Stakeholder involvement in marketing research
Question:
Discuss About The Implement And Monitor Marketing Activities?
Stakeholder involvement is a crucial part of any organization to enhance their operation process (Armstrong et al. 2015). For the marketing plan, the first responsibility of the stakeholders is to carry out a marketing research to understand the need of the current market. In the context of Black Beans Café the stakeholder that is the marketing executives have identified that high-quality food with organic ingredients is the main demand of the Sydney customers. Therefore, the staffs need to provide fast friendly service to satisfy their customers. However, this organization has experienced and friendly-focused staffs who are able to provide the meal and the coffee that is appreciated by the customers. This ensures that this organization is able to deliver the food within the time, which keeps the continuity of the service. The staffs of Black Beans Cafe comply with all the policies and regulations in order or deliver safe and hygienic food (Blackbeancoffee.com.au 2018). Legal compliance by the stakeholders is an effective approach, which ensures that the operation process is running smoothly.
In the context of Black Beans Café the stakeholders especially the non-marketing personnel focus on the delivery of the high-quality food products to the customers. For this purpose, they have incorporated organic ingredients in the food materials as maximum customers are health conscious today. They aimed to comply the code ASB or Advertising standard Bureau to ensure the success of their new marketing plan. The marketing personnel follows the “Do not call” policy for their potential customers. This resists them from calling the customers for marketing purpose. The non-marketing personnel follow the Privacy Act 1988 and the discrimination policy to keep the customer privacy and reduce the racism from the service (Blackbeancoffee.com.au 2018). The stakeholders of this organization have started to improve the food quality and to keep the legal compliance, which ensure the success of their marketing plan. Therefore, by the application of regular monitoring and benchmarking the performance of the staffs is measured in Black Beans Café.
In order to develop a proper marketing plan, it is essential for an organization to adopt proper marketing strategy as based on the selection of the marketing strategy the success of a marketing plan can be measured (Zhang et al. 2016). The Black Beans Café has taken a simple advertising strategy, which can be done through direct mail, PR campaign and local advertisement. They want to advertise their product through the CBD weekly newspaper article and direct mail as their budget is limited. To implement this advertisement strategy they need to set a budget for both direct email and newspaper advertisement. They need $900 to advertise their product through the newspaper. Then they need to contact the advertising agency, which can develop the content as well as publish it in the newspaper. For the email advertising, they need to hire technical experts who can develop good content.
Black Beans Café implements the staff training program and PR campaign as the team building and communication strategy. The PR campaign is helpful to communicate the message of an organization to the customers (Forbes and Kennedy 2016). The Black Beans café invites people weekly for the lunch and provides them the necessary information regarding their service. Their main target is to publish their service description in the newspaper at low cost. However, the distribution, advertisement, promotion and the customers’ service are the major parts of the marketing mix. The team members of this organization focus on the pricing scheme, which highlights that their product cost is 40% of the total retail price. This ensures their high profitability. On the other hand, the team members are able to deliver the food via the take-away model. The team members are highly involved in providing the service to the customers over the phone also, which ensures their friendly customer service. On the other hand, the team members are involved in PR campaign for the advertisement, which will increase the awareness of Black Beans Café and allow them to get double-digit growth.
Legal compliance in food service
The Black Beans Café needs to use tracking tool and collect the customer feedbacks to monitor the effectiveness of their marketing activities. However, it is important for an organization to track the all business activities while developing a marketing plan (Atwal and Williams 2017). Black Beans Café focuses on the direct email and newspaper advertisement. Therefore, they want to offer the organic product to enhance their product quality. Hence, by taking the customer feedback this organization can measure the effectiveness of their new organic product. If the customer provides positive feedbacks then they can ensure that their product is preferred by the customers. On the other hand, by keeping the track of the customer number they can measure the effectiveness of their advertisement process. If the customer number is increased then they will be sure that their advertisement tool is successful to increase the awareness among the customers.
The main objective and goal of the marketing communication are to create awareness among the customers regarding a service or product (Voigt et al. 2017). In the context of Black Beans café, their main communication objectives include enhancement of traffic by 30%, increase the awareness regarding the brand and get a double-digit growth. Therefore, they want to reduce the variable cost by purchasing the raw materials from new customers. To meet these objectives promotional activities are required for this operations. The Black Beans café has decided to implement the PR or public relation campaign. This will allow them to gather key people for weekly lunch and to share their service and brand information by providing articles. This promotional activity will be helpful for this café to create brand awareness among the people and if the people are influenced by this campaign then they can get double-digit growth. On the other hand, Black Beans café has decided to send direct mail to their customers to promote their service. This will be helpful for them to communicate with the customers directly. As a result, the customers will able to understand the new service of this organization, which will increase the traffic numbers.
In order to get a competitive position in the global market, Black Beans café focuses on the product feature, price, and delivery process. However, for an organization, it is crucial to get a good position by improving their product quality and pricing strategy (Han et al. 2018). The Black Beans café is known as the reasonable price provides and they are preferred by the customers for their unique product. The offer fine coffee and gourmet food at a reasonable price. Therefore, their delivery is very fast. Their staffs are experienced as a result; they can deliver the product to the customers within the promised time. This organization focuses on the maintenance of the health and safety of the customers. Thus, they incorporate organic ingredients in their food product, which meets their safety policy of the organization. On the other hand, their major objectives are to increase the brand awareness and to enhance the profitability margin. As for example, Dynamic is a major competitor of Black Beans café. This competitor provides coffee at a high price. Hence, by the introduction of the healthy product at a low price the Black Beans café will be able to get a good position in the competitive market.
Marketing strategy for Black Beans Café
Proper monitoring is necessary for any organization to measure the effectiveness of their marketing performance (Smilansky 2017). The target market of Black Beans Café is the office workers between the age group of 20-60. Their target market divided into three segments that are dine-ins, business and take away. The Black Beans Café takes the order directly from the customers and over the phone call. This marketing activity will meet the needs of the customers. In order to monitor the activity of their marketing plan, they collect customer’s feedback from in-store feedback forms and from the local customer survey. However, young and middle-aged people can take part into the survey while old aged people prefer feedback form. Thus, this monitoring process will be helpful for this organization to measure that their marketing activity is effective or not to satisfy their target market.
Analysis of the budget and the revenue is crucial for an organization to measure the effectiveness of their marketing planning (Han et al. 2018). The cost and the revenue of Black Beans Café are mentioned below:
Marketing activities |
Cost/Budget |
Expenditure |
Revenue |
Profit |
Advertising |
$9,500 |
$10,000 |
$11,000 |
$1,000 |
Direct marketing |
$6,555 |
$5,000 |
$9,000 |
$4,000 |
Total expenditure |
$15,000 |
Total profit |
$5,000 |
Table 1: Budget and Revenue analysis
(Source: Author)
From the above analysis, it has been found that the total expenditure of Black Beans Café is $15,000 and the total revenue is $20,000. Hence, the profit is $5,000. Thus the marketing activities are beneficial to increase the sales volume in the target market.
The Black Beans Café’s marketing objectives are:
- To increase 30% traffic number by 2011
- To enhance the brand awareness
- To achieve double-digit growth
- To provide high-quality food
- To provide fast friendly service
These are the major marketing objectives of Black Beans Café. However, they have taken various marketing activities to meet their objectives. This organization has taken reasonable pricing strategy with the high quality product. In order to enhance the traffic numbers, it is crucial for an organization to offer a high quality product at the pocket friendly rate (Mahmud 2017). As per the statistical data of the growth analysis of Black Beans café it has been found that their traffic number is increased up to 13% by the year 2011. Hence, it can be said that their low pricing strategy is helpful to increase their traffic numbers. On the other hand, they have adopted direct mail, newspaper advertisement and PR campaign to create the brand awareness. However, these advertisement methods are traditional, which is not applicable to all age group people. As per the market analysis, it has been found that in the year 2011 only 7% customer number is increased in dine-in target market segment. Such traditional advertisement activities are not effective to meet their double-digit growth objective. On the other hand, Black Beans Café is has recruited experienced staffs as a result, they are able to provide fast service to the customers. Therefore, they have improved their product feature by adding organic ingredients in their food product. This is a great marketing approach of such organization to meet the current market need as maximum customers are health conscious in the recent years.
Analyzing of the customer feedback is a vital way to improve the existing marketing activities (Mahmud 2017). In the context of Black Beans Café collection of the in-store feedback form and the local customer, survey is effective for them to improve their marketing mix. However, by checking the customer feedbacks this organization will be able to improve their product feature, delivery process, pricing strategy and the customer satisfaction process.
Staff training and communication objectives
Changes in the existing business activities are required if the old procedures are failed to meet the demand of the target market (Innes et al. 2017). It is important for Black Beans Café to bring changes in their business practices. The business practices, which need to be changed, are as follow:
- Bringing change in the traditional advertising process by using the digital media advertisement
- Make the change in the pricing strategy by adding discount pricing
- Bring change in the innovation process by incorporating product differentiation strategy
The Black Beans Café is popular for their reasonable pricing. However, only the reasonable rate is not effective to increase the traffic number and the growth of an organization (Chiang 2018). As for example, Verdi, Buzz café and Mia’s are the major competitors of Back Beans Café, which provide the good quality product at a medium price. Hence, by providing discount pricing strategy this organization will be able to increase their traffic number in comparison to use only reasonable price.
Adoption of the digital advertising strategy will be helpful for Black Beans to enhance the customer engagement. However, in the recent years, the working people are technology-oriented and they prefer fast lifestyle as a result, they have limited time to read newspaper in their routine bound life (Li 2017). It is difficult for Black Beans Café to reach each age group people by using only the newspaper advertisement. Thus, use of digital marketing strategy will be beneficial for them to cover a large number of traffic and create brand awareness among the target audience. On the other hand, during the use of digital advertisement Black Beans café needs to follow the confidentiality of the information of the customers and the organization. This strategy will fulfill the Privacy Act 1988. Therefore, the introduction of the product differentiation will be helpful for Black Beans Café to improve their product quality. This organization only focuses on the use of organic materials in their food. However, the product differentiation will be helpful for them to produce different types of healthy products, which will increase the growth and fulfill the safety policy of this organization.
Application of the discount pricing strategy based on the festive season will be a good method for Black Beans Café to retain the existing customers and cover the new customers. On the other hand, Black Beans Café needs to change their promotional strategy by using social media. In order to implement the digital marketing, an organization needs to focus on the social media marketing. Therefore, Black Beans focuses only the newspaper advertisement and the direct mail, which are not effective to deliver the service information in a large consumer domain. However, working people spend a lot of time on social media and they search product service via this advertisement process (Chuanga and Hu 2017). Thus social media marketing is helpful to create brand awareness for the large target audience. Therefore, to change in the innovation by product differentiation this organization needs to adopt disruptive innovation strategy. This strategy will help this organization to create a new market by making more variation in their products and it will reduce the huge competition in the global market.
References
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