Marketing Steps

Question : What are the steps in the Marketing Process? Answer: Research and situational analysis: The cafes and coffee shops industry has significantly grown over the years. This is because of the large success to Australias love for coffee and quality of the coffee served under vibrant coffee culture. The revenues for this industry is anticipated to grow annually at the rate of 7.2% over the last five years which is amplified by huge spike in 2013-14 due to growing consumer sentiment and increasing business. The revenues for the industry are anticipated to grow by 6.9% during the year 2016-17 to approximately $5.5 billion. It is noteworthy to denote that despite the strong performance for cafes and coffee shops competitive pressure has increased and has pushed profitability slightly down during the last five years (Huang and Sarigll 2014). The unique elements of Australian marketplace are sustained by demand arising from the industry in the recent global economic downturn. In this period the revenues for the industry grew in comparison to the rival hospitality industry such as r estaurants and caterings as they experienced a constant decline in the revenues. According to several reports the coffee industry is anticipated to experience sustained growth in the next five years with rise in consumer ethical spending. Situation analysis: Name of the cafe restaurant: Aroma Magill cafe Location: Magill South Australia Food and services offered: The stylish menu of the cafe offers customers with wide variety of selection of hot and cold meals, which also comprises of salads, foccacias, rolls, pizza, lasagne and pasta with large variety of hot and cold drinks. The cafe provides dining and catering services at Magill campus. It also provides services in corporate events and party with wide array of selections of fresh and flavoured catering platters. Target market and values gained: The current target market for Aroma is various educational sites across Australia. The ultimate goal of this market is to offer its customers with wide variety of quality with affordable meal options keeping convenience and potion size in mind (Wood 2013). The company looks to gain value through its ever-changing menu as it keeps on adding items to and special kind of combos to make its customers enjoy. The cafe always looks to offer something fresh to gain values among the local community and campuses. Key difference in product or services: Aroma cafe automatically differentiates its products and services for their customers with better serving staff and stupendous coffee. The cafe provides cafe and semi-gourmet food within reasonable price to its customer which makes them distinct from its competitors. The cafe focuses on making healthy choices and awareness of cultural diversity. Customers visit and popularity: Customers usually comes in the early hours of afternoon for the wide variety of meals served by the restaurants. Another popular time when customers often visit the restaurant is during the late evening hours when offices and campuses ends for the day making the cafe a favourite place to hang out (Westwood 2013). Choice of distribution channel: The cafe provides pre-packed food choices for students in hurry. The customers can obtain the product right from the cafe-counter. Payment options: The cafe offers its customers to either pay by cash or they can opt for cashless payment with their debit or credit cards. Positioning strategy of cafe: The cafe maintains a vibrant and contemporary settings, which encourages its customers to use the dining areas, and meeting place, which is both comfortable and inviting (Srensen 2012). The cafe has dry bars with comfortable lounges, plasma screens and alfresco settings to attract customers by positioning its self a step further from its competitors. Consumer behaviour: The current consumer behaviour suggests that the 47% of the coffee users usually prefers sitting in the coffee shop and 8.3% of the consumers prefers taking away. Another important factor affecting the consumer behaviour is the taste of coffee served as research shows that consumers are greatly concerned with the taste of coffee. Identification of target customers based on different attributes are as follows; Demographic information: The demographic information suggest that coffee is consumed by nearly half of the population which accounts for 46% of the peoples. It is worth mentioning that consumption of each type of beverage is closely linked with age (Liu et al. 2016). Consumption of coffee among age group of 19-30 represents 34% of the people and people aged 51-70 accounted 66% of the total population. Psychographic information: The psychographic information of the coffee states that consumers aged between 18-24 are from educated back ground and are likely to have annual household of more than $100,000 in Australia. People spending time at coffee shops and cafes drinks specialty and regular cups of coffee instead of usually coming and grabbing coffee (Hollensen 2015). Geographic information: As per the data obtained from the Australian coffee report it shows that customer demand in queens land is 6% more than that of Victoria. To make a coffee shops successful business owners should look into the below stated prospects The coffee venue should feature brewed coffee and espresso based beverages such as Granita ices fruit juices and any other beverages associated with coffee shops A dessert bars with range of freshly prepared desserts as well as baked foods related with breakfast Lunch offerings should be made containing both carry-out and dine-in menus (Mullins, Walker and Boyd 2012). Key areas to be identified in regard to attract consumers relating to product and services are as follows; Offering dishes with variety of country cooking themes such as braised and smoked meats, sea foods and vegetarian offerings with seasonal change. Evening sessions should feature a full range dining and Spanish appetizer with live entertainment such as musical jazz, Latin and urban musical traditions (Freitas and Spezia 2013). Menu featuring the selection of pan-ethnic dishes which is influenced by French cooking traditions. Psychological needs are mainly responsible for driving consumers towards buying or purchasing of coffee since it pertains to appeal humans primal needs which is fulfilled by psychological motivation (Da Silva and Mazzon 2016). This is due to the marketing, communication factors appealing the psychological needs forms the part of hierarchy, and to some extent it tends to satisfy the humans survival needs as well. Key Features Beach caf Costa Coffee Starbuck Healthy food Hot and fresh cold coffee Strong variety of sea food Own coffee estates Variety of sausage dishes Wide range of pizza Desserts Few additional desserts Variety of deserts to choose from like cheese, burgers, pizza mania etc. Options to choose from both sea and continental foods Beverages Limited number of beverages Several beverages like mango juice, crush chocolate shake, Pomegranate juice, quick serve traditional hot and cold drinks Review and assess consumer levels of consumer interest: Several social elements of coffee can be observed in the modern era of life style. Consumption has largely increased over the years and traditional tea drinking is popular in Australia. Coffee has been an important element in Australian cultures the late since 19th and early 20th centuries. Strong black coffee is regularly drunk amongst the consumer immediately after main course such as lunch, dinner and several times at work or any coffee shops (Linjaet et al. 2015). In addition to this, consumer buying behaviour is often related to their social class. A consumer coming from lower class is more focused on price while a shopper from higher-class society usually prefers elements of quality and innovations along with social benefit that can be obtained from the product. It is noteworthy to denote that customers need to buy coffee does not necessarily refers to the decision model process. Every customer has his or her own set of experience before making the decision to purchase coffee. A consumer purchase behaviour is influenced by their personality, life style and social factors. Social factors affects the business of coffee significantly as the reference group, family, role and status influence every consumer (Hawkes 2013). The reference group of consumers provides a basis to compare consumers regarding their behaviour, lifestyle and habits. Family members can influence the individual consumer buying behaviour by acquiring values and shaping personality as family creates habits relating to brand perception or products which forms an important element in impacting the business of cafes. Kit is noteworthy to denote that the consumers having brand perception at young age can carry out the same brand selection in the adult life without paying any attention that their family influenced such selection (Chwolka and Raith 2012). Setting up menu for coffee shop is considered as pivotal in decision making process. Pricing is those areas of marketing that requires to be periodically revisited in order to respond to the changing needs of the industry with fluctuating market needs and moods of consumers (Rothaermel 2015). Setting up the prices for restaurant involves taking into the consideration several elements which consists of cost of food, cost of labour, degree of competition and willingness of the target customers to pay. Menu strategy: A cafe generally has menu that possess the potential to create a huge impact on the cost and on the pricing as well. Hence, the cafe shops not only the need to decide on the food it is serving but should also consider the condiments which will be offered to attract consumers. Flexible pricing: Cafes or coffee shops can raise or cut down their prices on certain items so that they can achieve profitability upon their needs. Having a menu format, which can be changed frequently with small increments, will add to the profitability of the cafe shops. Complementary pricing: Adopting complementary pricing strategy enables a coffee shop to charge low price in comparison to their customers for common items and simultaneously raising prices on other items (Brinckmann and Kim 2015). The low pricing strategy will help in drawing customers in and once they are in the cafe there is high probability of inducting them to slightly purchase higher priced items. In the earlier stages, the cafe served the consumers with the satisfaction of understanding in advance the demand of consumers. The consumer had high preference for the cafe given the fact the cafe offered cost-effective breakfast and hot drinks at reasonable price. Though the setting of the cafe was not so attractive but the menu served by the cafe was appealing to the consumer taste and preference. The cafe additionally offered consumers with takeaway facilities for food and coffees served since the visitors enjoyed good coffee and decent food in family environment within the desired cost (Hair and Lukas 2014). However, the marketing message at the earlier stage wasnt much special about the cafe but the vibrant energy of the visitors made its ambiance. On the other hand, in the later stages it was observed that the cafe was unusually empty with only 20% of the total capacity occupied the space is filled. It is worth mentioning that the cafe had changed its menu by adding new variety of pizza to offers its customers. Given this circumstance, the food served now cost higher than the earlier price at which it was served. Consequently, the taste of the food does not meet the consumer expectations with hardly any taste in pizza served. Such marketing move conveyed a wrong impression on the minds of consumers leading to fall in number of visitors. The business of coffee shop is the business of people. It is relatively aimed at satisfying the customers both in terms of their physical and psychological needs. It is noteworthy to denote that customer attraction is all about meeting their expectations and satisfying their demand (Barney and Hesterly 2015). In order to bring back the lost consumer the cafe owner should look into the potential aspects to bring back its customers; Putting in display product: Having a range of product for display will sure cost the cafe in the form of wastage however; it may cost the cafe more if it does not follow the suit of putting the products on display. An abundant display may lead to high turnover for business and restore the success of the cafe. Creating a theatre: Creating an animated barista or completely having an automated machine for food and drink will potentially bring back customers. The items should be highlighted with the spotlights and should be located at prominent parts of the coffee shop (Honig and Samuelsson 2014). The theatre occupies the mind of customers and facilitates easy engagements leading to an opening of conversation. Appealing customers: The cafe should strategically place fans by alluring the smell of coffee into the streets so that it can attract customers. The cafe can also appeal customers through smells of cookie baking and fried onion. Marketing Mix for Caf The marketing mix approach is considered in case of caf in order to change and improvised the business situation of the caf. This marketing mix approach will be helpful for it to understand their strength and weakness for their betterment. Products: The product mix of Mini Caf is mainly constituted of the various kinds of products that must be introduced within menu in order to cope up with their present market condition. Their innovations in products must consider consumer choices. Place: In order to again their products and service popular, they need to open several branches all over the city (Keszey and Biemans 2015). Promotion: The condition of Mini Caf is poor as their innovations provided a wrong outcome. Therefore, they need to focus more in their promotion purpose. Price: Price is one of the major factors in retrieving the previous value of Mini Caf in the competitive market. Therefore, at the first stage the caf needs to offer their products at a reasonable cost to their valuable customers (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick 2012). People: The authority of the Caf needs to focus on their customer demands in order to provide them satisfactory outcomes as good quality products. Physical evidences: This is another important and attractive feature that needs to be incorporated by Mini Caf. Pictures of foods and beverages that are produced by them should be presented to their customers. Marketing Mix for Mini Caf Suite of services: This strategy can be taken for mandating their product variations in order to attract their customers. Loyalty programs: Loyalty programs can attract the customers as well as the members will find interest in serving their loyal customers (Kotler et al. 2015). On-Premises Advertising: This is another way of attracting the customers. Attractive advertisement will be helpful in making the customer feel different about the ambience. Promotional advertisement: Promotional fact will be helpful for them to set a good positioning within the target market. Figure 1 Illustrations of Marketing mix (Source Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick 2012) Marketing Mix approach prepared for the development of Mini Caf is supporting the organizational structure. In accordance with the previous condition of the cafe, it is clear that it was popular enough to satisfy their customer (Keszey and Biemans 2015). Therefore, the Cafe will easily support the proposed marketing mix. All the procedure mentioned in the Marketing Mix are clarified by aligning with the organizational marketing objectives, so these will be helpful to them in retrieving their market values. Human resource: There are few categories within Mini Cafe that needs to be managed by the HR: compensations and benefits, certifications, compliances, employee behaviour and consumer behaviour. HR of the Caf must be responsible for these roles. Financial role: The coffee shop should capitalise on the strong market demand for high quality gourmet coffee. The owners should start up with additional capital fund with the objective of creating and growing a loyal customer base (Sleep, Lam and Hulland 2016). This will enable the company to witness an increase in net worth over the months and will maintain a healthy gross margin. The combination of gross margin with operational expense will offer the company with enough opportunity to finance further growth. The marketing strategy for coffee shop is generally aimed to attracting new customers, retaining the existing customers, getting customers to spend more and come back more often. Establishing a loyal customer base is necessary for sustained marketing strategy. Sales strategy: Two speed up the customers the caf shop employ two service man in order to serve clients where one employee will be preparing orders of customers while the other taking care of the sales transactions. Competitive edge: The caf shop should position itself in a unique manner where its customers can not only enjoy the cup of coffee but also spending their time under a well organised ambient environment (Linja et al. 2015). Comfortable sofas, chairs and relaxed music environment will help in gaining back customer so that they can relax and release their stress. Cost fixations: The caf should decide up the cost for foods and coffee beverages along with retail beans and pastries as the proximity to the university campus and visitors will dictate their sales. Such strategy will help in improving revenues during the peak hours of evening and early morning. The caf shop should be in accordance with the competition and consumer act in order to enhance the welfare of the Australian by promoting fair and equitable trading provisions. The caf shop should deal with all the aspects of the market place by regulating the relationships with suppliers, wholesalers, traders and customers. In wider terms complying with the legislations requirements and industry code serves the purpose of the regulations requirement concerning the marketing strategy of caf shop (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick 2012). 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