Developing A Media Plan For Woolworths – The Fresh Food People

Target Market and Segmentation

Woolworths- The fresh food people operates in the retail industry and was founded in the year 1924. The retail giant which has its headquarters in Bella Vista, New South Wales is one of the largest Australian Supermarket and grocery chain in the country. The retail behemoth which employees over hundred thousand people along with Coles forms a near duopoly which accounts for almost 80% of the entire Australian Market(Thorlakson, Hainmueller & Lambin, 2018). The company which has been expanding its product offering in various categories to outsmart the competition leads in Selling groceries, DVD’S, beauty and health product, household product and other such items. The company has over 1000 stores spread across Australia, 976 supermarkets and an additional 19 convenience stores serving the 24 million population of the country.  The company has recently forayed into online sales and have started their click and collect model by the name of “Home shop”. This implies that the company is in doing everything it can to achieve its goal of sustainability in the longer run (Svensson et. al., 2018).

Considering the above introduction as the Preamble of the organization for the report, the underlying rationale of the assignment here is to create a media plan for the business organization. The rationale behind creating a media plan is to enable the use of media to build a communication with its customers at the lowest cost, whilst passing away the benefits to the end customers. The assignment will also include the selecting of the target market, identifying the media objectives, selecting media vehicles and determining the media costs for the media plan.

Target market in the simplest of words can be understood as the audience which are most likely to engage with the product offering and the marketing promotions of the organization. It is the audience towards whom the highly specific content and promotional material is targeted to generate sales for the business. Profiling on the other hand is further breaking down the customer according to different parameters such as demographic, geographical, and physiographic and many more (Sultan, Wong & Sigala, 2018). The section here will discuss the STP of Woolworths to create a perfect media plan.

Segmentation is the process of dividing the large market into several different sections which is based on various criteria such as demographic, physiographic, and behavioural and others. The idea here is to create a segment on the basis of similar taste and preferences, so that the marketing efforts cater to that particular segment (Coleman, 2018).

Australia with a population of over 24 million is a diverse country. The country besides hosting its own population and aboriginals is home to individuals of other countries as well. The products of the company appeal to as young as a 5 year old new born to even a 55 year old person. Thus, demographically, Woolworths cater to all the segments. However different buckets are created in the form of Children (up to age of 12), college going people (16-20 Years), millennial (18-35) and the family audience (Crush & Frayne, 2018).

STP of Woolworths to Create a Perfect Media Plan

The media plan will be targeted towards PAN Australia and will target each and every geographical boundary of the country. The company does not want to miss out on any geographical location and wants to mass communicate the message (Crutchfield, 2018).

This is related to the aspiration values of the people who are the target audience of the company. The company targets people who are aspirational, kind hearted, motivated, self -starter and have good moral values. Based on this segmentation the company will create the media plan to entice its audience.

Woolworths and Coles more or less target the same customer groups, and are always neck to neck in creating and developing marketing strategies to increase the existing market share. The company’s product offering is targeted toward the middle and the upper middle class people, and also the working class people. These types of customers are brand loyalists and focus on branded products and things. They have high affinity for lifestyle products (Culley et. al., 2017).

Thus, it can be said that the media plan will be created with the objective of catering the growing needs of the middle, upper middle class and the working class population. This group of customers are a right fit for the organization and are most definitely in a position to consume the marketing material/content/ promotion materials.

This section will discuss the reasons behind the marketing strategy and the marketing plan of Woolworths to increase its market share and achieve the goals of sustainability. The objectives are important to be identified before evaluating and choosing the right media vehicle for the attainment of the objectives. Some of the media objectives for Woolworths are:

As mentioned in the earlier section, Woolworths and Coles account for 80% of the retail sales in Australia. The bargaining power of customers in Australia is high due to large number of substitutes, players, and discount in the existing market. Thus, Woolworths, akin to Apple wants to build a strong brand loyalty in the market. The company through its media plan wants to communicate the value proposition they have for the customers in terms of the value in their product offering. Building strong brand loyalty is a step towards the ultimate goal of sustainability.

Customers are extremely volatile; it is easier for a customer to hop from one store to another and vice versa. This implies that there is a need for engagement with the customers. The engagement will help in retaining the customers, acquiring their loyalty, building a sustainable relationship and eventually driving the sales and reducing the customer dissatisfaction. Once a customer is engaged in the offering and the communication of the organization, he is bound to stay loyal, which in turn mean more market share for Woolsworth.

The media plan revolves around communicating the value the customers would get in associating with the brand. It is pivotal that customers sees tangibility in the value the company is communicating, this value can be in the form of lowest prices, certified products, ease of shopping, channels of shopping, free home delivery, loyalty card, reward points and many others. The purpose basically is to ensure that the intent of the communication has the same impact on the customers; this is one major media objective for Woolsworth.

Media Objectives for Woolworths

Coca-Cola is the only brand in the world which has brand recognition of 98%, this means that almost 7 billion people recognize the red logo globally and entrust the company to provide tested and good quality of beverage. This is something, Woolworth’s aims to achieve using the media plan. The company wants to use its artefacts such as the logo, uniform of the executives to communicate directly with the customers. Looking at the artefacts of the company, the people should build a mind map about the brand. This will help not only in creating strong brand awareness, but would also create a good brand identity which would help in the sales.

This objective is essentially associated with every media plan a company creates, but its penetration and efficiency largely depends on plenty of factors such as the media vehicle, timing of the campaign, profiling of customers, engagement, content creation and many more. Woolworths is fairly known to a large number of people in Australia. Hearing the name Woolworths, they associate with Fresh quality fruits and vegetables, groceries and many other elements of brand identity. This, number has to be increase exponentially, and this can only be achieved if the brand gets to know its customers really well, knows their taste and preference and is customer centric. This can only be ensured by over and over communicating the value, value proposition, product offering, sustainability vision of the company, discount and offers, loyalty cards, big day bonanza sales and in many other ways on the media vehicle.

The company has an online store “Homeshop” which is its click and collect business model. A lot of people go to the application, surf for the product, keep in their cart and completely forget about it. Thus, the media plan will also cater to such audience and remarket and retarget its product offering to make a top of the mind recall for the customers. Top of the mind recall helps in driving brand awareness and also facilities increased sales.

Before the advent of Internet and online channels, companies were totally reliant on the traditional media vehicles in communicating with the customers. But in the last couple of decades with the evolution in technology, traditional media vehicles have taken a step back and web 2.0 tools and technologies are taking over. The category for the media vehicle is divided into 2- Online (Internet and Social Media), Offline (Print, TV, Billboard, Radio, Events, PR, Personal selling and others).

Some of the media vehicles which will be used are Affiliate marketing (Web Marketing), Social media marketing, YouTube marketing and Influencer marketing.

This is one of the least expensive media vehicles in the online category; it implies that the organization promotes its product and offering on certain websites which the target audience of Woolworths use on a daily basis. The business here has to pay only when the network or publisher is able to deliver a click for the company which leads to sales. Thus, a good Return on Investment results through Affiliate marketing (Salgado, 2018).

Social media penetration in Australia is over 80%, which implies that over 80% of the 24 million populations are active on Social media. This number is a harbinger that social media is the most desirable platform for attainment of the objectives of Woolworths. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat can engage with the customers in terms of conducting quiz online, generating feedback, storytelling of the customers, and other offers. It is the reach of the social media platform which makes it an invincible platform and a must for brands to promote their company and its offering (Richards, 2018).

YouTube is the online video platform which has the second largest number of users, after the Facebook. The video platform is highly engaging, gives the option of uploading rich media, GIF on the page, create video for the customers, creating video showcasing how things get to the stores and many others. YouTube platform becomes important in delivering good global and regional footprint whilst creating awareness (Eagle & Dahl, 2018).

Twitter is a micro-blogging website, which lets a person communicate in 140 words to the world. Twitter has been adding various elements and features which help the business to flourish and grow. One such technique is influencer marketing, under influencer marketing, Woolworths has to get a fitness expert or a popular Australian celebrity on board and communicate with the target audience through his words. The communication of the information or the message through celebrity will not only influence his followers, but would also build a better connect with the target audience of Woolworths (Drakett et. al., 2018).

The prime communication or the marketing spend will be diverted to the online channels and less to the offline, the reason being the growing working and college going population in Australia.

Television is still the most versatile and used media vehicle for the family audience. Television is to be used as the media vehicle to target the family audience, most preferably the females of the family who takes decision on household supplies. Thus showing family based advertisement reflecting the values of the brand will connect with the family audience of Australia (Voorveld et. al., 2018).

Billboards are to be used to communicate to the target audience by Artefacts of Woolworths. Large hoarding with the logo of the brand will help in top of the mind recall which will help in increasing the sales for Woolworths (Sudhakar, 2018).

Print media such as newspapers, lifestyle and health magazines will be used to communicate directly with the direct audience. The marketing on print media will be to communicate through the use of content created by Woolsworth depicting its value proposition, discount offering and how Woolworths is better than any of the competition (Chen, 2018).

The purpose of conducting and creating the Events is to entice the external stakeholders of Woolsworth. The open platform event will be like a going down the memory lane of the company to build relationship, trust and invoke positive emotions in the target audience of the company.

These are some of the media vehicles which are to be included in the marketing plan of Woolsworth. Majority of the budget will be allocated towards the spend in the online category in comparison to that in online category.

The media costs are calculated on the basis of the estimates and the historical data which shows the costs in various categories.

The media costs written here are to be reviewed every month, based on the return on the investment from the media vehicles. The media vehicle which would generate better ROI and help in retaining and acquiring more customers will be retained with fresh investments and a revised marketing strategy to ensure effectiveness in achieving the objectives of Woolworths.

Recommendation and Conclusion

Woolworths along with Coles are the market leader in the retail category in Australia. Both these companies have created a duopoly and have a market share of almost 80% in the category. The need of the hour is to invoke the sentiments of the customers and communicate value directly to its target audience. Woolworths has to use the vast technology of social media, internet marketing and big data analytics to map the journey of the customers and increase the awareness on the company’s attest offering and creating a top of the mind recall. The online media vehicle, due to its two way communication elements is the most preferred media vehicle for Woolworths and would be able to achieve the objectives of the organization which are inclined towards sustainability.

References

Chen, L. (2018). Doctors offline, activists online: an analysis of Chinese celebrity physicians’ politically oriented social media activities. Chinese Journal of Communication,(Volume 11, No. 25, pp. 202-217) 

Coleman, D. (2018). Building Brand Experiences: A Practical Guide to Retaining Brand Relevance. Kogan Page Publishers.

Crush, J. H., & Frayne, B. J. (2018). The ‘supermarketization’of food supply and retail. In Food and Nutrition Security in Southern African Cities (Vol. 168, No. 197, pp. 168-197). Routledge

Crutchfield, L. R. (2018). How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t. John Wiley & Sons.

Culley, B., Graham, J., Kay, G., Norberry, J., & Wilson, S. (2017). Digital Marketing Plan: Naked Wines Australia. Newcastle Business School Student Journal, 1(1), 68-89.

Drakett, J., Rickett, B., Day, K., & Milnes, K. (2018). Old jokes, new media–Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes. Feminism & Psychology, 28(1), 109-127.

Eagle, L., & Dahl, S. (2018). Product placement in old and new media: examining the evidence for concern. Journal of Business Ethics, 147(3), 605-618.

Richards, D. (2018). The role of the media in the public perception of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. In 2018 Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (p. 3514).

Salgado, S. (2018). Where’s populism? Online media and the diffusion of populist discourses and styles in Portugal. European Political Science( Volume 21, No. 32, pp. 22-28). Routledge

Sudhakar, G. P. (2018). Categorization of Media Vehicles in Digital World. SCMS Journal of Indian Management (Volume 14, No. 23, pp. 126-134).

Sultan, P., Wong, H. Y., & Sigala, M. (2018). Segmenting the Australian organic food consumer market. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 30(1), 163-181.

Sultan, P., Wong, H. Y., & Sigala, M. (2018). Segmenting the Australian organic food consumer market. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 30(1), 163-181.

Svensson, G., Ferro, C., Hogevold, N., Padin, C. and Sosa Varela, J.C., (2018). Developing a theory of focal company business sustainability efforts in connection with supply chain stakeholders. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 23(1), pp.16-32.

Thorlakson, T., Hainmueller, J., & Lambin, E. F. (2018). Improving environmental practices in agricultural supply chains: the role of company-led standards. Global Environmental Change, (Volume 21, No. 48 pp. 32-42.)

Voorveld, H. A., Araujo, T., Bernritter, S. F., Rietberg, E., & Vliegenthart, R. (2018). How advertising in offline media drives reach of and engagement with brands on Facebook. International Journal of Advertising, (Volume 15, No. 23, pp. 123-140).

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order