Target Marketing Strategy and positioning of Popeye - Case Study Example

Marketing Report Popeye Institute Contents Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 1Purpose: 4 2Scope: 4 3Context: 4 1.4Main Data Source: 4 1.5Assumptions & Limitations: 4 2. Situation Analysis: 4 2.1Description of Popeye Louisiana 4 2.2Marketing Environment 5 2.3Target Marketing Strategy and positioning of Popeye 5 2.3.1) Target Market 5 2.3.2) Target Strategy 5 2.3.3) Target Positioning: 6 6 3.Reflection of Critical Incident 7 7 7 3.1Product/ Service: 8 3.2People: 9 3.3Physical Evidence: 9 3.4Processes: 9 3.5Price: 10 3.6Place: 10 3.7Promotion: 10 3.8Sustainable Marketing: 10 4.Conclusion. 11 5.Recommendations 11 References 12 12 Figure 1 Competitive Target Positioning 6 Figure 2 Matrix Positioning 7 The purpose of the report is the evaluation and assessment the marketing strategy of Popeye incorporation with recommendations in the areas where there is a room for improvement. The scope of the report spans from the company itself to the new entrants in the market for the effective implementation of the marketing strategies. The report analyses the marketing environment of the Popeye Louisiana and using the live experience method and evaluation of internal marketing method with the help of identifying marketing elements. The quality of food and serving time are considered to be essential characteristics for the success of food chains like Popeye Chicken. Therefore, the recommendations are made considering the major identified attributes for the business success. 1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose: The purpose of this work is to estimate the marketing strategy of Popeye incorporation with recommendations in the areas where there is a room for improvement 1.2 Scope: The report can be useful for the company itself and new food chain entrants to evaluate the marketing strategy of the business 1.3 Context: The report is written in the context to evaluate and improve the marketing strategies of Popeye Chicken. 1.4 Main Data Source: The methods used to evaluate the marketing strategies include mystery shopping, which is also referred to as the identification of critical incident practically. Therefore, the direct observations are used for the evaluation of marketing strategy to identify the utilization of key marketing elements 1.5 Assumptions & Limitations: The report and analysis is based on the assumption that one time live experience is useful for the generalization of marketing strategy. The limitation is the limited time frame to analyze the marketing strategy using only the experience of Singapore based Popeye chicken restaurant, which is very small part of the international food chain. 2. Situation Analysis: 2.1 Description of Popeye Louisiana The report analyzes the marketing strategy of Popeye. The Popeye is an American chain of fast food and the chain was founded in the year 1972. Popeye was initially established in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Popeye is famous with the name of Popeye Louisiana. It is often referred to as Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits. Another name of Popeye is “Popeye Chicken and Seafood”. After a span of around 19 years Popeye was acquired by US based chicken company named as AFC Enterprises (Smith, 2006). The Popeye has completed its 2000 franchises in all over the world. During the mid of 2014, Popeye claimed that it has re acquired full control of its seasoning. 2.2 Marketing Environment The major factors that affect the operations of the Popeye business include the quality of food, variety of food, prices and serving time. The two main forces that may affect the firm’s ability to serve its customers are the competitive prices and attractive ambience along with good food. In the marketing language these two forces have the implications that low price may reduce the competitive pressure on the company. Secondly, good ambience along with good food may increase the attraction for the customers, which may eventually increases the sales. The restaurants are designed in red and yellow color scheme to generate the distinctive and attractive environment for the customer. 2.3 Target Marketing Strategy and positioning of Popeye 2.3.1) Target Market The target market is referred to as the market for which the company designs the product. The target market of Popeyes is generally fast food customers. The age range is 25 to 49. All the food products are designed in the shape of fast and junk food. 2.3.2) Target Strategy The target strategy is referred to as the strategy to tap and capture the target customers. The target strategy, which is being used by the Popeye Chicken, has appeal to young people. The Popeye Louisiana uses its extensive marketing strategy and connects its products with music to attract the customers. In August 2014, Popeye launched the strategy “Chicken with its own Playlist”. In order to capture the young generation and the chicken lovers, Popeye has inculcated its new offer of chicken tenderloin. The launch of the new offer was made along with the spottily playlist to connect food and music together so the target market can be captured more easily (Levere, 2014). 2.3.3) Target Positioning: The major competitors of Popeye are KFC and McDonalds. Popeye chicken has the market share in the fried chicken market as 22 percent using the data retrieved from Nasdaq (Davis, 2014). The figure represents the competitive target positioning Figure 1 Competitive Target Positioning 3. Reflection of Critical Incident The critical incident includes the postings of the blogs on the Popeye marketing strategies. According to the postings, the Popeye is considered to be an attractive place. The ambience and the food quality are found to be more attractive. The experience of Popeye Singapore seems to be ok because of the good and spacious place. The lighting style of the shop is very attractive. The prices of the food items are very reasonable and the serving seems very rich and attractive. The main concerning point that can be observed in the blogs is the serving time of Popeye. The serving of the Popeye Singapore was quite slow. The two identified attributes are quality of food and speed of service. Figure 2 Matrix Positioning Evaluation: ‘Live Case’ Internal Marketing Environment. After the live experience of Popeye, the unique factor that has been observed is the unique and attractive ambience. The resAs in the matrix mentioned above the speed of service of food chains like Popeye has high importance because of major shareholder in the fried chicken market and all the restaurants have to manage large crowd at the same time. Practically, the performance of Popeye speed of service is not good. One of the reason may be less staff is available for the management of large crowd. The other important attribute is quality of food. The quality of food is proved to be very high both in terms of performance and importance. Therefore, Popeye is maintaining good quality of food, which may be an important reason of its capturing of major market share. Restaurants have red and yellow colour scheme. The architectural designs are quite much distinctive in comparison with other similar food chains. The chicken is the base of Popeye. The major focus is on variety of food products along with good ambience. The internal marketing environment of Popeye is based on serving its own employees as customer. The critical issue outlined in the previous section is the speed of service that needs to be improved to increase its sales. The following section of the report discusses its marketing strategy in relation to marketing elements, which are referred to as 7Ps of marketing element 3.1 Product/ Service: The product, which is offered by Popeye Chicken, is totally fast food items and in fast food major focus is on chicken products. It is also known as the chain of fried chicken fast food. The live case experience of Popeye Chicken Singapore proves that the food quality of the serving style of Popeye is quite much attractive for the customers. Therefore, it is capturing the major fast food market internationally 3.2 People: The person refers to the customer services. In other words, the section of the report covers how effective the services of Popeye chicken. The main issue, which was faced during the live experience of Popeye chicken was the slow customer service that is the waiters use to take long time to serve the customer. Therefore, the management in case of large crowd is difficult for Popeye 3.3 Physical Evidence: The physical evidence has played significant role to evaluate the quality of services and the marketing strategy of Popeye chicken. The reason is that the Popeye chicken market its product by saying “Quick Service Chicken Restaurant Group” as mentioned on its website. The physical evidence proves that the claim of quick service was wrong. The serving time is quite long. The reason may be the lack of required number of staff or may be the less trained staff to serve the customers. Therefore, the physical evidence proves to be more useful experience to evaluate the marketing campaigns of Popeye Chicken. 3.4 Processes: The live case used process can be used to identify the actual quality of services and food. As discussed in the previous section of the report where the matrix of performance and importance of attributes are discussed, the quality of food is proved to be very important and in terms of performance, the quality is quite much satisfactory. On the other hand the service time is also very important but in terms of performance it’s not good. Therefore, the selection of process of live case experience has proved to be useful for evaluation of marketing strategy of Popeye Chicken 3.5 Price: The prices of Popeye Chicken food are proved to be very reasonable. It can be explained with the example of the order of Chicken set that includes biscuits with strawberry jam, Cajun fries and a soft drink cost not more than eight dollars. Therefore, the price of food at Popeye chicken are proved to be quite much reasonable and affordable 3.6 Place: At the time when I reached to Popeye chicken it was the start of evening of Tuesday i.e 11th November, 2014 at 5:30pm. The restaurant was fully crowded and I got the seat at the end of the shop. I could see the main road and observed that Popeye Chicken Singapore is located at the most ideal place i.e. at the main road and easily accessible place with reasonable parking area, which may grab more customers 3.7 Promotion: Popeye menu is the value proposition it is completely southern style. The cooking style is quite much unique. It offers variety of food items include fish, chips, biscuits, tender chicken kids meals and most importantly signature sides. The promotion or marketing strategy while using its own style of food service is quite much useful in terms of attracting customers. 3.8 Sustainable Marketing: All the elements discussed above have important implications in evaluating the marketing strategy of Popeye Chicken. The Critical issue is the poor customer relationship management because of long serving time but due to maintaining high quality products its market share is maintained and even increasing year on year basis. 4. Conclusion. After evaluating the marketing strategies of Popeye Chicken, it can be concluded that the important factors that contributes significantly include quality of food, service time and ambience. The ambience and quality of food are quite much attractive and are proved to be the major reason for capturing the significant market share in the food chain market. On the other hand, the serving time is not that much satisfactory as compared to its marketing campaign of “Quick Service Chicken Restaurant”. The quality of food and serving time are the most important attributes for the success of food chains like Popeye Chicken. Therefore, it serving time needs to be improved. 5. Recommendations Despite of all the positive points, the serving time during crowded period is quite long. The company needs hire more employees to decrease the serving time frame and improves the customer services. The poor customer services may lead to the decrease in market share. In addition to this, the increase in labor force is not the only thing that needs to be worked on, the management of Popeye chicken also needs to train the newly hired employees to improve the customer services. The reason is that the increasing market share may lead to increase in expectations of the customers regarding quality and services but if any one of these factors may be sacrificed then the success of the business may become temporary. Therefore, both the factors should be focused on at equal level. References Davis, C. F. (2014). Heres Why Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Stock Is Heating Up. Wallstcheatsheet. Levere, J. L. (2014). Popeys Offers Chicken With its Own Playlist. New York Times. Smith, A. F. (2006). Encyclopedia of Junk Food & Fast Food. Westport, United States: Greenwood Press. Read More