Marketing Mix and Consumer Behavior - Essay Example

?Marketing Mix and Consumer Behavior Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Marketing Mix 4 Consumer Behavior 6 Sociological Factors influencing consumerbehaviour 8 Personal factors 8 Social factors 9 Psychological Influences 9 References 12 Introduction The recent era of globalization has turned the entire market into a single marketplace. This practice is being continuously supported by technological up gradation as well as the innovative trends of marketing. Earlier, the marketers used to consider a specific market and used to design their products according to the needs of that particular market. Today the entire world is considered as markets by the marketers who are involved in global trade. Participating in the global trade has become a growing trend of today’s business scenario since global trade comes with the opportunities of competitive advantage and access to a wider market that provides the marketers, ample scope to grow and develop. Thus in this context, when a marketer wishes to grow and prosper then it’s necessary for him/her to consider the entire world as their consumer. This is true for products as well as services. The report at hand focuses on the marketing mix of a brand and the means through which the brand convinces and satisfies its customers. One such brand with a global presence is BiCE. BiCE is a group of restaurants with Italian origin that was started during 1926. Today the group has its presence in the places like North America, South America, Asia, Middle East, Europe and Africa (BiCE, 2013). The marketing mixes at each of these places are different. Since it’s not possible to discuss BiCE’s marketing mix in the context of all the places, therefore the present report will be focusing on BiCE Abu Dhabi, UAE. However before discussing the marketing mix of the restaurant it is necessary to discuss the market condition of the place where the restaurant is operating presently. Marketing Mix Product- BiCE offers a complete Italian familiarity to its customers. Italian rock music is played by a group of musician in the lounge area so bring out the essence of Italy. The adjacent places of the restaurant remain well-decorated by terracotta idols and Etruscan bronze structures. The wide array of delicacies consist of a broad gamut of cuisines starting from appetizers like gamberi, zucchine e carciof, Fritto di calamari, Carpaccio like Carpaccio di aragosta con composta di mango piccanto e salsina al caviale, soup like Zuppa di orzo e gamberi, Risotto like ai funghi Porcini, salad like Insalata Cesare con crostini all’aglio, pasta like Penne all’arrabbiata, Main Course like Filetto di tonno rosso, in crosta di sesamo con caponata Siciliana, and Side orders like Sauteed spinach- Sauteed mushrooms - Steamed vegetables, Grilled vegetables - Mash potato - Grilled asparagus - Grilled asparagus and Mixed salads. Along with offering superb Italian cuisines the restaurant also comes with accommodation facilities. But the lodging service is only accessible during the peak seasons of the year when maximum number of tourists visit the country for spending their holidays and shopping (Jumeirah, n.d.). BiCE mainly focuses on rendering a diverse array of food menus to meet the tastes and food demands of people pertaining to various nations pertaining to China, Thailand, Arabic, and other European countries like Germany and France. Similarly the restaurant also tends to meet the varying eating needs of other expatriate population coming from United Kingdom and United States to United Arab Emirates. The cuisines are served in packages that come with separate sauces, salads and other non alcoholic beverage drinks and also of alcoholic drinks like wine and others. Moreover the restaurant also focuses on encouraging the people to enjoy their socializing activities through helping them savor on the food and drink products in an eat-out zone with adequate seats attached for gossiping. In addition the availability of a Wi-Fi facility further works toward meeting the requirements of the expatriate individuals in the emirates to efficiently mingle with people after office hours. The place is ideal for business lunch, family dining, friend’s hangout and private dinner. Price- The prices offered by BiCE are quite high in comparison to its competitors since it spends a lot towards the look and appearance of the restaurant. BiCE focuses on differentiating its product offerings from its competitors by the means of a differentiated pricing strategy. The differentiated pricing strategy largely incorporates both the facets pertaining to pricing mix and penetration into its business framework. In a more specific way, BiCE has a propensity to mostly break through the consumer market of fast foods by the means of the application of price penetration mix where the standard charges depending upon economic and marketing conditions are widely used for setting the prices of the different food products and the beverages. However in cases where the customer would be inclined to avail further offerings like non-alcoholic and other alcoholic beverages along with Wi-Fi connection and game for amusement and entertainment activities the same would be priced on a premium note. Promotion- BiCE effectively promotes its food and beverage offerings to its target market to make them aware of the availability of Italian food and beverage in the region of Abu Dhabi. Primarily the restaurant takes the help of the internet ad campaigns and other websites like trip advisor, zomato and world travel guide to rate and review its services. This technique proves to be useful for the restaurant in two ways, firstly the customers get aware of its existence and secondly the restaurant’s management gets feedback directly from their consumers which help them to know their flaws and their strong points. The restaurant also operates closely with promotional strategies like broadcast and print advertising. Print advertising can be implemented by the means of renowned magazines devoted towards promoting travel and tourism activities and provides reviews about fast food and also BiCE’s ad promotions through the means of television commercials contributes to a large extent towards drawing the larger mass of visitors. Further the company keeps in touch with its fans and followers through its website and makes use of other social media marketing networks such as LinkedIn and Face book to gain additional market share in the Arab Emirates market. The restaurant also dedicates special evenings to special menus like ‘Pizza Mania’ or ‘Pasta Passion’ to thereby cater to the interests of niche groups in the Abu Dhabi market. Place- As per the government’s statement on food industry of UAE, 85 percent of the entire food items of the country are imported and developed on a local basis for making retail eateries. The food market of the UAE is around $5 billion in size and the US is the key provider of food items in this country (Ameinfo, 2012). As a result, foreign providers of food ingredients are the key players in the food supply chain of the UAE. In relation to the location parameters the restaurant has been suitably located in the vicinity of tourism and business centers in Abu Dhabi, situating the restaurant in such a region results in attracting a massive flow of tourists and other business holders to the restaurant. The suburban population of Abu Dhabi is mainly featured as a bunch of individuals possessing a great amount of disposable earnings and assets. Due to the high amount of disposable income the people would have a propensity to go for lavish expenditure concerning food and other spare time activities that counts as a point of attraction for BiCE. Consumer Behavior Consumer Behavior is a field of study that embraces all the aspects of purchasing, be it a physical product or an intangible service. It is a complex, dynamic, multi faceted procedure and the person devising the marketing strategies makes all the advertising and promotional decisions on the basis of the suppositions drawn from the behavior of the customers. Consumption might happen due to several reasons, the key reason being the realization of a requirement, goal or worth. Another noteworthy reason for buying a product could possibly be the people or group around the consumer or the longing to get acknowledged as the part of a cluster (Foxall and et al, 2005). It’s the marketer’s job to keep on varying the aspects of the marketing mix (product, price, promotion, and place) for devising strategies to attract and retain consumers. The following illustration represents a consumer behavior model- Source: http://newagepublishers.com/samplechapter/000160.pdf Thus it can be seen that there are abundant causes behind opting for a product and also there are some critical factors behind the non-acceptance of a product or service. A few factors shown in the consumer behavior model will be discussed in the context of BiCE, in the subsequent sections. Sociological Factors influencing consumer behaviour Sociological factors of consumer behaviour comprises of mainly the personal and social factors. Personal factors The personal factors consider the whole bunch of consumers as individuals. The demographic factors of a target market like age, gender, occupation, income, marital status, education and so on affects the consumer’s purchase decision to a great extent. Age serves as an important factor for the products and services of the firm (Blackwell, Miniard and Engel, 2006). BiCE’s consumer range includes adults, aged people, teenagers as well as kids below 12 years. The objective of BiCE is to develop the brand as a premium brand name and a key competitor of the multinational food chains already present in the market of Abu Dhabi. Therefore, the company focuses on the youth segment that tends to have food outside with their friends and family. The restaurant also targets the families which poses advanced mix of domestic and western family culture. Overall the consumer segment is quite wide and the age group ranges from kids to senior citizens. The consumer’s food habit also affects the product design and service offerings of the restaurant to a great extent. The climate, food habits, language, religion, dressing style, income status, etc. falls basically within the wide gamut of geography. These geographical factors should be taken into consideration by the restaurant while preparing their marketing mix (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2007). For example let’s think about the approach adapted by McDonalds. The well-known fast food chain has got diverse menu for diverse sites across the world. When the firm was asked to state the cause behind the broad range of menus, the firm replied, “We try to adapt our menu to reflect different tastes and local traditions for every country in which we have restaurants. We're keen to respect cultural differences and so every country has its own policy of developing menu items” (McDonalds, n.d.). Moreover consumer behavior depends to a large extent on the education and knowledge of the people, for instance people who are well educated are more concerned about the adverse effects of calorie consumption and thus they would prefer to choose the least calorie contained foods and desserts (Catherine Jansson – Boyd, 2010). Since the consumers of the new generation are immensely tech savvy therefore BiCE has designed its promotional strategies keeping in mind its technology loving target market and thus the restaurant constantly encourages its patrons to keep in touch with the management of the restaurant through social Medias like face book, twitter and LinkedIn. Social factors Family, friends, and peer groups create a large influence on the purchase behavior of the consumers. This process is known as “Word of Mouth” (East, Wright and Vanhuele, 2008). Culture, social class, and social roles are known to be dominant factors in managing the approaches of the human being. It includes a universal set of attitudinal designs which are sustained and transmitted by the members of a definite society by the means of various modes. For example the people belonging to the similar culture would have a general dialect, patterns of doing things and recreations as well as they are anticipated to share like values. Psychological Influences Consumers’ motivation in purchasing decision might proffer the marketers with more unqualified understanding of the customer’s expectations and their reaction to the diverse marketing policy and strategies developed by the marketer. Cognition and Affect are the two main elements of the term consumer behavior that are known to be created by different and partly autonomous cognitive and affective systems that can, however, persuade each other in a range of techniques. The affective framework is reactive in most of the cases (Peter and Olson, 2008). This implies that the affective framework generally reacts involuntarily to diverse situations and consequently a person has very limited direct command over their feelings and emotions. In most of the cases affective responses are learnt by the means of classical conditioning and early socialization (Kenneth and Irwin, 2013). Due to this, affective responses differ extensively across social groups and cultures and as a result individuals tend to act in response in an unusual manner to similar stimulus (FOXALL & YANI-DE-SORIANO, 2011). For instance an Italian person visiting the UAE would find a closer association with BiCE than the Italian person staying there on a permanent basis. This is due to the reason that a visitor would definitely find more connected to a restaurant serving foods of his homeland than an Italian who is used to the foods of BiCE and doesn’t feel anything special about it. On the other hand, the cognitive system is in charge of thoughts, understanding, evaluating, scheduling, and making decision. Cognitive responses are much restricted than the affective responses as they are impacted by the accessibility of resources for cognitive dispensation. The cognitive system supports individual to understand and make logic out of their individual experiences (Hoek & Gendall, 2008). At this point it’s evident that the cognitive framework creates prejudiced meanings that signify personal elucidation of the things people come across. A marketer applies several techniques for drawing the customers and the consumers get diversely motivated by the various tactics of the marketer. Consumer personality talks about the thinking and the behavior of the person which differs from one another. Consumer perception is the process by which a consumer identifies, organizes and interprets information to create a meaning (POYNOR LAMBERTON & DIEHL, 2013). Attitude is his or her thinking or outlook towards the particular product or service. Learning is a psychological factor that affects the buying behavior of the consumer. Awareness regarding the consumer’s perception and attitude are essential to understand for the marketer to assume and determine consumer’s actions and needs as these are significantly impacted by point-of-purchase stimulus, service experiences, the facets of marketing communications techniques, and the framework within which these interactions take place (Hawkins, 2010). Thus psychological factors are well considered by the marketers of BiCE and as a result they promote themselves as one of the luxurious and classy restaurants so that these adjectives motivate the ego of the consumers. Also the price of the products has been set high by the restaurant with the motto of appearing as a costly place to dine. This factor again stimulates the feeling within the consumers that they possess the ability to dine at a costliest restaurant and thus satisfies their self-esteem. Moreover BiCE includes in its list of products and services, some exclusive and authentic Italian dishes that comes with soothing music and piano played at the background. Moreover the decor of the restaurant gives the consumers a feel of Italy itself. The restaurant attempts to educate its consumers by the means of online social media, television and printed forms of advertisements and hires some of the eminent celebrities for endorsing the brand. References 1. Ameinfo. 2012. Middle East's retail food sector undergoing major consolidation. [online] Available at http://www.ameinfo.com/249433.html. 2. BiCE. 2013. About BiCE. [online] Available at http://bicegroup.com/bice_corporate/index-10.html 3. Blackwell, R.D. Miniard, P.W. and Engel, J.F. 2006. Consumer Behaviour. Thomson South Western. 4. Catherine Jansson – Boyd. 2010. Consumer Psychology.England: McGraw-Hill International. 5. East, R. Wright, M and Vanhuele, M. 2008. Consumer Behaviour Applications in Marketing. London: SAGE. 6. FOXALL, G, & YANI-DE-SORIANO, M 2011, 'Influence of Reinforcement Contingencies and Cognitive Styles on Affective Responses: An Examination of Rolls' Theory of Emotion in the Context of Consumer Choice', Journal Of Applied Social Psychology, 41, 10, pp. 2508-2537, Academic Search Elite, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 December 2013. 7. Foxall, G. and et al. 2005. Consumer Psychology for Marketing. London: Thomson. 8. Hawkins, D.I. 2010. Consumer Behavior. India: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. 9. Hoek, J, & Gendall, P 2008, 'An Analysis of Consumers' Responses to Cause Related Marketing', Journal Of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 20, 2, pp. 283-297, Academic Search Elite, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 December 2013. 10. Jumeirah, n.d. Offers. [online] Available at http://www.jumeirah.com/en/ 11. Kenneth, S.B. and Irwin, A.H.2013. Social Psychology. New York: Psychology Press. 12. McDonalds, n.d. Why is the McDonald's menu different in different countries? [online] Available at http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questions/food/menu/why-is-the-mcdonalds-menu-different-in-different-countries.html 13. Peter, J.P. and Olson, J.C .2008. Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Strategy. Mcgraw-Hill/Irwin Series in Marketing. 14. POYNOR LAMBERTON, C, & DIEHL, K 2013, 'Retail Choice Architecture: The Effects of Benefit- and Attribute-Based Assortment Organization on Consumer Perceptions and Choice', Journal Of Consumer Research, 40, 3, pp. 393-411, Academic Search Elite, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 December 2013. 15. Schiffman, L. G. and Kanuk, L.L. 2007. Consumer Behavior. New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Read More