Introduction to Marketing Strategy and Market Segmentation
Discuss about the Marketing Strategy of Donalds Choco Company.
This report presents the marketing strategy such as market segmentation, target market, and poisoning approach. It also discusses the impact of using marketing mix on the purchasing behavior of customers. This report also evaluates the ideas for products and service. It also demonstrates the product, price, and place and promotion strategy. It also explains the extended marketing mix strategy for the company. In the last, it explains the role of marketing in implementing the principle of ethics, sustainability, and social justice.
Market segmentation and target market
Donalds Choco Company selects a particular market for boosting the revenue in the Australian market. This company deals in varieties of chocolate such as organic chocolate, Unsweetened Chocolate, dark chocolate and milk chocolate. Market segmentation has categorized into homogenous subgroups. This segmentation can be effective to choose the target market, which has similar traits, requirements as well as desires. It could be accomplished by using distinct marketing mix strategy. The main segmentation could be categorized as demographic, geographic, behaviouristic as well as psychographic (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker, and Brennan, 2015). Target market of Donalds Choco Company can be segmented on the basis of the following factor:
Geographic segmentation
Donalds Choco Company will choose the different urban areas of Australia to sell their product. Since, in Australian urban areas, customers create more demand for dark chocolate hence there could be chances of increasing the customer’s demand towards product of Donalds Choco Company.
Demographics: Age
Donalds Choco Company will target the customers of different age groups such as 20-24 and 25& above. These age-groups of customers will highly purchase dark chocolate as compared to other chocolate. However, these age-groups of people make effort to compare the quality and price of the product and also gives preference to healthy chocolate. As a result, the company should make the premium quality products as well as price sensitive policies for target customers. This innovative product would be beneficial to meet the needs and requirements of customers due to superior quality as well as affordable price (Goworek and McGoldrick, 2015).
Target market
The innovative product also leads the customers with respect to Donalds Choco Company as it will provide the affordable range of products in the chocolate market and also delivers the healthy product to customers. Therefore, the target market of Donalds Choco Company for this innovative product is young people who want healthy lifestyle (Sheth, and Sisodia, 2015). As a result, it is leading opportunity to beat the competition in the Australian chocolate industry.
Target Market Segmentation for Donalds Choco Company
Donalds Choco Company will focus on customers who make the desire for a healthy lifestyle in the Australian market. It will deliver the fresh as well as quality products as it has higher demand in the marketplace in the present scenario. It will create the positive picture amongst the customers by making innovative healthy chocolate and giving the added value to customers. As a result, the targeted customer will be ready to pay a high price for buying the dark chocolate (Jha, Saini, and Kaur, 2017). This innovative product will create a unique image and pull the attention of bulk of customers towards company because, this product would be effective for customers to get a healthy life.
Ideas for the products and Services
Donalds Choco Company will produce dark chocolate to make feel healthy to customers. It will also deliver the organic chocolate product in the Australian nation. In addition, Donalds Choco Company will address the customers who are interested to use easy as well as innovative technology to shop. As a result, it has built a distinct picture as an innovative chocolate confectionary shop in Australia. In addition, Donalds Choco Company delivers the services to their customers to purchase the product by ease procedure. For example, the customer can use their laptop on the train along with at their home to shop by using the app of Donalds Choco Company. In addition, chocolate would be delivered at the gate of home that creates a favorable picture in the mind of customers.
Product Levels:
Marketers need to use 5 level of product in order to make market planning. Each product level will deliver added value and build customer value hierarchy (Hamlin, Bishop, and Mather, 2015).
Core Benefit or Product:
It is a basic level of product. In this level, Donalds Choco Company will entail the fundamental services that the customer is really purchasing. For instance, customers actually buy the chocolate in the confectionary shop (Ramli, 2017).
Basic or Generic Product:
In this level, Donalds Choco Company will turn the core advantages to fundamental products. The fundamental product for confectionary shop may entail pastry, cake, chocolate, and biscuits.
Expected Product:
Donalds Choco Company will produce an expected product by including a set of conditions as well as attributes in this level. It will also produce those products that buyer expect to purchase. For example, confectionary customers expect hygienic and fresh products (Amsteus, Liljegren, Markovic, and Månsson, 2016).
Product Levels for Donalds Choco Company
Augmented product:
The marketer will prepare an augmented product which exceeds the expectations of customers. For illustration, a confectionary shop can entail fresh and hygienic products, self-service as well as an online payment system. In the competitive market, the competition level is high at the level of augmented product. Product augmentation encourages the Donalds Choco Company to look the total consumption system of customers (Schlegelmilch, 2016).
It is evaluated that real competition is not what the corporation has manufactured in the confectionary shop but it is what they add to their confectionary shop in terms of services, packaging, financing, delivery arrangements, advertising, warehousing, and customer advice as well as another thing that people value (Pyo, 2015).
Following are a certain strategy that should be entailed in the product augmentation strategy:
- Each augmentation increases the expenses. The extra benefits available in confectionary store add expenses (Tanner and Raymond, 2015).
- Augmented benefits may be expected advantages for customers. The unexpected additions such as gift-wrapping and hygienic packaging may be expected by the customers from the confectionary shop (Phillips, 2016).
- Donalds Choco Company will raise the price of their augmented product as compared to its competitors because no augmented product could be delivered at the much lower rate.
Potential Product:
This level will focus on all potential augmentation and transformation of the product that will undergo in the upcoming period. This level will enable the Donalds Choco Company to find new ways for satisfying the customers as well as make distinguishes to their offers with others. Donalds Choco Company will add benefits by offering the innovative healthy and dark chocolate. It will not only provide higher extent of satisfaction to customers but also build loyalty towards products of Donalds Choco Company. Joy means exceeding the expectation of customers (Gengler, and Mulvey, 2017).
Penetration pricing strategy will be used by Donalds Choco Company as it is the new entrant in the Australian market. Under this strategy, pricing of the product is set low at initial level to promptly cover the wider area of the market and commence word of mouth. The strategy focuses on the prediction that customers will switch to the new brand due to a lower rate. Penetration pricing is highly related to marketing objective of increasing market share as well as using economies of scale. Penetration pricing can attract the new customer into the confectionary shop of Donalds Choco Company. It could be also effective to gain market share by building loyalty amongst customers (Huang, and Sarigöllü, 2014). But, when it would be applied incorrectly, then it may cause the company to lose money and may gain competition.
Donalds Choco Company can make low price strategy to build positive branding between existing customers who will share their belief with potential customers. This pricing strategy will increase the market share and leads to gain revenue and decline production cost of the company. A customer who purchases dark chocolate at a lower price then, they will often purchase a regular and high-price associated product out of convenience (Tomczak, Reinecke, and Kuss, 2018).
Pricing and Distribution Strategy for Donalds Choco Company
Donalds Choco Company will use differentiated distribution strategy to generate high economies of scale. It could enhance the profit margin. However, there is a certain chance of declining potential revenue. It is stated that multiple distribution channels could gain the revenue but there is a chance of gaining the costs (Godey, et. al., 2016).
A differentiated distribution strategy will enable Donalds Choco Company to expand the potential sales by offering their products among the bulk of potential customers. It may decline the dependency regarding spending on marketing communication. There is need to recruit skilled marketer and sales partners to make expertise into the marketing mix. Donalds Choco Company should focus on the product development and promotion strategy as it could be imitated by their competitors. Donalds Choco Company can use wholesaler strategy to decline their customer service costs when the wholesaler operates directly with the retailers. It should also use a trusted wholesaler to gain probability of signing retail accounts (Fan, Lau, and Zhao, 2015).
Donalds Choco Company will need the higher cost to sell the product at each location. Because, there is need to ship the product to multiple locations rather than shipping to one retail store. The company may lose some control of their marketing as it will use different retailers, independent sales reps, and distributors that could damage their brand. Further, when Donalds Choco Company will introduce middlemen then, there would be chances of increasing cost of sales. Hence, the company should offer discounts and generates new promotional materials as well as expand customer service (Schivinski, and Dabrowski, 2016).
Donalds Choco Company will use frequency card programs to develop store traffic as well as visit frequency. The objective of using this strategy is to reward customer as per the amount of purchasing. For illustration, Donalds Choco Company could offer free pastry after a customer collects 250 points equivalent to four dark chocolate. The customer may earn one dark chocolate after collecting 1000 points. The company should develop a positive picture about their brand to motivate buyers regarding frequency program. It should also maintain relevancy in a display of product for customers to put on weight. It should also keep the record of customer’s name, emails, and address. Donalds Choco Company can issue a card to the customer to keep the record of their purchase. It should also contact to marketing consultant in the area those experts in frequency card marketing. It would aid the company to effectively issue and register the programming cards (Hanssens, Pauwels, Srinivasan, Vanhuele, and Yildirim, 2014).
Donalds Choco Company can useAfter-Sale Customer Surveys to promote their product and services in targeted time and cost. This strategy will enable the organization to contact consumers by using email and telephone as it would support to enhance the satisfaction level of consumers. The salespeople could directly communicate with the consumer to understand their needs and differentiate the product features of organization and market players. Consequently, Organization will be capable to obtain higher competitive benefit from this strategy and capable to retain their position in the marketplace (Davcik, and Sharma, 2015).
Apart from this, Donalds Choco Company could use the social media as it would support to enhance awareness of products and services in limited time. There are certain methods that could be used by an organization like Google, Instagram, Facebook, LinInd, YouTube, and snapchat as it would be effective to gain the awareness of goods and services among potential and existing consumers. This strategy could be more appropriate as compared to another strategy as it could facilitate the marketing manager and Human resource management department to directly communicate with consumers and collect their opinion. The social media connects individuals to directly communicate with company at the global level. Hence, it can be said that this strategy could support Donalds Choco Company to make a reliable relationship with their consumers for making a unique image in the marketplace (Bahadir, Bharadwaj, and Srivastava, 2015).
Physical Evidence
The physical evidence is determined as the environment surrounding the services. There are many components that could be considered by the Donalds Choco Company as physical evidence like advertising, brochures, business cards, and logos. It will support organization to engage their consumers in the company’s services. In addition, it is also analyzed that most physical evidence is the company’s logo as it would facilitate the organization to make distinguish image in the marketplace (Bahadir, Bharadwaj, and Srivastava, 2015).
Process
The process demonstrates the way by which organization delivered their services to their potential and existing consumers. It considers both direct and indirect activities that are considered in the services of Companies. Hence, Donalds Choco Company can consider many activities to make an effective process like direct and indirect activities of business function (Davcik, and Sharma, 2015).
People
People refer to all persons who are involved in the whole process of business. Donalds Choco Company considers management team, marketing team, and customer support in order to provide effective customer services. Each person has different behavior that could directly impact on the performance of the organization. In addition, the organization should focus on the people to improve their skills and get higher competitive benefit by satisfying huge amount of consumers (Hanssens, Pauwels, Srinivasan, Vanhuele, and Yildirim, 2014).
Role of marketing in embedding principles of sustainability
Under the marketing, Sustainability entails promoting different component such as brand, products, and services of the company. It also focuses on certain sort of sustainable act. For illustration, both economic sustainability as well as environmental sustainability may be significant aspects of the marketing strategy of Donalds Choco Company. This principle is customer based orientation and also identifies the valuable customers whose purchasing decision impact on the environment as well as local society (Crane, Andrew, and Dirk Matten, 2016).
Effective market research is prominent in case of building a sustainable marketing strategy for Donalds Choco Company. It entails the addressing the issues of the environment. The environmental issue can impact on launching the dark chocolate products. There are different regulatory agencies that could also impact on launching the product in Australian chocolate market. These agencies are the Food and Drug Administration, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Environmental Protection Agency. These agencies made different regulations that should be focused on the marketing department of Donalds Choco Company to develop sustainable marketing strategies (Kolk, 2016).
Sales and marketing activities should follow ethical principal as it would be beneficial for Donalds Choco Company to overcome sanctions from regulatory authorities and loss of goodwill amongst customers. The company can get instruction on the ethical standard from chocolate industry and marketing teams and builds the internal regulation. Donalds Choco Company is an ethical company as it respects rights of all of their stakeholders to make a judgment in the favor of company (Carmeli, Brammer, Gomes, and Tarba, 2017).
Donalds Choco Company will use ethical conduct in the sales and marketing by using professional practices for competitors, customers, company colleagues, members of regulatory bodies. It will also entail the respectful communication, incorporating cultural diversity, and non-discriminatory behavior with regards to customers who belong to the diverse culture. Donalds Choco Company will behave truthfully, depict conditions and product reliably and also builds productive contribution to address the issues as well as solutions. The company will also consider the applicable laws as well as regulations regarding ethics constantly (Kolk, 2016).
The healthy competition provides the added value to the customer and also allows Donalds Choco Company to get maximum return on their investment. Ethical practices in a competitive environment entail supportive fair competition as, Donalds Choco Company competing by demonstrating the reliable demonstration of product and service in the Australian chocolate market and meet the obligation in good faith (Carmeli, Brammer, Gomes, and Tarba, 2017).
Role of marketing in embedding principles of social justice
In the marketing strategy, Donalds Choco Company can consider many social justice issues like gender equality, economic injustices, poverty, and environment. The organization could also concentrate on the climate change caused by improving the existing situation of the firm. Moreover, Company could also make a reliable relationship with consumers by mitigating the social justice issues form their marketing and make a diverse image in the marketplace (Kolk, 2016). In addition, it can also be said that an organization could consider many activities to improve the social justice from the organization like professional development and social justice marketing. A marketer should be great business people to understand the social justice and make an effective decision. It is significant for the marketers to critically evaluate different factors like privilege, power, diversity, oppression, and identity. It will support help the marketers to successfully deal with social justices issues (Crane, Andrew, and Dirk Matten, 2016).
Conclusion
From the above interpretation, it can be concluded that Donalds Choco Company will segment the market on the basis on the geographical and demographic basis. It also targets the urban areas of the Australian market to sell the confectionary product. It can be evaluated that innovative dark and healthy chocolate will produce by the company to create a unique image in the mind of customers. There are five levels of products, which will focus on Donalds Choco Company to launch the product. Penetration pricing strategy will be applied by the company due to market penetration into Australian chocolate market. It can be also summarized that differentiated distributed strategy will be used by the company to sell the product by only marketing channel. Furthermore, social media marketing and frequency card program will be implemented to promote their products in confectionery sector. Extended marketing mix will also be used in their marketing strategy named people, process, and physical evidence. It can be summarized that marketing play imperative role in implementing the principle of sustainability, ethics and social justice within Donalds Choco Company.
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