs expenses.

Extreme Paintball has a permanent offer to their customers, since during the week days people are almost busy with their work/school/colleges … etc, Extreme Paintball has reduced the entrance fees to 6 RO per customer (put in mind that the 6 RO includes the same number of initial paintballs 100), while the profit percentage remains the same as 40%. But, the additional paintballs prices are not subject to any changes that any offer might occur at anytime during the weekdays, or any offers in the future.

Conclusion:

This assignment was of great importance in enhancing my knowledge about the marketing management part in the real world. The idea behind some of the theories I covered was a bit vague; however, by conducting this research my doubts and problems were clarified. The assignment indeed helped me in my overall knowledge of the subject and truly made me know where marketing and management actually applies in an organization, which is everywhere! This product or service could have resulted in a better evaluation but because of the limited time frame and the company’s conservative managerial approach made information gathering and processing a bit hard.