Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC — SME Case Study (UAE)

Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC is a well-recognized leading distributor of suppliers and manufacturers globally. The company mainly deals with the sale of maritime spare parts, motorcycles, auto vehicles and other accessories. The company started its journey in Dubai in 1965 (Mkadubai.com, 2019). The company has been authorized as a distributor for NGK Spark Plug, a leading spark plug in Japan. The company manufactures all kinds of industrial types of machinery, marine vessels, and passenger cars. Furthermore, the company has been an authorized distributor for Xylem JABSCO, one of the most renowned and largest suppliers/ manufacturers globally. Xylem JABSCO deals with the supply and manufacture of marine accessories and types of equipment, marine toilets, commercial and luxury designed marine toilets. MKA has been a supplier of the UAE market for the past 50 years. MKA mainly supplies Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC the world’s most branded and right quality industrial types of equipment and accessories, automotive parts, designed marine crafts that have high and premium quality in storing energy solutions and branded batteries (Mkadubai.com, 2019). Further, the company supplies motorcycle gear including safety gears, helmets, outfits, parts, ATV engine parts, and several premium motorcycle varieties.

Figure 15: Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC (Source: Mkadubai.com, 2019)

MKA aims to manufacture trendy and branded car batteries, designed marine crafts, requirements, and types of equipment of industrial and automotive parts. It also focuses on the manufacture of maritime accessories and spare parts, industrial types of machinery, marine vessels, safety requirements such as safety gears, helmets, outfits, parts, and passenger cars. It also is an authorized distributor of Xylem JABSCO, NGK Spark Plug and others in the UAE market (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

The mission statement of MKA is

¡ To continue supplying high-quality accessories and spare parts in the UAE market that will serve the best to its customers in a satisfactory standard.

¡ To focus on the advancement and innovation in auto parts.

¡ To make a premium product at an affordable price, focusing on customer’s demand and requirements.

¡ To grow innovation to meet its global competitors.

¡ To make eco-friendly products, human-centric services, and innovative solutions.

¡ To concentrate on making the company’s employees focus on retaining mutual trust, integrity and honesty with its customers and customise customer service.

¡ To focus more on the bolts and nuts of auto parts, create the proper combination of product pricing and quick delivery of products to the customers.

¡ To enrich the supply chain distribution operations connecting with authentic resources.

¡ To increase the global relationship with foreign companies and increase dealerships.

¡ To improve its finance plan, budgeting methods and balance sheets (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

Vision Statement The vision or aim of MKA is to continue in the “maintenance of the authorized distributorship with leading suppliers and manufacturers.” It focuses on leading manufacturers of maritime, motorcycle and auto industries. The company aims to “grow its technology and digitalisation” within growing Dubai to maintain its brand image as a leading manufacturer company.

MKA focuses on every minor malfunction or defect in its products, leading to grave accidents. The company was always in demand regarding accuracy, and quality should be high to maintain its standards (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ The company has focused on the “conformal coating on the electronic control unit” to make it moisture-proof. Further, the company’s vision is to use a fluorescent agent over the moisture-proof to show illumination if the application has any defect (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ The company needs to inspect that the fuse is correctly installed in fuse boxes. Fuses have the same size and monochrome cameras cannot detect defects in fuses properly. Therefore, the company can use color cameras to inspect the defects in fuses accurately. The company’s vision is to use an “auto tech inspection tool for easy inspection operation” (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ The company focuses on checking appearance defects that include “clogging or cracks in Diesel Particulate Filters or DPFs,” as it has been difficult due to its large size. Using megapixel cameras will also help to give an appropriate accuracy in measuring the detections (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ The company focuses on inspecting the burrs or chipping in oil seals with the help of trend edge stain, a new defect detection mode. This mode helps in the extraction of burrs or chipping from edges (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ As conventional area cameras cannot detect any engine valve stain or flaw, the company has focused on using the lumi trax function. This helps in the appropriate detection of the stains or flaws (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ The company thought to use a line scan camera for coating the side of pistons. This is because it was difficult to determine optimum light conditions.

¡ The company aims to introduce vision-guided robots to minimize image processing systems, machine vision, calibration difficulty, and staff education requirements.

¡ The company has decided to introduce a 3-D inspection. A 3-D inspection is capable of accuracy in the measures and operations that mainly include image-enhancing filters, light and lens optimization, machine vision using high pixels and other technologies.

¡ The company has thought of using OCR/character inspection/print inspection to check, recognize, and determine products, parts, or printed characters.

This OCR helps in reading the QR codes that are stamped in metal parts. It helps to inspect the model number and expiration dates in products (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ The company has been focusing on expansion of factory automation processes for increasing the accuracy of dimension measurements.

¡ The company has been focusing on improving its profitability with increased equipment and production.

¡ The company is focusing on improving its profitability by gaining customer reliability and labor saving. Hence, the company reduced cost to maintain the product’s quality with the introduction of image processing systems.

¡ The company is focusing on improving its profitability with the help of upstreaming action as early as possible and increasing the visualisation process (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

The Four P’s of Marketing Here, I will discuss the four P’s of marketing adopted by the Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC. I have heard many suggestions and ideas from my colleagues and friends regarding the four P’s of marketing and have read many textbooks, journals, and articles. Generally, a small, medium, or large company uses these four P’s to strengthen its marketing strategy (Solan, 2020).

The four principles of marketing are as follows

¡ Product: Product mainly deals with “what a company sells.” This can be consulting, services, physical goods, and others (Solan, 2020).

¡ Price: Price mainly deals with “how much can be the charge of the products that the company is selling.” The pricing strategy is mainly based on the customer view of any particular brand (Solan, 2020).

¡ Place: Place mainly deals with “where the company is reliable to promote its services or products.” This activity mainly deals with the place where the greatest number of ideal customers are available. Ideal customers are always eager to gain information about the industry and its products (Solan, 2020).

¡ Promotion

Promotion mainly deals with “customer’s medium to reach out to the company and its product information.” Promotion is based on using effective strategies for marketing and promoting (Solan, 2020).

Price Product Place Promotion Credit policy Offer prices Discount Packaging Services Brand Sale promotion Publicity Advertisements Distribution channels Channels Market Figure 16: Four P’s of Marketing (Source: Created by the researcher) Product In MKA, clients are provided with innovative and branded products. The company looks into the quality and quantity of the product as both create a good sense of the product to the customers (HR & Aithal, 2020).

The lists of products of MKA are

¡ Blowers, lights, marine toilets, and pumps from Xylem JABSCO.

¡ Half style, open face, demi jet, jet, MX Cross, modular type, and full-face helmets from VR-1 Helmet.

¡ Mask gloves, apparel, support product, hip protector, elbow or knee guard and body armor from Downforce.

¡ Industrial tires, golf cart tires and power sport tires from Duro.

¡ Utilizer chargers, marine series, and powerful battery from Odyssey Battery.

¡ Sprocket and kits, kart chain, dessert or endure, motor cross, ATV, road, and street racing from DID Chains.

¡ Engine valves, connecting rod, piston ring and piston kit from TKRJ.

¡ Designed marine crafts, automotive and industrial applications to store energy solutions from Dweller Batteries.

¡ Lighting instruments are a double spotlight of 24 volts LED, an electric spotlight of 12 volts or 24 volts, floodlight of 12 volts or 24 volts, a manual spotlight of 12 volts or 24 volts, double spotlight halogen (450 * 450) of 24 volts, spare headlights, spotlight 2005 of 12 volts or 24 volts and spotlight xenon of 12 volt 55 watts to 24 volts 55 watts.

Marine horns are a flush oval mounting horn, horn chromium-plated white, horn black plated and horn white (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

¡ Impeller from Kacawa International Co. Ltd.

¡ Batteries for Yamaha, Harley Davidson, Honda, BMW, off-road and street motorcycles from Yucell Industry Ltd. VRLA batteries, snowmobile car batteries, jet-ski batteries, ATV batteries, power sport batteries and scooter batteries Yucell Industry Ltd. maintenance-free battery, high-performance battery, conventional series battery, sealed factory activated batteries and gel type battery Yucell Industry Ltd (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

The company has focused on providing trendy, innovative, and branded products. As for the mission and vision, it can be concluded that the company is reliable to extend its services, diversify its products, expand its distribution channels, and create innovation in its business (HR & Aithal, 2020).

Figure 17: Products of Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi L.L.C.

Company (Source: HR & Aithal, 2020) Price In my view, there is no appropriate percentage regarding what is to be the price of what. I believe that accurate pricing is when the client or the customers are willing to pay the value and are satisfied with it. Then, the price is considered to be worth the value concerned with the product. According to my experience, I have found that the clients and the customers are ready to pay a reliable amount concerned with superior services and products (HR & Aithal, 2020). The strategic decisions and plans are created to promise the customers their demanded value at prices. From my analysis, on average, it is found that the pricing scale of the company of the products range in a medium value.

In contrast, in most of the products and case of the branded products, the price is kept high. It is seen that, according to HR & Aithal, (2020), the customers are reliable and satisfied with the premium quality of products which are high-priced.

Low High Medium High Medium Low Shown by Three batteries Figure 18: Pricing graph of products of Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC (Source: Slideteam.net, (2021) From the graph below, it has been found that there is a substantial growth in the company’s economy. This can be considered as a unique selling proposition that precisely hits the pricing strategy and growth in the economy of the company.

Q1 50.00 50.20 50.40 50.60 50.80 51.00 51.20 51.40 51.60 51.80 Stock Price P/E Multiple Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Earning Growth...

Figure 19: Quarterly earnings of Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC (Source: Pomering, 2017) Place In my opinion, marketing is entirely concerned with the place where it has been established, may it be virtual or physical. We all know that quote “out of sight, out of mind” (Pomering, 2017). A customer who is out of the company’s convenience zone will use the company’s products less than the customers who are in the convenience zone of the company. Therefore, it is crucial to choose a place highly enriched in marketing based on customer buying. It is not always easy for a customer to browse the Internet searching for the company’s address.

MKA is located in Dubai. Dubai is a city in demand for its automobile technology business and has extreme growth in the field of automobiles. This is because being an electronic country battery is in high use to those who are fond of cars. Therefore, the company is reliable to get its brand in this country (Pomering, 2017).

Promotion Promotion can be considered as a great platform to bring out the information regarding the products. Promotion is a method to communicate the company’s products with the potential of regular customers. MKA used only good ways to introduce its product details to customers

(Pomering, 2017)

¡ Customers are offered with complimentary upgrades.

¡ The company hosts events.

¡ Creates blog posts.

¡ Spreads product details, offers and new product details through email.

¡ Runs social media contests.

¡ Uses Google for business.

¡ Has exclusive preview offers to potential customers.

¡ Places advertisements in television, radio, and social media platforms.

¡ Created a company website to post updates about products (Mkadubai.com, 2019).

SALES PROMOTION PUBLIC RELATIONS PROMOTION ADVERTISING PERSONAL SELLING DIRECT MARKETING Figure 20: Promotion Mix (Source: Created by the researcher) Performance After going through a detailed discussion about the traditional market mix that are the four principles of marketing, I thought of taking the liberty to extend the

topic with the addition of the idea of the fifth principle

performance. Performance is significant as that of a product as both compliment each other. With the increase in the efficiency of performance, the superiority in the output can be increased. Performance mainly depends on the promises regarding the accomplishment of tasks (Pomering, 2017). According to the company’s information updates, the company has diversified its products and runs well in the automobile market. It has established deals with the world’s largest dealers and suppliers due to efficiency in its productivity.

Artificial Intelligence In my view, MKA can introduce artificial intelligence technology. This deals with the running of different operations with the help of computer-controlled robots or digital computers. This helps in giving accuracy in outputs and task proficiency (Brynjolfsson & Mcafee, 2017). AI helps to enable optical sensors that identify any individual, helps run autonomous vehicles at optimum speeds, and the digital robots help serve its customers. This practically lowers the employee cost.

Furthermore, AI helps to intensify the hospitality, health care and financial requirements. Use of AI simplifies human tasks and increases output (Haenlein & Kaplan, 2019). AI also helps to pacify the performances carried out within the organization. The budgeting and balance sheet measurements are accurate due to machinery stabilization. Installation of robots reduces human resources, which can help to reduce the overall cost of the company. Digitalization also implements the communication process among the staff’s area and with the customers. The latest technologies will help the company to extend its marketing strategy and implement its competitive aptitude to compete with the latest and digitalized technologies that are trendy in the UAE market.

Cyber Security According to my perception, cyber security has been necessary to protect internal private information in the current generation. Cyber security helps the company to defend its vital data, networks, electronic systems, mobile devices and computers from any type of malicious attacks. The company needs to strengthen its network security from any intruder who uses opportunistic malware or is a targeted attacker. Application security helps to make devices and software threats free (Gupta, 2018). Knowledge management information system, or KMIS, helps to protect the privacy and integrity of stored information. Operational security helps to secure the data assets. Disaster recovery process defines restoring operational information and data for returning the organization capacities in a previous position (Gupta, 2018). Business continuity helps to operate some processes without the use of its resources.

End-user education practically deals with teaching the users to delete any unplugged or unidentified USB drive and suspicious email attachments to prevent the computer from any virus attacks, as these attacks can corrupt the vital data and information present in the devices (Gupta, 2018).

¡ MKA mainly deals with car batteries and other automobile types of equipment, cars, and sports cars.

¡ The company has made an excellent product as these equipment types are high in demand in the current generation.

¡ The company’s vision and mission are to continue the supply of high-quality accessories and spare parts and expand its business in the UAE market.

¡ In my opinion, the company makes premium products at an affordable price. The company has enriched its supply chain operations connecting with authentic resources of distribution channels.

¡ The company has also focused on improving its finance plan, budgeting methods and balance sheets.

¡ The company has diversified its products in a broad aspect. The products mainly include blowers, lights, marine toilets, pumps, industrial tires, power sport tires, sprocket and kits, engine valves, designed marine crafts, spare headlights, marine horns, impeller, off-road and street motorcycles, jet ski batteries, ATV batteries, power sport batteries, high-performance batteries, and gel type batteries.

¡ The company has established the pricing strategy of most of the products and kept it in the medium range.

¡ The company’s location is superb with its marketing products, as Dubai is well established with high technology of automobiles, cars, and batteries.

Being an electronic country, batteries are in high demand in Dubai and that signals more demand for the company.

¡ I strongly recommended the use of artificial intelligence and cyber security technologies.

Artificial intelligence technology helps in intensifying the business process. It increases the output and minimizes the time. In parallel, cyber security helps secure the vital data and information of all operations going through its internal business and protects the devices from any threats or viruses.

As per the discussion done with Ahmed Kambar, the conclusion I drew is that Mohd Al Haj Kambar Awazi LLC mainly deals with the sale of maritime spare parts, motorcycle, auto vehicles and other accessories. The vision and mission of the company are to continue the supply of high-quality accessories and spare parts in the UAE market that will serve the best to its customers and make a premium product in an affordable price, enrich the supply chain distribution operations connecting with authentic resources and improve its finance plan, budgeting methods and balance sheets. The company has gained much success in applying the four marketing principles that include product, price, place and promotion. The company has highly concentrated on creating diversity in products meeting customer needs.

The company has maintained most of the products in the medium range and premium products in the high range as it suits customers satisfaction. The company is situated in Dubai, a great location, as Dubai has a high demand for its automobile technology business.

The company uses a five-promotion mix called sales promotion, public relations, advertising, personal selling, and direct marketing. In addition to this, the company gained much popularity with the establishment of performance. I strongly recommend using artificial intelligence and cyber security technologies to intensify and secure its business in a broad aspect.