Marketing Management and Brand Positioning - Assignment Example

? . Marketing Management I. Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 I. Marketing Mix 3 Product 3 Place 4 Promotion 5 Price 5 II. Stakeholders Analysis 5 Customers 5 Competitors 6 Company 7 Community 7 III. a) Brand Positioning Analysis 7 III. b) Perceptual Mapping 9 References 10 Introduction In today’s world, the process of change is the only factor that is constant. As a matter of change in various factors like social, economical, technological etc, human being all over the world are responding and adapting to these changes by making suitable changes in their lifestyle as well as their preferences. In today’s fast paced civilization, the population all over the world irrespective of their occupation or location based factors are switching over to foods and beverages which are easily available and consumable on the go. This has led to the growth of tremendous competition in the world wide markets among various fast foods brands in quick service or packaged formats. In this particular assignment, the focus is laid on Dominos Pizza, which is considered as the leader in the pizza delivery business in the US on the basis of consumer spending and occupies the second position in the globe, while comparing in terms of sales (Annual Report, Item 1). The company, founded in the year 1960, provides quality products that are made available to the consumers at affordable prices with excellence in product delivery (Dominos.com, 2008). I. Marketing Mix The marketing mix of a company increasingly talks about the process of value generation, value communication, value distribution and value capture through the 4 P’s of marketing which is commonly represented as product, place, promotion and price. Product The world’s second largest pizza company in the world in terms of volume has a highly diversified line of product portfolio. The company’s main product offerings are mostly the diversified kinds of pizzas that help the company to cater to the hunger needs of the consumers belonging to the mass markets by providing the required and desired nutritional food value through its food products to the customers. Apart from the basic product offering of pizzas, the globally present pizza manufacturer and delivery brand focuses on the process of value generation, value distribution and value capture through a widely diversified portfolio comprising of various categories of product like pasta, breads, chicken products, sandwiches, chips, drinks, deserts as well as some by product type auxiliary offerings. It also needs to be mentioned that in an attempt to service and cater to the needs of the customers in a better manner, the company also allows the consumers and customers to opt for customized product offering depending on their personal choice and preferences. Among each of these diversified product lines, the company has various product variants which helps their product appeal to a broad range of customers in the American region as well as in various countries all over the globe. Place The largest pizza delivery company in the US follows a very generalized yet highly well developed and advanced model for the process of distributing value to the consumers. The company follows the strategy of expanding and entering in various markets through the process of offering franchisees. By the process of offering franchisees in various markets, the company gets the option for going for both intensive as well as exhaustive distribution of products. As of today’s date, the company has presence in various locations all over the globe with a store count of more than 9000 worldwide (Annual Report, p. 14). Promotion The company uses a mix of online and offline processes for promoting its products. For the purpose of increasing product and brand awareness in new markets, the brand goes for exploiting traditional promotional media like the television, hoardings, banners, newspaper ads, etc. The company also goes for in store promotions like offering discounts, coupons, value for money combo packs to promote its products. The company also conducts various online and offline promotional campaigns in the markets all over the world, in an attempt to increase connectivity with the consumers. Price The pricing of the products are highly competitive in nature in an attempt to make them eligible for competition with the various competitors that are present in various markets worldwide. The company in an attempt to provide better value to the customers encourages the use of discount coupons as well as various combo meals which provides better value for money to the consumers. II. Stakeholders Analysis Stakeholder analysis is basically the process of analyzing the people or the parties who are directly or indirectly influenced by the organization’s business processes (Mikkelsen, 2005, p. 236). The stakeholder’s analysis can be done by analyzing the business from the view points of the customers, competitors, company and community Customers The customers are the most integral part of the entire group of stakeholder as the entire business model of the globally popular brand is highly dependent on the basis of fulfillment of needs and demand arising from the consumers all over the globe. In the wake of various economy based uncertainties of macro and micro nature, the customers and consumers in the developed as well as emerging economies are getting more and more price sensitive and are focusing getting more value for money. Apart from that, they are also looking for products that suit their personal style and cater to their individual taste. All of these are some of the most highly influencing factors that can emerge while assuming the customers’ role and abilities to affect the business process of an organization. In an effort to cater to the interests of the customers, it can be said that the globally popular pizza brand focuses on paying individualized attention to the customers that are present all over the world by the process of offering localized products while sticking to the basic principles of quality and affordable product accompanied by quality service. The company also focuses on providing economical value to the customers by providing discount coupons as well as value for money products. Competitors Talking in terms of competitors, it can be said that the brand being present in multiple locations all over the globe are subjected to numerous challenges from various domestic and international competitors in the emerging as well as the established economies. The challenges for the pizza brand come mostly from the other cheaper alternatives of fast food that are present in various markets all over the world. The competition also comes from well established, internationally popular fast food chains like the Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Dunkin Donuts, KFC, McDonalds which are also currently focusing on expanding their market reach by entering new markets and generating, distributing and capturing of value to the consumers through the process of opting for franchisee mode of operations in various new market locations. Company Talking from the company’s point of view, it can be said that the company’s internal stakeholders who comprise of the suppliers of essential raw materials, the store representatives, store employees, as well as the general employees of the business are the key backbone of the brand. They are the main human resources who have to be credited for the successful emergence and continuous growth of the global brand. It can be said through their untiring efforts and continuous ability to produce quality products while delivering them with high quality services to the hands of the customers, the internal stakeholders of the organization play a major and critical role in the process of building up of a global brand and positioning it as a top global player in terms of volume sales. Community In today’s world, the community at large plays a major role in the process of developing and establishing a business because of the presence of social media and low cost smart phones, that has provided enormous amount of power to the community based stakeholders. Today’s brand conscious consumers are also getting increasingly getting aware of their moral responsibilities and are focusing on the process of checking out and keeping an eye on the social responsibility that is being played out by the brand (Dominos.com, 2008). III. a) Brand Positioning Analysis The phenomena of brand positioning increasingly helps the product to make itself differentiate from the other alternatives present in a specific market and enables the consumers to have easy brand recognition in regards to how a particular product is positioned with regards to the segmentation, targeting and positioning (Sengupta, 2005, p.12). This has led to the growth of tremendous competition in the world wide markets among various fast foods brands in quick service or packaged formats. The positioning of a brand defines the personality and attributes that the target consumers increasingly associate with on a mental note (Floor, 2006, p. 61 ). It can be said that the brand of Dominos is a highly popular brand all over the world and has high brand equity in markets all over the world. In the developed markets, the pizza brand tries to gain leverage by positioning its products on the basis of affordability, high quality of the product as well as the service. However, in the emerging markets like India, China, they are consciously being tried to be positioned as a young lifestyle brand that the young target customers can associate while also promoting high quality product and service. In an attempt to maintain exclusivity, the focus on the brand in the emerging markets is more on quality and lifestyle, rather than the price. III. b) Perceptual Mapping References Dominos.com, 2008. Corporate Profile. [Online] Available at: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=135383&p=irol-homeprofile Accessed: 20 Nov 2012 Dominos.com, 2008. Domino’s Pizza Annual Report 2011. [Online] Available at: http://phx.corporateir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTMxMTE4fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1 Accessed: 20 Nov 2012 Dominos.com, 2008. Domino’s Social Commitment. [Online] Available at: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9OTQ4OTl8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1 Accessed: 20 Nov 2012 Floor, K., 2006. Branding a Store: How to Build Successful Retail Brands in a Changing Marketplace. UK: Kogan Page Publishers Mikkelsen, B., 2005. Methods for Development Work and Research: A New Guide for Practitioners. California: Sage Publications Sengupta, S., 2005. Brand Positioning: Strategies for Competitive Advantage. India: Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Read More