Gloria Jean's Digital Marketing Strategy - Assignment Example

Gloria Jean’s (GJ) digital marketing strategy Lecturer Executive summary The paper talks of Gloria Jean, a company that specializes in selling coffee beans and coffee products both offline and online. Due to the current competition of marketing, the company is spreading its tentacles in digital marketing in order to lure more customers and have a huge share of the market. Gloria Jean targets Malaysian market mostly the middle-aged population having busy schedules. In its apparent quest to improve its online sells, the company has op make changes and improvement to compete with other companies in the market selling similar products. Introduction Gloria Jeans offers the market with the highest quality of Arabica beans of coffee species. The organization gets its coffee roasted with modern technological equipment in Australia. The organization objective is to capture some of the Malaysian coffee market specialty through targeting of thirty outlets thus creating a strong presence in the market lifestyle and retailing of coffee in Malaysia. The company can improve its presence online because it has adequate resources helping increase its presence physically and thus further expand itself both online and offline. Currently, Gloria Jean’s promotes itself offline and online. Its in-store does not give any link to its presence online thus its digital marketing profile seems to be very low. The organization has online intermediaries in existence such as Google, Malaysian directory and Yahoo that helps it expanding its market share and selling capacity to the online consumers (Myfranchise 2009). Gloria Jean’s E-marketing environment Microenvironment Google sites in Malaysia have been ranked as the most popular seven million visitors in the month of June in the year 2009 in Malaysia. This accounted for approximately y seventy-six percent of the total local population who get online. Research indicates a slight increment in the population of Malaysia who use the internet from eight thousand six hundred and eighty to nine thousand four hundred and one (Digital Media across Asia 2010, March 22). Approximately nine point three million people in Malaysia who are aged fifteen years and above do access internet from workplaces and homes, with each of them spending approximately fourteen hours online. New opportunities to capture the attention of the targeted market are offered by such growth of online users. Therefore, Malaysia bears the potential to increasing its population-accessing internet. In Asia region, Malaysia emerged the strongest country with strong penetration of social networking and nearly three point eight hours engagement per visitor. Many Malaysians use Facebook as the main social networking site. Macro-environment The macro-environment consists of the social, legal/ethical, economic, technological and political factors. Social- the availability of confidentiality of identity, guarantee, information on products, and a variety of products are among the reasons the consumers are willing to transact online. E-commerce in not used commonly in Malaysia as it is in the urban areas including Johor Bahru and Penang that have eighty-five percent of the users residing in urban areas whereas the remaining users are located in rural areas. In Malaysia, the highest penetration of the internet is in the valley of Klang. Legal/ethical- the statutes of Malaysia do have the law of confidentiality that influences the privacy of consumers’ data including the initiative of the government for the protection of E-commerce in the ninth Malaysian plan. In the Malaysian section, 234 (1) entails the interception of internet communication that includes E-commerce transaction, e-mails among others. The laws on the privacy of data provide digital marketing in the country with minimum security required by the industry without hindering their growth unjustifiably. Economic- Malaysia being a developing country is being faced by numerous challenges of poor infrastructure in telecommunication and various problems in using the full potential of the internet. Therefore, the country is striving so hard to make use of the internet to the maximum to bridge the gaps with the already developed countries by the help of its vision 2020. Political- despite the fact that the internet helps in boosting the opportunities in business, on the other hand, it also help in creating conflicts to be more visible. Therefore, the government of Malaysia might decide to use the internet in spinning the present problematic of politics in retaining the trade and investment (Holmes & Grieco 2002, p. 59-72). Technological- to date, Malaysia has been using fixed lines of telephone, mobile phones, and broadband in accessing the internet services where the use of broadband is seen to be increasing steadily. The country has the lowest speed in downloading since its quality of broadband is still below the modern applications threshold. The Malaysian government is attempting to improve the speed of the internet and the safety of the customers through aiming at a fifty percent penetration of broadband. Upon being completed, the introduction of the high-speed initiative of the broadband will help in boosting the demand for online service including the digital marketing (Xue 2004, p. 238-250). Nature of existing online customers The population of Malaysia is relatively young since approximately more than forty percent is below fourteen years of age, and more than fifty percent of the population is aged between fifteen years to sixty-five years of age. It is estimated that the Malaysian population will probably have a significant impact on the amount of sales of coffee and coffee products because of the changes in tastes and perceptions. Such as, the youth tend to find contemporary products of coffee including latte and coffee tastier and appealing. In addition, as the culture of café continues growing and becoming urbaner and part of urban lifestyle, the sales of coffee in that population segment are expected to increase steadily (Nielsen Netratings 2008, April 14). The huge population of the youth is expected to increase the sales of the on-trade coffee, as the sales of coffee and tea are the only alternative drinks for the young consumers. This makes the joints selling coffee products as the best hangout places for this target population. The adverse effects on health of soft drinks and the steady increase in hanging out of specialist shops selling coffee are making the consumers aware of the different products available in the market. In addition, it also makes consumers want to have an experiment with them at home such as buying of coffee beans and making coffee at home (Abraham 2008, p. 28-28). A huge number of the young population tends to be driving the market demand for coffee. Moreover, the major internet users are the young professionals and the teenagers with increasing users noted between fifteen years and nineteen years of age. Therefore, Gloria Jean’s consumer market comprises of the young population whose age ranges from fifteen to forty-five years. Majority of this population serving as the consumers of coffee products and users of the internet are mainly middle-income earners. The population is facing a busy constraint of time due to the nature of their working styles and thus prefers eating outside (Sulaiman, Jaafar, & Kadam 2005). Online customers usually tend to buy products from familiar sites with as much as sixty percent of the shoppers purchasing from a similar site. This implies how significant it is to capture millions of new online customers as they try to make their first online purchases. Majority of the online customers in Malaysia most likely do depend on the recommendation from other people (Chittenden & Rettie 2003, p. 203-217). This accounts for approximately fifty-three percent of the online consumer population such as fellow consumers, of who are either known or fellow online customers. Special offers and search engines are other factors that influence the decision of Malaysians online shoppers. Teenagers and the young consumers are ranked, as the main population that drives the Malaysian digital market, thus targeting this population will improve Gloria Jean’s sales through online marketing. From a survey conducted, it indicated that the population in its forty’s and fifty’s do have a reduced buying power as well as resources of accessing and using the internet. Thus, the organization is not considering the population in its fifty’s as the main target group (Azmi 2007, P. 125-135). Strengths and weaknesses of Gloria Jean Strengths Gloria Jean organization is located in high traffic places where it strategic position allows a huge number of customers to have access to their taste of coffee offline and online The organizations slow expansion of its outlets allows it to maintain a steady quality of products With the increase in the number of people in the population having access to and using the Internet, the company has the potential of increasing its consumer purchasing power in the market through digital marketing The organization is investing hard in developing additional services as well as products that will help in creating a strong relationship with the customers thus maintaining their old customers The organization has the potential to expand deeply into the huge Malaysian technologically savvy market of the youth to win more customers The organization has adopted the maximum use of the internet for cheaply promoting its sales Weaknesses The organization presence online is weak with poor online marketing strategy Its offline marketing is poorly integrated with online marketing thus facing stiff competition from other organizations selling similar products such as Starbucks The organization has a small customer base in existence; therefore, its online marketing is not reaching the intended number of consumers of the products they are offering Alternative digital marketing strategies to increase Gloria Jean’s market share Positioning Gloria Jean can position itself as the ultimate hanging out place where consumers will turn to unwind themselves with a customer service at its best. The organization can also position its products relative to what its competitors are selling in terms of- Price- the organization should be looking forward to introducing discounts and vouchers to every customer who does buy their products through online purchase. This additional present to the customers will increase the number of customers who will prefer to make orders through online other than buying the products offline. In addition, such markets will help in reaching out to the organizations target market population of students and other middle-aged persons who have a limited budget and attract them in trying the quality of coffee (Vatanasombut, Stylianou, & Igbaria 2004, p. 65-69). Value added services- in addition to selling coffee products, the organization should also offer games customer services links, online subscription services, catering, additional information of the organization coffee tasting and delivery among several other services. Introduction of such services will help the organization in attracting more customers on board and maintaining the initials ones. Excellence relationship- loyalty cards and personalized e-newsletters having information on the organization should be provided to the customers to maintain their loyalty presence and attract more customers. The differential positioning of Gloria Jeans can be displayed to the customers on its website having a clear proposition of online value to acquiring new customers. The proposition of online value can be used in communicating Gloria Jean’s vital benefits and increased interactivity with the customers. In addition, price discounts can be offered on the products that customers cannot be awarded when they purchase similar products offline from the stores. Gloria Jean’s is in a position to adopt the strategies of market penetration with its existing products and markets. With its differentiated offerings, the organization can put much of its focus on increasing the marketing share by efficiently competing with other online organizations selling similar products (Jawahitha 2004, p. 55-63). In positioning the organization, development of its products can also be adopted to introduce low-calorie and low-fat coffee in the online market. At the same time, the company will be adding value added service to the purchase of the product online. By achieving its sales through its promotions done online, Gloria Jean can also decide to opt for the right mix of “clicks and bricks”. Bits presence online will mainly serve to complement its other channels in the business and not to replace the channels in existence (Gulati & Garino 2000, p. 107-14). Products Since the majority of the Malaysian population comprises of the middle class, the consumers are increasingly becoming conscious of their health. They are willing to spend much on healthy products; the organization should spend time to ensure its products are healthy so that they can attract huge customer population size. Until today, in Gloria Jean, there is only one brand of beverage containing low-fat content known as chillers. The organization has the liberty and room to extend its line of products through the introduction of the new line of coffees containing low calories and low-fat content. The products should be purchased by customers through making online orders or redeeming of vouchers. Development of personal services can be done by allowing the customers to make online subscription to new services and by subscribing, they should be offered a given percentage of discount. Through subscription, customers will be expected to pay a subscription fee and given the amount so that they can receive coffee on a regular basis. This will also help the organization be in a position to customize their coffee blend- sugar-free syrup, nonfat milk- choose the location of delivery- the size of the coffee cup and the frequency of delivery. The organization should work hard to minimize the time taken for delivery of the product purchase online and any delay made should be compensated to the customer by issuing the product out free. Other than the usual subscription of the customer, the delivery of the coffee should be made in a way that it can be done through calls. In addition, any services of catering to any party will be made available in making reservations. The concept of coffee tasting can be used in sorting out the product preferences thus allowing the customers to play online games and reward any customer who emerged the winner with a free cup of coffee. Each winner should be given the opportunity to tasting several other blends of coffee to give a recommendation to the blends that they most prefer (Shaharudin, Pani, Mansor, Elias Sadek 2010, p. 96-103). Such moves are going to attract more customers to get online and purchase the blends of coffee being on sale. The introduction of such services will help in making the online marketing interactive. This will allow customers to have an active role where they have an opportunity to determine the taste changes they would wish to be made in the different types of coffee products on sale. The opportunity will also make them have a say in determining the blend of coffees that they think should be introduced to the market in the future (Reichheld & Schefter 2000, p. 105-13). Price The organization should also make the customers who buy the coffee products for online delivery, and online subscription has discounts on their products. Introduction of online survey will also help Gloria Jean to track customers qualifying to be handed out the redeemable voucher for free coffee after they have buy one cup of coffee this means that such customers will be given two cups of coffee at the same time being charged only a cup of coffee (Schlee 2001, p. 347-362). The company can also discount on its “healthy” coffee using low introductory offers. This will help the organization increase the awareness of the existence of its coffee and help them in learning more about the quality of the product through consumption. The low prices on introductory help in signaling out high quality of products to customers a concept that translates to more attraction of customers (Dawar & Sarvary 1997, p. 251-259). Place Besides having its personal website, Gloria Jean’s presences can also be incorporated in search engine of Google so that it helps in generating awareness since Google site is more popular. The organization should make use of other digital channels of communications such as social sites of networking, blogs as well as sites sued for photo sharing for effective advertisement of Gloria Jean. Currently, the organization does not provide any information on nutrition either offline or online. If it takes advantage of this opportunity to provide facts on nutrition of its beverages online, it can provide a gateway to more customers since the population is becoming conscious of their health. The organization can also introduce the use of Gloria Jean card for payment; this will help in transforming how digital marketing is conducted thus making payment easy and safer. Since the company will be responsible for implementing the use of the card, customers are going to find the system worthy and hence put its trust because there is no third party involvement (Quinn & Humble 1993, p. 31-40). Promotion The organization should offer promotion of sales in combination with exchange for the contribution that are valuable from the customers. Because customers do expect incentives and rewards for the time they spend, the organization can come up with a way through which the customers can fill up online surveys. These surveys will make them entitled to winning free coffee voucher upon purchasing a cup of coffee (Pepper, Rogers & Dorf 1999, p. 3-12). Using digital channels The use of search engines optimization will help in promoting the company. This will help the company to direct its targeted market to Gloria Jean’s services. The use of online public relations can be employed in order to increase the awareness of the different brands of coffee at the same time generating backlinks vital to search engine optimization. The consumers in Malaysia highly rely on recommendation done on a personal level. Thus, when the company creates a blog on its website, it will help in bypassing other Medias. This will allow the customers to leave their comments on their satisfaction in an interactive format on the services and products of Gloria Jean (Schultz & Schultz 2004). The company’s coffee pictures can be uploaded and its key phrases used in tagging it in the photo sharing sites that are popular. Commercial videos can be spread through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the spread of word of mouth through comments made by individuals. These tools will help in marketing the company more and thus creating awareness and bringing many new customers on board. Gloria Jean can remain connected to its customers and increase the convenience of its customers through social media sites such as Twitter through allowing order delivery to be placed through Twitter (Dee, Bassett & Hoskins 2007, p. 387-97). People, process The company should work hard to incorporate the people-process in its system. Through this, the sales-related inquiries and customer-support inquiries that are inbound are made effective. The company should also introduce FAQ and feedback link bon the website to improve the online services especially on deliveries. The staffs working in Gloria Jean should be able to manage calls efficiently and promptly reply to the emails and feedback inquiries of the customers. The company should note that acquiring customers online is expensive, and huge expense helps in successfully acquiring the acquisition objectives (Grehan 2004). E-customer relationship management Upon implementation, by the company, it will be useful for taking the feedback from the customers’ ion the potential new products. By such, it will be possible for the company to practice reverse marketing (Hitwise 2006). This will be through encouraging customers to post their ideas on current as well as new products and services that are potential for introduction under a section of the website of the company. This will help in optimizing online service quality hat will further help in attracting customers (Deise, Nowikow, King & Wright 2000). Conclusion Despite the fact that the company online marketing is not strong, improvements can be done so that the company can be at par with the digital marketing giants such as Starbucks. With the world population going digital, Gloria Jeans is forced to make changes and invest heavily in online marketing to increase its consumer demands and the number of customers. References Abraham, M. (2008). The off-line impact of online ads. Harvard Business Review, 86(4), 28-28. Azmi, I. M. (2007). Personal Data Protection Law: The Malaysia Experience. 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Using Service to Gain a Competitive Advantage: The PROMPT Approach. Long Range Planning, 26(2), 31-40. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct =true&db=buh&AN=17479050&site=ehost-live&scope=site Reichheld, F. & Schefter, P. (2000). E-loyalty, your secret weapon. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 105-13. Schlee, E. E. (2001). Buyer experimentation and introductory pricing. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 44, 347-362. Schultz, D. & Schultz, H. (2004). Integrated Marketing Communications: the Next Generation. Wiley, New York. Shaharudin, M. R., Pani, J. J., Mansor, S. W., Elias, S. J. & Sadek, D. M. (2010). Purchase intention of organic food in Kedah, Malaysia; a religious overview. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 2(1), 96-103. Sulaiman, A., Jaafar, N. I. & Kadam, P. (2005). Factors Affecting Online Purchasing Among Urban Internet Users in Malaysia. International Journal of the Computer, the Internet and Management, 13(SP3). Vatanasombut, B., Stylianou, A. C. & Igbaria, M. (2004). How to Retain Online Customers. Communications of the ACM, 47(6), 65-69. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4& hid=104&sid=e793c235-70b4-4f1f-8869-066b7e9427fd%40sessionmgr111 Xue, S. (2004). Internet policy and diffusion in China, Malaysia and Singapore. Journal of Information Science, 31(3), 238-250. Appendices TABLE 1 Top Internet Properties in Malaysia Based on Unique Visitors, June 2009 Total Malaysia Internet Audience*, Age 15+ - Home & Work Locations Source: comScore World Metrix | | Total Unique Visitors (000) | % Reach |Total Internet : Total Audience | 9,320 | 100.0 | Google Sites | 7,091 | 76.1 | Yahoo! Sites | 6,442 | 69.1 | Microsoft Sites | 4,697 | 50.4 | FRIENDSTER.COM | 3,178 | 34.1 | FACEBOOK.COM | 3,076 | 33.0 | Wikimedia Foundation Sites | 1,924 | 20.6 | TABLE 2 Asia Pacific Region and Individual Country Growth by Unique Visitors September 2009 vs. September 2008 Total Asia Pacific Internet Audience*, Age 15+ - Home & Work Locations Source: comScore World Metrix | | Sep-2008 | Sep-2009 | % Change | Asia Pacific | 396,000 | 484,245 | 22 | China | 168,258 | 220,834 | 31 | Japan | 57,933 | 68,319 | 18 | India | 30,719 | 35,810 | 17 | South Korea | 26,656 | 29,197 | 10 | TABLE 3 Asia-Pacific Social Networking Overview December 2008 Total Asia-Pacific – Age 15+, Home/Work Locations* Source: comScore World Metrix | | Social Networking | | % Reach | Average Minutes per Visitor | Average Visits per Visitor | Asia Pacific** | 60.6 | 137.0 | 11.4 | Singapore | 74.3 | 175.6 | 19.1 | Australia | 68.3 | 224.3 | 17.8 | South Korea | 68.0 | 277.8 | 15.1 | Malaysia | 66.6 | 181.2 | 14.2 | Hong Kong | 62.8 | 127.7 | 13.7 | Read More