Marketing at the Vanguard GroupIn light of an evolving market, faced with new competitors and after careful analysis of their current customers, the Vanguard Group (hereinafter referred to as "Vanguard" ) realizes that it needs to rethink its entire marketing strategy. However, in order to protect and exploit their competitive advantage, represented by low management fees, and to optimize the loyalty that customers continuously demonstrate towards their organization, they must now target the most profitable segment for them and develop the best way to serve and delight these customers. SWOT SITUATION ANALYSIS highlighted Strengths • Low commission strategy; • Performance and competitiveness consistently above the average of most Vanguard funds (Figure 2); • Quality-oriented corporate culture; • One of the highest loyalty scores in the industry, with a lower than industry average refund rate; and• Good reputation. Weak points • Poor brand and advertising awareness; • Underutilized customer database; • Vanguard views marketing solely as an expense, rather than a long-term investment; • The website is geared towards providing information rather than selling Vanguard products; and• Excessively low commission pricing policy does not allow for higher revenues when they perform better.Opportunities• 80 to 90% of Vanguard clients have funds in other organizations;• Investment opportunities with pension plan members to offer them services additional (cross-over) , as well as to reinvest pension plan earnings after retirement (roll-over);• Competitors are fleeing the sub-one (1) million dollar segment, which represents 8.9 million families; • New opportunities for online transactions, which are low cost; a...... middle of paper ...... notable for Vanguard due to the exponential increase in the number of potential customers, to whom Vanguard does not have to directly advise and serve on its products and services, combined with the high profitability potential. The development of this large, skilled sales force could also be accomplished at relatively low development costs. The positive aspects of this alternative are somewhat strongly outweighed by the fact that enormous mass advertising efforts would be required to inform potential customers about the Vanguard brand, and over which Vanguard would have no control in the sales process. Vanguard would also face stiff competition in dealing with brokers, who aren't always the most loyal sales representatives. This weakens the expected return on investment for this alternative and ultimately led to its rejection.