Mobile Marketing Applications: The Broadway Cafe - Research Paper Example

BROADWAY CAFÉ: CASE STUDY 1. Introduction of Mobile Coupons The increasing power of consumers has significantly reshaped business distribution and marketing models. In turn this has required retailers to add value in stores to compete with the multiple retail channels and highlighted the need for businesses to adopt customer relationship oriented approach in order to create value for the consumer (Merz, He & Vargo 2009). It is evident that retailers are now moving away from the conventional economics based approach to consider the benefit of integrating effective customer relationship management (CRM) into business strategy to create value for its customers. In turn, the relationship between consumers and branding is arguably paramount in determining the centre of how value should be marketed to retain and persuade new customers (Merz, He & Vargo 2009). Indeed, whilst loyalty programs have been viewed as incentives for consumers, the type of loyalty programs in ensuring brand loyalty in the long term has become increasingly dictated by the consumer (Payne et al, 2004). Therefore, the increase of consumer power arguably forces organisations to undertake a more lateral approach to marketing as opposed to merely focusing on competitors (Avlonitis & Indounas, 2007). This argument is reinforced by the proposition of Weinberg et al that organisations shouldn’t assume what the customers want, but that it is imperative for organisations to add value in addressing consumer needs to survive in the multi-channel marketplace (2007). With regard to the Broadway Café, the difficult economic conditions have created changes in consumer attitudes towards price sensitivity with consumers increasingly attracted to discounts and money saving initiatives (Aktas, 2010, p.19). Therefore, as Broadway Café’s customers are all mobile and the majority of people have mobile phones, the introduction of mobile coupons would be a great tool to increase brand awareness and encourage repeat business with the introduction of discounts. Additionally, the use of mobile coupons are better than printed coupons as these are often lost or forgotten and will have an expiry date (Aktas, 2010, p.19). In contrast, the fact that most people regularly access their mobile phones throughout the day clearly renders m-coupons a great tool for the purpose of branding and as it is electronic Aktas highlights that they therefore provide a “convenient, discount or rebate delivered to the mobile device of the person” (Aktas, 2010, p 19). Additionally, the benefit of the mobile coupon is that it is a very effective way to engage with customers in order to increase loyalty on a low marketing budget. Furthermore, there is a lot of flexibility with mobile campaigns, for example, the café could offer a free product with a purchase via mobile coupons. Another great way for the Broadway Café to benefit from mobile coupons is to require customer action before taking advantage of the coupon offer. For example, an m-coupon could specify that a customer can benefit from the free product or discount at the café on the condition that they tell a friend or send the coupon to another person. This is extremely useful in widening the scope of the mobile campaign and potential customer base. Another way of taking advantage of mobile campaigns is to use mobile advertising networks such as AdMob where advertising can be targeted by location and city where the Broadway café is located to increase the customer base. As mobile advertising is still in its relative infancy, the advertising costs at networks such as AdMob and Jumptap are very cheap compared to online advertising networks. Additionally, the benefit of using an advertising network is that the Broadway cafe could advertise their m-coupon promotion and get people to opt-in for mobile coupons. This way, the Broadway café can then use the database to continually market to via email or SMS with updated offers, which in turn maintains the trust with the customer base and increases loyalty. Whilst the possibilities of using mobile coupons have potentially great benefits in terms of financial reward, customer retention and building up a customer base, there are potential legal issues particularly in the collection of consumer information if using opt-ins. Accordingly, any mobile campaign should comply with the CAN-SPAM legislative provisions on consumer information. Furthermore, whilst the potential rewards of mobile marketing are great, it is imperative for the Broadway café to ensure that in any campaign tracking is undertaken to not only keep track of costs but to also measure return on investment in terms of click through and conversion rates for opt-ins for mobile coupon offers (Krum, 2010). This is also useful in measuring the success of an advertising campaign and through testing and tracking the Broadway Café can keep tweaking mobile campaigns to maximise chances of success. 2. YouTube Marketing The contemporary marketplace has seen the phenomenon of social networking and media revolutionise how people communicate with each other. From a business perspective, this has implications for consumer relationship management as the control is increasingly with the consumer. For example, Seth Godin highlights that people are more likely to seek peer reviews of services and products in the increasingly networked environment, which has implications for businesses particularly when dealing with complaints (Godin, 2008). Therefore, in terms of modernising the Broadway Café, it needs to adopt a multifaceted interactive customer relationship strategy and use new media to access an increasingly diverse consumer demographic. One option would be to use video and in particular YouTube, which is the world’s biggest video streaming site. Currently YouTube is estimated to have 2 billion views a day with 24 hours of video uploaded every minute (website-monitoring.com). In developing a YouTube strategy specifically geared towards the long wait lines, one approach would be to use humour, which is a great tool to engage with customers (Meyerson, 2010). A prime example of a successful business use of YouTube to engage with customers was Blender, who created humorous YouTube videos to promote their product. Therefore, in applying a successful YouTube strategy for Broadway Café, it is imperative to think outside the box and one way would be to create humorous videos. Additionally, any coupon offers or discount offers should also be mentioned in any videos created to encourage customer visits. The key to a successful YouTube campaign is not just engaging with the customer base but to increase brand awareness and exposure and therefore any YouTube campaign should take advantage of its viral potential. YouTube enables people to share videos and post to other social networking sites such as StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. In encouraging users to share videos, this can help videos go viral, which would be great for brand exposure and new customers. Additionally, as video is highly popular with online users searching for information, Broadway Café should ensure that all videos are tagged with relevant keywords for search engine optimization purposes. Additionally, it is recommended that the Broadway Café create a website for the business and post all videos from YouTube on the website also. The added benefit of this is that video sitemaps can be created for the YouTube videos and submitted to Google, which again increases search engine rankings. Furthermore, in addition to YouTube strategy, another great way to engage and deal with consumer issues would be to adopt social media marketing particularly with Twitter and Facebook (Prince, 2010). A prime example of a business adopting this approach is Dell, whose use of Twitter and Facebook has been cited as directly contributing to increased sales (Prince, 2010). Prince explains that Dell has used Twitter “to straddle both the tracking and directing sides of the customer engagement approach”. The use of Twitter enables Dell customers to interact with each other and for Dell to directly address consumer issues. 3. Outsourcing Employee management involves the balancing of numerous differentiating personal characteristics which make them unique. Understanding these variances in individual traits and personality is vital to effective employee motivation and performance. Various assessment tools and theories-based on human nature provide perspectives in understanding individual performance in the workplace. Therefore, employee performance correlates to organisational performance. The learning organisation is an evolving notion which has become increasingly incorporated into the modern company and multinational philosophy. In its simplest form, Richard Karash propounds the ideology underlying the learning organisation: “A learning organisation is one which people at all levels, individuals and collectively are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about” (Karash, R. 1995). The ideological underlying principle behind the learning organisation is that it produces a flexible workforce with a shared vision, which in turn ensures internal stability within an organisation. Additionally, it has been argued that encouraging employee involvement within an organisation helps to build effective employee relations, which in turn aids optimum organisational performance (Krausert, 2009). Therefore the benefit of having an employee build a custom system is the employee involvement in the organisation and employee morale. Nevertheless in building a system, there are implications for potential areas of conflict particularly if the system doesn’t meet specifications. Additionally, the other problem is the potential for conflict over intellectual property rights and it would be imperative for Broadway Café to ensure all necessary legal protections are implemented. Alternatively, there are clearly benefits of outsourcing particularly in terms of cost. Additionally, outsourcing the custom development would avoid potential areas of conflict by using an employee and would place Broadway Café in a better bargaining position regarding cost and bespoke requirements. The main issue with updating the system is the implications for employee performance particularly with the older employees used to the previous system. However, in order to ensure compliance with labour law and good employer management practice, it is recommended that the Broadway Café have a meeting with all the employees to explain the changes to the system in detail and to arrange mandatory training for all the employees when the custom system is implemented. This not only ensures good employer practice to ensure consistency and harmony in employee relations, but will also more likely prevent resistance from the older employees to the new system (Krausert, 2009). BIBLIOGRAPHY Atkas, A. (2010). Analysis of Current Mobile Marketing Applications, GRIN Verlag publishing Avlonitis, G., & K. Indounas, “Service Pricing: An Empirical investigation. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services”, 14 (2007) 83-94. Godin, S. (2008). Tribes. Piatkus Books Karash, R. “Why a learning organisation?” (1995) Available at www.richardkarash.com accessed December 2010 Krausert, A. (2009). Performance Management for Different Employee Groups. Springer Krum, C. (2010). Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are. Que Publishing Merz, M., He, T., & Vargo, S. (2009) The evolving brand logic: a service dominant logic perspective. Academy of Marketing Science Meyerson, M (2010). Success Secrets of Social Media Marketing Superstars. Entrepreneur Press. Prince, D (2010). Get Rich With Twitter. McGraw Hill Websites www.admob.com www.facebook.com www.jumptap.com www.stumbelupon.com www.twitter.com www.website-monitoring.com www.youtube.com All accessed December 2010. Read More