Chester Zoo Marketing Mix

The marketing mix is a business tool which takes into consideration different elements that go into a business promoting a brand and its products. Marketing is constantly evolving with the idea of the first founded through Cuiliton’s (1948) research to then be developed into the 4Ps which can be seen as the fundamental elements of marketing; product, price, promotion and place was discovered by McCarthy (1960) and finally be labelled its name ‘the marketing mix’ by Borden (1964) and put down as the foundations and a guide to a successful and strategic marketing campaign.

This essay will provide an evaluation of the marketing mix that is implemented by Chester Zoo and their different methods used in marketing. In addition, the marketing strategies used to satisfy the needs and wants of their customers through the use of the 4Cs will be discussed; customer needs, cost to the customer, convenience to customer and communication. Finally, a customer perspective will be brought up to highlight and review positives and points of improvement in Chester zoo’s approach.

Chester zoo is no different to other businesses and carries out McCarthy’s (1960) four elements of the marketing mix ‘the 4Ps’. Product is the good/service offered to meet customers wants and can be seen as the most important P. In Chester zoo’s case that is the zoo that has a high-class reputation in its market and happens to be the largest and most visited zoo in the UK with arounds 1.9 million visitors in 2018 (figure 1, Chester zoo case study). The zoo has one of the widest portfolios in the industry with over 7500 animals and 400 species and several catering options for the visitors all around the zoo.

They even have their own TV documentary called ‘the secret life of the zoo’ which is a successful and popular show that generates high income and impels more people to visit the zoo.

Chester zoo is unlike other zoos and has a feature which differentiates them to other zoos which is that they are a charity which can be seen as their unique selling point since any incomes made from the zoo is invested back for development and further research. Price is the amount that customers pay for a product. Pricing of a product is determined through many factors such as market share or even competition. For Chester zoo the pricing strategy adopted seems to be the competitive pricing strategy with their prices being just about lower than London zoo, however, they offer an online advance discount which helps the zoo prepare for the visitors by knowing how many people to expect and can looked at as a marketing strategy to attract more people for lower prices.