Marketing Plan For Salsa Royal In Male, Maldives: Enhancing Customer Perceived Value And Brand Image

Consumer Analysis

The following report is based on the marketing management of the organization Salsa Royal located in Male, Maldives, which is a fast food restaurant. The organization is facing some market challenges such as tough competition, similar product offering and inappropriate market position. As the consequence, the organization is losing its market share. Thus, it is essential for the organization to apply some changes to the operation to meet the customer demands and strengthen the organizational position in the market. Mullins, Walker and Boyd (2012) commented that marketing is the summation of all those activities that are linked to flow of goods from production to consumption. The major purpose of the report is to develop an appropriate marketing strategy that helps the organization in reinforcing the market position. In the following report, an appropriate marketing plan has been developed which starts providing a description regarding the product categories, sales and organizational mission and vision. The report includes a situational analysis, which helps to analyze the external and internal factors that have strong impact on the organizational operation. The report also proposed a new product, which should be launched to the market as the addition to the customer retention strategies.

Salsa Royal is one of the largest fast food restaurants located in the capital Male of Maldives.  The organization has a large category of fast food products. Salsa Royal provides dinner, breakfast, lunch and reservation, seating and a complete eco-friendly environment. At the initial stage of the operation, the organization gained a large amount of profits with limited number of customers. In the recent time, the overall profits of the organization decreased by 21% and the last year profit decreased by 3.9% (Sonstein et al. 2014. This scenario indicates that the organization is rapidly losing its market share and bearing the loss. The overall return on investment has been less. More specifically, it has been identified that the initial operation of the company was successful because the organization has variety of vegetable and non-vegetable items that were largely accepted by the customers. However, people in Maldives are fond of sea food and the restaurant did not put required attention to this category.

Salsa Royal mission- The major mission of the organization is to “sell the food in a fast, and friendly environment that appeals to pride conscious and health minded customers”. The organization mission has till now received one of the lowest score in all the evaluations conducted by Darbi (2012). The mission of the company is product oriented, which remains as the disadvantage for any mission compared to customer-oriented. The product-oriented missions tend to pay attention to the certain products and services instead of satisfying customers’ needs or resolving the issues. Such product could provide less flexibility for the organization to expand into other product markets. In overall, Salsa Royal does a poor job in implementing their mission as communication tool to present the significant and valuable business information to organization’s stakeholders.

Company Overview and Product / Service Description

Salsa Royal Vision- To become integrated food service group in the Asian regions delivering consistent quality products as well as excellent customer focused.

As put forward by Mohamed (2012), the core competency of the company provides the customers with the benefits while not being easy for the rivals of the company to cope or imitate and provide leveragability for different products and market.  In the case of Salsa Royal, Male, the core competencies involves its capability to provide a unique recipe on the basis of the food items which has a distinctive taste. In addition to this, Salsa Royal also has significant expertise managing as well as opening the restaurants in the global market. However, the organization lacks a proper managing direction. In such a growing sector, the organization does not have a proper technological base.

On the other side, it has also observed that the firm has poor bargaining power with the suppliers, which would have enabled the organization to have suppliers at lower cost maximizing the profit margin on the products sold. Conversely, it has also been observed that the organization does not have proper understanding about the economies of scale with its local, regional as well as international operations. Having such ability would have helped the organization to reinforce its cost advantages with the suppliers. Moreover, ever since, Salsa Royal has started the business, they have only focused on the chicken items but even though people in Maldives are fond of seafoods, the restaurant did not implement any special initiative on that category. This is because of the cost of supplies in another category.

• To increase the customer offering large variety of products
• To present international food items to meet the demands of customers belonging to different cultural backgrounds
• To maximize the profit margin leveraging the internal capability –such as distinctive taste of food

The above-mentioned goals are associated with the current ability of delivering products that Salsa Royal could achieve. However, the organization does not have a proper strategic focus that can be associated with the organizational goals and direction.

 Based on organizational vision and mission, it can be mentioned that the marketing focus of the organization stiff and stable, which would help the organization to implement new organizational initiatives but due to the improper use of resource, the organization is not able to reach its desired direction. However, it has been identified that current mission and vision is associated with the new product and market development initiatives. The vision is to become an integrated food service group in the Asian region and this vision can be achieved because people from all Asian nations visit Maldives as their preferred tourist place. This can be used as the strategic opportunity for extending the business. In addition to this, the mission of the company is to sell the seafood items to fast and friendly environment. Nonetheless, company’s mission is not associated with the product categories it has. Yet, as the focus is on Asian regions, certainly, the organization could pay attention to this seafood category as Asians are used to this category. Thus, the current mission and vision could contribute to the development of new product and market.

Strategic Focus and Plan

Political –As put forward by Kothari (2014), Maldives is presidential republic; president is on the top and as the head of government and head of the state. The president runs the executive branch as well as appoints the cabinet, which is further approved by the citizens. Fishing and tourism are the major industries in Maldives, which provides the highest GDP to the nation. Therefore, the government of the nation is supportive towards these two sectors. Here, a significant fact is that as the governments support the tourism and fishing, the other sector such as food industry, which is associated with these sectors receive an indirect help from the government. The government invests in tourism, so that more foreigners or the other visitors come to the nation and this frequency of visits of people is an advantage for the food sector organization. Thus, it can be implicated that political environment in Maldives is stable for the food industry.

Economical –A large proportion of Maldives economy is based on tourism, which generate almost 28% of their GDP (Brander et al. 2012). In addition to this, fishing remains the main occupation of people, where they receive priority from the government for the development of their business. On the other side, the agriculture and manufacturing continue to play a lesser role in the growth of the economy. Thus, it is certain that fishing sector plays a strong role in nation’s economic growth, so Salsa Royal could utilize this base to its business. Suppliers’ demand is low due to the abundance of fish. Hence, low demand of suppliers remains as the cost of advantage for the organization if the firm wants to continue the operation focusing on fish items.

Figure 1: PESTLE analysis

(Source: Brander et al. 2012)

Social –Islam is the only religion of Maldives, the open practice of all other religion is strongly prohibited, and such actions are liable to the prosecution under the law of the nation (Zubair, Bowen and Elwin 2011). This scenario indicates that considering the religious influence in mind, the firm should design its product category, which means the prohibited food by Islam such as Pork should not be prepared in the restaurants. However, the foreigners come from many cultural backgrounds and in such context, they might ask for such items. However, as Maldives is a sea-based nation, this might not be a big challenge for the organization, as seafood should remains as its major category.

Situation Analysis

Technological –It has been identified that government generates makes investment in Research & Development but only those sectors that generate GDP. The country has developed an international submarine cable Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, which connects the nation virtually to other nations (Scheyvens  2011). In the recent time, the nation has embraced the web technology, which helps people to remain socially connected. Thus, the development in the web technology could certainly help the business in promoting their products and services and creating market awareness. Presently, Salsa Royal is not involved in the social media, which would have popularized the brand. However, the organization yet could use technological advancement for the growth of their business.

Legal – As discussed earlier, the nation is biased towards the religious views and the legal framework is developed considering this fact. However, when it comes to business, all businesses are supposed to follow and implement the trade regulations. The non-compliance to trade regulations could lead to penalty (Mayer 2011).

Environmental- The nation is completely concerned about the green initiatives. As the initiative to the environmental sustainability, the businesses have to be involved in the action of recycling the use of resource (Sovacool 2012). More specifically, all businesses have to be aware of the use of resources and waste control initiatives. In 2014, the government banned the use of plastics and excessive use of water. As the consequence, the firms have started using the used water through recycling.

Bargaining power of the customers- (High)-It has been observed that due to the economic stability in the nation, people in Maldives live enhanced  life style; they look for high quality of products. On the other side, due to the availability of resources and suppliers of fish, many small and medium size restaurants keep this item in their main course (Sambajee and Dhomun 2015). Thus, the customers have many choices when it comes to food. Thus, the bargaining power of the customers is high. 

Bargaining power of the suppliers- (LOW)-As the availability of resource is high, the demand of suppliers remains low. However, as the agriculture sector of the nation did not show any sophisticated development, the food organizations observed a deficiency in the supply of chicken items (Hassan and Gharleghi 2015). This is a probable reason for loss in profits of Salsa Royal. Therefore, the level of bargaining power could differ on the basis of the sector.

Figure 2: Competitive Rivalry

Market-Product Focus

(Source: Scheyvens 2011)

Competitive rivalry- (High)-As Maldives is an attractive tourist locations, people from many nations visit Maldives, which increases up the trade opportunities for the organizations in the food sector. Many small and medium size fast food organizations established their operation in the large cities such as Male in Maldives (Scheyvens 2011). On the other side, as the nation has an abundance of fishes, many fast food restaurants establish the operation focusing on this particular category. Thus, the competitive rivalry remains high.

Threats of new entrants-(Moderate)-Due to poor growth in the supply of agriculture and manufacturing products, small and medium size food enterprises find it difficult to meet the market demands. However, in other sector such as fishing, the availability of resource is high; thereby, the small and medium size food enterprises open up the operation focusing on this category only (Scheyvens 2011). Thus, the threats of new entrants moderate for the existing fast food organizations in Maldives.

Threats of substitute products- (Moderate)-The threats of new entrants remain moderate for the existing fast food restaurants because in the large cities of Maldives, many small shops on the streets are selling fast food items, which certainly cover a particular area of the market (Jaleel 2013). On the other side, due to the technological advancement, the fast food organizations sell the products through online delivery network, which also affects the market share of traditional shops.

Strength · An appropriate ambience inside the outlet often attract the customers to pay a second visit (Sattar et al. 2012) · Taste and food quality are better than other food outlets · The organization could serve variety of items under the single menu · The firm has the ability to become specialized in chickens

Weaknesses · The organization observed the presence of many competitors in the market, which is affecting the market share of the organization. · Due to lack of trained workforce, the organization is not able to provide the desired customer services · Inadequate attention to the desired products is also affecting the market share of Salsa Royal · The firm gained a poor understanding about the market and the customers. · The existing pricing strategy is not effective and aligned to the product strategies and market demands.

Opportunities · Salsa Royal has the opportunity to expand the business in a different segment on the basis of the resource available.  Fish sector and tourism sector in Maldives create the highest GDP, Salsa Royal could diversify its business into the same category (Jayantha and De Silva 2011). · Maldives is technologically developed, therefore, the firm could promote the products and services to the large market through social media platforms · Due to the technological advancement, the organization could increase the customer base reaching the wide market. For example, online order service could be effective for the organization because only a few restaurants in Maldives have started this service.

Threats · Due to availability of restaurants, many small and medium size fast food restaurants are accessing the market, which certainly remains as the significant threat for Salsa Royal as Maldives is one of the smallest nation with respect to population.  Thus, the market is limited.

Table 1: SWOT analysis

(Source: Jayantha and De Silva 2011)

As out forward by Hunt (2011), running a successful business is not like a field of dreams, one could build it but they may not come true. Businesses should let people know about the products and services they offer. While letting others know about the products and services, formulation of marketing strategy is very important. It helps the organizations to determine which customers they will serve and they will do it. The organization identifies the market, then divides into different smaller segments, and then selects the most promising segment. Therefore, Salsa Royal could focus on the following market segments to launch its new product.

Demographic Segmentation-As put forward by Liu, Kiang and Brusco (2012) demographic segmentation consists of dividing the market into the groups based on few variables such as age, gender, family size, income, religion and nationality. However, as Salsa Royal sells the fast food items, it should not follow any particular age group but the major focus should be on the young people. When it comes to income, it has been observed that people in Maldives follow a trendy life style due to the economical stability. As people in Maldives have high disposable income, people look for quality of products. Salsa Royal needs to consider high quality in the manufacturing of new product called Fish Balls.  

Marketing Program

Geographic Segmentation-As mentioned by Hassan and Craft (2012), any market required to be segmented such as nation, states, regions, cities and neighborhoods. In the case of Salsa Royal, the firm should focus on the large cities such as Male, Fuvahmulah and others. However, apart from all these cities, the firm could also focus on tourist, commercial and university canteen. Maldives is one of the attractive tourist locations and many people visit Maldives for such natural beauty. Hence, Salsa Royal could use this as a significant business opportunity- such as focusing on those particular locations that are crowded by country people and foreigners.

Figure 3: Market Segmentation

(Source: Papadopoulos and Laroche 2011)

Psychographic segmentation- According to Cleveland, Papadopoulos and Laroche, (2011), psychographic segmentation can be divided into many groups such as personality and life style. Even though, people in Maldives are bounded by the religious views, young people have the tendency to follow the western culture. Thus, Salsa, Royal could implement a western theme in the internal environment of the restaurant.

Target market- According to Papadopoulos and Martín Martín (2011), target market remains as the process of assessing each market segment’ attractiveness as well as selecting one or more market to get in. In order to generate profits, the organization could target the large metro cities of Maldives such as Male. Male is the suitable choice for Salsa Royal, as the city has the highest population excluding the foreigners who occasionally visit. In addition to this, most of the large universities and colleges are located in Maldives. As commented by Pires, Stanton and Stanton (2011), organization with the limited could determine to serve only one or few special segments; conversely, a company with a large amount of resource could decide to serve several markets. Nonetheless, as the organization Salsa Royal has limited resource, it could pay special attention to the selected market such as Male where it could generate profits.

Positioning- As mentioned by Basu (2011), positioning refers to a product to acquire a clear, distinctive as well as desirable place to compare the products in the mind of the buyers. As the company is advised to spread across the city Male, the firm should decide how it could differentiate its market offering for each targeted segment. Salsa Royal should promote a high quality position for its products. It needs to produce a high quality product and charge price as well as distributes through high class dealers with the circulation.

Implementation Plan

The organization Salsa Royal needs to communicate through physical size that people consume to judge quality.  Moreover, in the case of Salsa Royal, it is required to mention that the firm needs to provide the services in such a way that the customers build and carry a positive image. Thereby, for those customers, the quality of products needs to be standardized. Moreover, the company also needs to build an eco-friendly environment that certainly influences the mind of the customers. Thereby, it is essential to mention that in product positioning, all external and internal aspects should be considered, which would help to present a complete image.

The marketing mix is a business tool that is mostly used in marketing and marketing mix becomes often crucial when determining a product or brand’s offering and this activity is synonymous with the four Ps.

Product- As put forward by Gordon (2012), a product can be defined as anything that could be offered to a market for attention, actuation or the consumption that could fulfill the needs.  The company has an increasing availability of seafood, Salsa Royal should continue with the seafood such fishes. Thus, considering the present scenario, the organization has been proposed to develop and launch the product called Fish Balls.  Salsa Royal should focus on the coastal areas where most of the people visit and the foreigners come and they could observe that they prefer fish items.

This proposal could work well as people in Maldives are fond of fish items. Moreover, the organization is suggested to increase up variation in the category of fish. Apart from this category, as the secondary option in the marketing plan, the organization also needs to increase the variety in the chicken items.  The people who come from Asian nations like India, UAE, and Singapore prefer chicken items. The firm could satisfy their needs and demands. However, it is also expected that people from other nations who are used to chicken items might prefer something different that they might not have tasted before.

Product Categories- There are different products divided into the sections in accordance to the differentiation in them.

• Fish (Fish Balls, Fish chop, Fish Kopta, Fish Roll, Fish Teaco and many more)
• Chicken (Chicken Roll, Chicken Bowl, Chicken Toasted Full Chicken, Grill and Roasted Chicken and many more)
• Burger ( Chicken Burger, Fish Burger, Veg Burger and others)
• Snacks & side orders

Price- Price remains as any amount of money and that customers have to pay during the purchase of the product. When it comes to price, it is observed that economical state of Maldives is stable and people have high disposal income (Masha and Park 2012). Thus, keeping the quality of products in mind, Salsa Royal could develop competitive pricing strategy for the proposed products. Likewise, any modified existing product should be sold at competitive pricing strategy. The products of Salsa Royal should be priced high and the firm should target both upper and middle class people of the target market. Dramatically, the firm needs to tickle down the price insisting on the middle to lower class to penetrate both sides of the market.

Evaluation and Control

Figure 4: Marketing Mix

(Source: Riaz and Tanveer 2012)

However, to sell the existing products, the organization could pay attention to the lower social class. It can also be mentioned that it is necessary for Salsa Royal to consider different segments of the market while designing the pricing strategies for the products. In addition to this, while developing the pricing of the products, the head office of Salsa Royal, should be involved in the process, which means pricing of all products should be set by one single branch. Hence, pricing needs to be aligned with the market demand and the stability in the economy. Furthermore, as Salsa Royal is performing the operation in the domestic market only, it does not have to consider global pricing strategy, which would have been dynamic.  The price of all products should be equal to the cost and the expected profits.

Promotion –As stated by Helm and Gritsch (2014), the promotion refers to the activities that communicate the merits of the products and influence customers to purchase it. It remains as the significant technique, which is used to inform as well as educate the selected target customers regarding the organization and its products. However, for the promotion of products, the organization could take advantages of technologies. For promoting the products in the wide market, Salsa Royal could rely on social media platform, where it could present the details of its products and services in a more detail manner through different social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  In addition to this, the organization should promote its brand by working on the logo of the firm. Especially, when it comes to a fast food restaurant, brand logo is a significant aspect that customers often carry in mind. In addition to this, the organization should consider the religious festival of Maldives such as Eid, Ramdan and other event, where it could develop special deals and offers to persuade the customers.

Place- Place includes organization activities that make the product available to target the customers. In this context, Gordon (2012) commented that high quality of products, effective pricing as well as promotional activities are of no use if the products are not available to the customers. The organization needs to focus on the downtown of the cities, which remains crowded. The advertising campaign should be arranged in the downtown of Male. All hoarding featuring the products and services should be distributed to the populated areas of the cities. In addition to this, the products and services should be placed to the convenient place such as outside the campus of a large university in Male, so that customers could easily go as well as enjoy the delicious foods.

In order to focus on the target market and the above-mentioned segments, the organization needs to implement an appropriate communication strategy. The organization should focus on developing a communication program; this means, as the nation is technologically developed, the organization could pay attention to social media platforms. Certainly, social media is a large platforms, where millions of people are socially connected on a regular basis. Thus, to create awareness among the people, Salsa Royal particularly focus on the social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others to convey the messages about the products and services. The social media tools should be used properly, which means, the firm could create a public community page on a large social media tool like Facebook, where they could post the latest updates about the products and services and the customers could see them and react to it. In addition to this, the firm could use the most popular social media tool such as YouTube, where it could publish a video featuring the products and services of Salsa Royal.

Apart from the communication strategies, the focus should also be on product manufacturing. Due to the similar product offering, the firm might again observe a slow growth in the new strategy. Thus, the proposed product Fish Ball is a new item and it should be prepared with the highest priority to give customers new experience in the category of fish. On the other side, to make distinctive point in the product category, the organization needs to increase up the variety in the products. This means, if Salsa Royal wants to  particularly focus on the category of fish, it has to maintain the variation in this category. This might also help the customers to select their preferred option from the choices.

Salsa Royal also needs to consider technology in their services. As Maldives is technologically developed, to reach the customers in the remote areas the firm could provide online delivery services. In this system, the customers have the choice to select option and order online. In implementing this service, the organization needs to maintain an effective delivery services; this means, the focus should also on the distribution channels. The distribution network should be broad and effective; the firm needs to ensure the delivery of products are not delayed.  To speed up the deliveries of the products placed online, Salsa Royal needs to hire people who could implement this job. In addition to this, to maintain the quality of products, or to differentiate the firm from the competitors, the quality of new and existing product needs to be considered and maintained. In this context, Salsa Royal could hire new and experienced chefs who have years of knowledge in multiple cuisine. Thus, such experienced people prepare the dishes different people that customers might not have experienced before.

Once the plan is implemented in accordance to the marketing needs, the organization needs to measure the performance of the plan. In the evaluation procedure, the organization needs to pay attention to all departments and stakeholders involved in the plan. Firstly, the organization needs to collect feedback from the customers regarding the newly developed products and services. The marketing executives of the firm should assess the feedbacks and identify the flaws, if any are there. Based on the identification, appropriate measures need to be prepared and implemented. However, the evaluation should start after 6 months of implementation of the marketing plan. In addition to this, the firm could do it by looking at the sales, which should be going up and the firm needs to be careful regarding what measures the organization is supposed to use.

The firm could do it by setting a longer sales cycle and to see the difference, the firm needs to measure the number of new leads being generated. Likewise, in the feedback process, the form should find out where they heard of the organization. In the feedback process, if they found the response “I do not know” then, certainly, the firm needs modify the strategies. For example, many customers might not have heard of the newly launched product and service; hence, the firm must ensure that it is advertising its products and services in the right media. The firm could select the media to suit the audience being specific as possible. Moreover, in the control and evaluation plan, the firm needs to make sure whether the networking activities create new opportunities for the firm. While measuring the networking activities, the firm needs to track the source of networking enquiries. Similarly, the control team of the firm also needs to make sure, whether the marketing tactics making it easier to sell the services. Like each department related to the organizational activities mentioned in the marketing plan, the organization needs to focus on the client demands and the point of differences.  

The firm also needs to ensure the sales conversion rate and the firm could do it by looking at the historical records as well as determine whether the rate of conversion has enhanced and here selling remains as the significant factor of the marketing function. Lastly, in the evaluation process, the firm needs to look at the fact whether the plan does have a positive return on investment. The organization needs to ensure whether the plan brings enough new and repeat business to justify the expense. If not all these measures are taken into the consideration in the evaluation process, the organization might not observe an expected return on investment.

In the marketing plan, especially in the communication strategy, the organization needs to think of the public relation, which might help to communicate or reach the target customers. Salsa Royal needs to develop a good relation with company’s public bodies by deriving favorable publicity. By doing this, they could develop a good corporate image heading off unfavorable rumors. As the public relation tools, the organization could use news, internet and other relevant tools.

Conclusion 

The above-presented marketing plan could help the organization to gain the market share and reinforce the existing marketing share. The present scenario indicates that organization is losing its market share due to both external and internal factors. Therefore, based on these issues, the organization has been suggested to increase the list of food items based on the current market demands. In addition to this, the firm has been proposed to take advantage of technologies as Maldives is technologically developed. It is anticipated that the proposed plan could help the organization to deal with excising business challenges.

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