Bu1108 Managing Consumer Markets- Process Assessment Answers

Answer:

Marketing in a simpler term can be defined as the management process in which goods and services are moved from a single concept to the customers. Moreover, it includes the coordination of four major components (4 P’s) of marketing i.e. product, price, place and promotion. Now onwards 3 more elements have been added in marketing mix and that are people, process and physical evidence (Wilson and et al., 2012). Moreover, there are various activities included in marketing but all the activities revolve around these elements of marketing mix.

Thus, the major purpose of this report is to identify various activities of marketing in order to bring improvement in the 7 Ps of marketing mix of Cedele Café. This café is located in Singapore at 115 Franklen AVE (Cedele, 2017). Moreover, the report covers the identification of present marketing strategy of a firm and issues faced by the company in the current market. For that aspect, station analysis and STP would be carried out. Moreover, recommendations regarding 7 P’s have been made in this report and also regarding the creation of mobile App for resolving a service marketing issue.

Furthermore, the scope of this report is very wide because it will help the firm in bringing improvement in their marketing strategy and this way company can increase its sale. Moreover, this report also helps in identifying the external and internal environment which will be a great help for all the firms falling under this industry. Furthermore, it can be assumed that recommendations given in this report will help the company to enhance the customer’s footfalls and increase in their profit (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). However, this report is limited to only marketing related queries and it will not provide assistance to the firms facing different issues relative to marketing.

2.1 Description of the background of service based firm

In a general context, Service Company is that business which generated income by availing services rather than selling physical or tangible products. These companies have completely different business structure. They don’t sell any physical product so they don’t possess any inventories, however, inventories of stationary items could be there. Moreover, they don’t have any manufacturing unit as they do not manufacture anything (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010). But, exceptions are always there like restaurants and hotels also come under service sectors but they serve tangible products like food, drinks, coffee, etc. and they also have inventories of all the raw materials which get processed and turn them into eatables and drinks.

Furthermore, in service firms, employees have direct interaction with the customers and their customers are known as clients (Service Marketing, 2017). Along with that, they satisfy their clients by serving them in an effective manner and the repeat sales are based upon how well the client had been served by the staff member. Furthermore, the marketing strategy of Service Company is different from that of product based firm because there are 3 more marketing mix elements get added into it and that are people, process and physical evidence. Thus, in the present report, Cedele café falls under service industry and the firm come in the exception of managing inventory and processing unit. Moreover, the company also looks upon the additional 3 elements of marketing mix.

2.2. Analyzing the Marketing Environment

Marketing environment is that environment which surrounds the organization internally and externally. There are two types of marketing environment; one is macro environment and the other is micro environment. There are various market forces which is impacting the company to carry out their services in an appropriate manner. Thus, according to macro environment, shifts in the socio-cultural trends and value have put a major impact on an ability of a café business to serve their customers (Lusch and Vargo, 2014).

The reason is that, many new trends have changed the lifestyles and behavior of a consumer and their preferences. The technological factor has promoted the Cedele Café to provide a facility of Wi-Fi to their consumers in order to fulfill their demands and strongly compete with the competitors. Thus, this could be the good opportunity to attract more and more customers of similar segments. Furthermore, the competition in the market has forced the café to provide their offerings at very reasonable price and moreover, the customers these days get attracted by seeing good deals so the café is forced to provide beneficial deals to the customers.

Along with that, socio-cultural latest trend of eating healthy has become a major preference which Cedele Café is embracing from years. The café has a tagline of providing healthier food (gluten free) than any other food chain and it also serves food made up of organic produce. In addition to this, political and legal factor has also influenced the Cedele Café by putting an obligation of complying with several laws and regulations which have been given by the government. For example, food safety, trade requirements, licensing of liquor and health & safety at workplace.

2.3 Describing the segmentation, targeting and positioning stagey

The Cedele Café is a bakery café which serves coffee and snacks along with bakery products. Thus, the firm has segmented its market on the basis of demographics like age and income. Majorly the young people and adults of upper middle class and high end income group have been targeted and also the people who are health conscious. Coffee and bakery items are mainly consumed by the people of ranging from 20-40 years of age (Grönroos and Ravald, 2011). Further, to maintain the standard of the café only high income group has been targeted. Furthermore, psychographic segmentation has also be done where social class lifestyle (working class and college going students) have been targeted. Furthermore, segmentation is also done on the basis of behavioral where health conscious have been targeted. The reason is that, café serves organic and gluten free food so it has segmented its market on this basis.

Furthermore, target market of the Cedele Café is youth and middle age group who belong to upper middle class and high class. Specifically, the health conscious people from this category have been targeted by the Cedele Café. Lastly, the positioning strategy of the café is on the basis of quality of the food and coffee and price of the product served.

There are various service marketing issues which have been encountered in Cedele Café and that have been listed below:

1. The price is relatively lower than other cafés but no offers and discounts provided by the Cedele Café.
2. Promotional activities are not done by the café in an effective manner. The company only has its Facebook page which demonstrates its latest deals and offers. Thus, company is lacking at its promotional part. Due to this, many of the people are not even aware about this café where best food is get served. Moreover, footfalls of customers are not much which does not enhance their profits (Johns and Van Doren, 2010).  
3. The 5^thP of the marketing mix is people and it is not efficient in Cedele Café. The staff of the café is not very friendly and the service which they provide is not on point. Moreover, there is a shortage of manpower because cashier of the café is doing waiter job as well. Along with that, no proper dress is dedicated for them, presentation of staff is not appropriate, their hairs and beard are not groomed properly.
4. Physical evidence which is a last P of service marketing strategy and it is somewhat lacking in the café. However, everything is put into display so that it is easily accessible for the customers and it has peaceful ambiance but the siting is not very comfortable in the café which pushes the customers to leave the café early. Moreover, there is no music in the café which makes it little noisy and this discourages the people to visit the café.

3.1 Marketing Mix recommendations for resolving service issues elements

3.1.1 Physical Evidence

It can be recommended to the Cedele Café that they must bring improvement in their sitting so that people coming to the café will stay for longer time and thus, they would order more food and beverages which adds to the income of the café. Along with that, they should also provide free Wi-Fi which is the major reason for customers to visit the café. In addition to this, the café should also install the music system and plays soft instrumental music which will make the place calm and soothing where people would visit to relax (Grönroos, 2011).

3.1.2 People

Cedele Café must hire those people who are of charming nature so that they can serve the customers in an appropriate manner. Furthermore, it can be recommended to the café that should provide effective training to their staff members on how to behave positively with the customers. Moreover, proper motivation should be given to the staff members in order to boost their morale. Most importantly, a similar dress should be assigned to the waiters and they should be learnt to be properly groomed in order to put a positive impression over the customers. For getting high number of footfalls, it is essential to put emphasize upon the people of the company.

3.1.3 Promotion

Promotion should be done by the Cedele Café for attracting large number of customers. Further, social media promotion should be done at large scale in order to create awareness. Moreover, lucrative deals should also be provided to the customers through sharing of post on social media and also by developing a mobile application, company can do its promotion.

3.1.4 Processes

Cedele Café is following a good process where customers are allowed to access all the bakery items which makes it easy for the customers to take anything they wish to buy. Further, café should also do the access to water as well so that they don’t have to wait for the waiter. Further, the order management can also be improved by installing a device on each table so that by pressing a button waiter get notification about the call of which table and what the customer demands for. This will reduce the wait time and calling of waiter.

3.2 Contribution of Café towards sustainable marketing efforts

Cedele Café is different from its competitors because of its positioning of “Eat Well, Be Well”. They translate this into making of their food. Further, they purchase only good quality and natural ingredients by keeping in mind the freshness. Moreover, the company contributes towards the sustainable marketing where they have the motto of “Waste Not” and they always recycle their products and order exactly as per the requirement. Moreover, they believe of giving it back to the society, for example, their organic coffee comes from UK based company which does the contribution of 60-80% of its profit back to the grower communities (Huotari and Hamari, 2017).

4.1 Recommending about the mobile app which can be used for enhancing marketing abilities of the café

Recommendations have been made to Cedele Café for developing a mobile app in order to make it easily accessible for the customers and to attract large crowd of customers towards the café. Some of the recommendations have been suggested below:

• Café should include its entire menu along with pictures in the app so that customers get attracted towards it.
• The café must provide offers and discount if ordered from the app. Ordering from app will make it easier for the café to prepare in advance. Moreover, it will pull the customers as well because they are getting discounts or other offers by using app.
• The café should also built a fun game in the app and make a condition that if the customer will earn this much points then they will get 5% cash discounts or any free item with the order above certain limit.
• Café should also provide a map to its outlet which would be easy for the customer to reach there.
• Further, app should also have the suggestion feature where customers can feed the suggestions as well.
• Along with that, the café must also built a feature of contributing to the charity and when the customers pay the amount, a certain percentage of that bill should go directly to the charity box and that must be visible to the customers. This will make the customers feel good.
• Home delivery option should be available in the app and after certain amount home delivery charges should be waived off.
• Moreover, notification about every update should be given to the users so this will help them to remain up dated regarding latest deals and offers.

4.2 Conclusion

From the above report it can be concluded that service marketing strategy must be developed in an appropriate manner so that they can attract large number of customers towards it services. Moreover, all the 7 Ps must be taken care and it should be ensured that they are contributing properly in marketing of their services. Further, this report also contributes that to attract more customers; company must embrace changes as per the changing trends in the market. Along with providing quality services, the firm should also contributes towards the suitable marketing which is the latest concept of doing marketing. Most importantly, the company must follow the 3 Ps of marketing mix which is specially designed for service based firms.

References

Journals and Books

Wilson, A. and et al., 2012. Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm. McGraw Hill.

Jobber, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2012. Principles and practice of marketing (No. 7th). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G., 2010. Principles of marketing. Pearson education.

Perreault Jr, W., Cannon, J. and McCarthy, E.J., 2013. Basic marketing. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Lusch, R.F. and Vargo, S.L., 2014. The service-dominant logic of marketing: Dialog, debate, and directions. Routledge.

Grönroos, C. and Ravald, A., 2011. Service as business logic: implications for value creation and marketing. Journal of Service Management, 22(1), pp.5-22.

Johns, P. and Van Doren, D.C., 2010. Competitive intelligence in service marketing: A new approach with practical application. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28(5), pp.551-570.

Grönroos, C., 2011. A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation, interaction and marketing interface. Industrial marketing management, 40(2), pp.240-247.

Huotari, K. and Hamari, J., 2017. A definition for gamification: anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature. Electronic Markets, 27(1), pp.21-31.

Online

Cedele. 2017. [Online]. Available through <https://www.cedelegroup.com/>. [Accessed on 6^th October, 2017].

Service Marketing. 2017. [Online]. Available through <https://managementstudyguide.com/definition-and-characteristics-of-services.htm>. [Accessed on 6^th October, 2017].