Situation Analysis
Discuss about the Relationships Of Customer Satisfaction Customer Loyalty.
Atone is situated within the gorgeous, parochial, eclectic cul de sac i.e. North Melbourne. Atone has a large number of loyal customers from far and wide. It has customers, who travel bi-monthly or monthly from rural Victoria and throughout Melbourne taking in Kensington, Yarraville, Flemington, Carlton, Docklands, Parkville, Southbank, Melbourne CBD, Albert Park, South Melbourne and others. At Atone Lifestyle Salon, effort is being made to offer effective skincare solutions and salon services to satisfy the financial and lifestyle needs of the customers. It endeavours to notify and educate the clients, not only to sell products, nevertheless also raise clients’ awareness regarding their well-being as well as the sphere of cosmeceuticals. It endeavours to offer these services within a fostering atmosphere, which adds to the overall logic of well-being. Further, this particular paper attempts to provide marketing plan for new service i.e. organic massage being introduced by Atone Lifestyle Salon.
To start with, situation analysis could great assist Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne in identifying relevant internal as well as external forces, which could help the salon in attaining long-term sustainability and competitive edge within such competitive marketplace. By adopting SWOT Analysis, PEST Analysis and Porters Five Forces Analysis tool, an effort has been made for understanding the manner in which different forces impact the operations, their present as well as likely clients. The chief purpose of situation analysis is to understand the present competitive situation of the Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne in terms of marketplace needs and the way it could assist in coming times.
According to Kotler and Armstrong (2004), PEST analysis approach is a highly effective tool adopted for evaluating outside environment of a company or industry. The tool assists in examining the Political, Economical, Social and Technical forces impacting the business surroundings (Kotler, 1998). Furthermore, the below sections throw light upon the PEST analysis of Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne for attaining competitive edge.
Political Factors
- Alterations in government policies and regulations for the businesses
- Launch of new instruction initiatives for the beauty and grooming segment
- Government officials might levy higher of taxes upon businesses along with taxes on banners and hoardings.
Economic Factors
- Increasing cost associated with grooming products and tools.
- Decreasing income and earnings of the customers.
Social Factors
- Changes in clientele i.e. the clients may be higher during summers, wedding seasons and festive seasons as compared to winters or otherwise.
- Alterations in preferences and likings of the clients. People could any time move onto some other beauty service provider they think is offering better services at better price.
- Wedding seasons could bring in high volume of clients
Technological Factors
- Adoption of up-to-date techniques for carrying out beauty services is an important factor affecting this segment.
- The salon needs to be completely conscious about what exceptional methods are prevailing within the marketplace and what methods are being adopted by the competing brands.
The below sections provide Porter’s Five Forces Analysis for Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne.
Threat of Substitute
Threat of substitute in case of Atone Lifestyle Salon operates is relatively high because of absence of product differentiation. Also, there are several salons providing alike services. As a result, there is a high need for providing various discounts as well as offers to the clients.
Buyers’ Power
Clients are an important part of each and every business and company. With respect to Atone Lifestyle Salon, the buyers’ power is high since they could any time move onto other brands making available superior provisions. Thus, the salon must make sure that it facilitates its customers with provisions, which are exceptional and reasonably priced.
PEST Analysis
Suppliers’ Power
The suppliers’ power is low in this case for the reason that whatever supplies are required for the salon are available easily.
Threat of New Entrants
Threat of new entrants is high for the reason that grooming and beauty is considered as being emerging segment having promising proceeds. Also, there exist no entry obstacles or guidelines governing this segment.
Competitive Rivalry
The grooming and beauty segment is extremely competitive with several big and small companies making available similar facilities for the clients. This makes essential for Atone Lifestyle Salon to take on strategies that could keep it a step ahead of the competing firms.
Hill and Westbrook (1997) hold the view that SWOT analysis is an effective marketplace planning approach, which assists in identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities as well as threats related to any brand, company or industry. The SWOT tool is highly helpful in recognizing and laying focus upon the internal and external forces, needed for accomplishing long term objectives and goals (Houben et. al., 1999). Further, the continuing sections throw light upon the SWOT analysis of Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne on the basis of diverse factors discovered in the PEST and Porter’s Five Forces analysis above.
- Sound retail position in a famous and well-travelled region
- Expert and competent employees holding sound experience and skills with a huge beauty and grooming repertoire
- Customer-directed business practices.
- Wide service portfolio
- Competitive prices
- Satisfies the need of whole family
- Atone Lifestyle Salon does not have adequate brand equity that its competitors have attained over the years.
- The fight to remain on the competitive edge in terms of style and beauty trends.
- A constantly progressing segment that is not impacted through the economic backgrounds.
- The ability of trimming down the marginal fixed costs at the time when there is a rise in client base.
- Cut-throat competition with several brands making available similar provisions.
- Modification in customer wants and preferences
- Entrance of new brands making available superior services at reasonable cost.
The marketing objectives of Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne include:
- Augmenting the rate of repeat clients by a significant around 20% quarterly.
- Bringing down the costs associated with client acquisition by around 8 to 10% yearly.
- Upholding a constructive and continuous progress every month.
Financial objectives take in:
- Augmenting the overall amount of retail services as well as products offered by about 10% yearly.
- Increasing the profit margins by around 10% yearly.
- Augmenting profitability levels by first year.
This particular section of the paper lays emphasis upon segmentation, targeting as well as positioning of the latest organic range of massage services of Atone Lifestyle Salon.
There does not exist any one means of segmenting a marketplace. It can be on the basis of geography, demography, climate, behaviour and/or population (Chisnall, 2004). Atone Lifestyle Salon will basically target middle as well as affluent class of the society. Salon and spa in considered as being luxury services and thus, there is no use of targeting lower group of the society.
Atone Lifestyle Salon will fundamentally target two different market segments i.e. both males and females. At present, it has been seen that both males as well as females have turned out to be highly conscious about their hair, skin, hand etc. and are ready to pay extra for exceptional services. Atone Lifestyle Salon would basically target men and women between the age group 20-45 years, who would show high interest towards salon services like massage.
Atone Lifestyle Salon will position itself like a well-situated and full service salon. It will make available exceptional massage services. It would basically leverage its competitive edge for accomplishing its desired positioning. The competitive edge of Atone Lifestyle Salon revolves around making available better-quality and exceptional services for the customers. The salon also very well recognizes the actuality that the beauty and grooming segment is crowded thus it is not that easy to stand out. Additionally, the salon would invest a good amount of money along with time for offering training to the employees to ensure that the clients attain excellent organic massage experience possible.
Porter’s Five Forces Industry Analysis
Within such global economy, companies rely greatly upon several practices and techniques for achieving the desired goals and outcomes. Kotler and Keller (2006) state that the 4Ps of marketing mix are considered as being one among the highly effective tools for introducing a service within the marketplace (McGee et. al., 2005). Nonetheless, the first and foremost thing is to conduct marketplace research and understand the marketplace (Chisnall, 2004; Hair et. al., 2000). Furthermore, the marketing mix for new addition of organic massage by Atone Lifestyle Salon, Melbourne
Product is regarded as being the foremost element of the marketing mix (Kotler and Keller, 2006). Moreover, decisions associated with product are the chief decisions the corporations must make before developing the marketing plan (Hallowell, 2006). Additionally, the product decision with respect to Atone Lifestyle Salon involves brand, comfort, quality, safety, guarantees and lastly, support. The salon needs to ensure that the organic massage services that are being launched are distinct from the present corporations making available similar facilities. The salon would also give discounts in case if any customer opts for two massage. The salon would also make available yearly packages option for the clients to ensure that they could obtain discounts on actual price. The client wouldn’t require making any prior appointments.
Pricing simply implies towards the actual amount a client shells out for the particular service or product (Kotler and Keller, 2006). While fixing price for organic massage services Atone Lifestyle Salon would consider all the cost part of offering the specific service taking in employees cost, tools used, taxes along with service cost. The massage service prices would be fixed with respect to a number of factors. For instance, the price would differ as per the part where massage is needed. The price for head massage would lower than full body massage. To retain existing customers and attract new customers, Atone Lifestyle Salon would offer special discounts on prices. The salon would also give discounts in case if any customer opts for two massage. The salon would also make available yearly packages option for the clients to ensure that they could obtain discounts on actual price.
Place simply involves the distribution network of a particular product or service (Kotler and Keller, 2006). The new service introduced would be made available at respective salons. Also, the client would be offered the option of home-services where they can easily book their massage session at home
Promotion highly relies upon the product or service decision along with pricing decision. If any service is totally new in the market, it calls for brand or service awareness promotions as well as advertising to bring it to clients’ notice. If any service is already prevalent in the market in that case it will call for brand recall promotions along with advertising (Kotler and Keller, 2006). Further, the promotion practices that would be considered with respect Atone Lifestyle Salon take in in-store promotions and advertisements.
Advertisement: Adverts regarding the new service will be placed within several different local newspapers as well as magazines of Australia.
In-store and Store Front Displays: The store front and in-store displays will be observable for the heavy walk-through client base.
The key aim of the Atone Lifestyle Salon marketing plan is acting like one and complete help guide for the salon. Further, all the below stated areas would be employed for monitoring the performance on regular basis (Hallowell, 2006):
- Overall Expenses: Monthly and annually
- Overall Revenue: Monthly and annually
- Rate of Customer satisfaction
- Repeat clients of the salon
References:
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