Retail Marketing at Kings Cross Railway Station - Case Study Example

Retail marketing at King’s Cross Railway station Introduction Retail marketing involves the selling of products after breaking bulk. It is the final stage of a product since it is the stage that the product reaches the end consumer in the supply chain. The profits at the retail stage are highest since every item is sold at a profit. This is however dependent on the supply chain. An idea of starting a retail outlet at a railway station will trigger searching for viable products of trade. These will mainly be products that are needed while travelling or exactly after travelling. The place of choice is King’s Cross railway station that is situated in the King’s Cross district of central London. A brief analysis of King’s Cross shows that it mostly receives guests from the Northern part of London. The core of business in the station is travel and this makes the railway station the place with the largest crowds. There have been recent developments of buildings from people targeting the tourists who travel to king’s Cross. A few metres away from King’s Cross is St. Pancras which is a major destination for tourists who arrive from Europe. The area around king’s Cross is therefore populated largely with tourists. Current retail opportunities While looking at the range of products that can retail largely in King’s Cross, it is wise to have the Tourism mind and some of the products that could easily be needed by tourists are mainly personal grooming stuff like combs and brushes. Food is a major necessity to all human beings and therefore when the retail of food is introduced, it is likely to grow. The food should have exotic touches so that the tourists can get something that they are familiar to. Customer customisation shows that customers are more likely to buy a product that they know that a new product. In the case of food, the ingestion of the body will be the prior consideration before a customer decides to try new food. However, having assorted dishes like traditional and exotic foods will always be more profitable since the local people will also buy while the tourists too will be interested in food that they already know. Tourist information for retail is the best product to retail. This one, unlike food, is not perishable and can always be changed whenever there are any changes that require to be done. There is always assurance that strangers will always look for direction. Having a tourist information centre at King’s Cross is a great idea since it is strategic and again, very lucrative. There is an assortment of products that could be retailed in the tourist information centre. These include maps and transportation services. Tour guide services too are a product that will be highly demanded and information on various famous places and hotels can also be retailed. The tourist information centre should charge fairly and market itself widely to make people knowledgeable of the services that are offered. This will consequently bring in scores of tourists looking for maps. To customize the products, there should be maps that are done in the native languages of the tourists. This should be based on the number of tourists from a certain region who visit King’s Cross. In addition to having tour guides, interpreters, escorts and body guard provision could earn the tourist’s information centre a great deal of revenue. This is however also dependent on the financial class of the tourists who visit King’s Cross. Souvenirs too can move like Hot cake in King’s Cross. Having in mind that most of the guests who arrive are mainly from Europe where there is a culture of collecting souvenirs, the tourists from Europe are likely to buy large quantities of them. Since there are over five thousand people who enter into shopping stores daily in King’s Cross, it is most likely that half of these will buy goods like souvenirs to remind them of King’s Cross. Other products that could move fast are artefacts and any other pieces of art. This is mainly because Europeans treasure fine works of art and they are always ready to offer bucks for good pieces of art. They like buying art to remember certain places that they have visited and some of the Europeans buy art for resale at a higher price in their country. Some of the Europeans who visit King’s Cross arte actually profession art collectors who go around the world collecting art and then reselling it for profits. Post cards are also a product that can highly retail at terminal stations. This is mainly used as a mode of communication. As slow as it is some people still hold onto postcard communication since it is their tradition. The pictures on the postcards too lure tourists into buying them either due to their beauty or because they remind them of something that they like. There are also professional post card collectors who gather post cards and then send them to museums or use them for story telling. The theory of happy hours shows how travelling increases the stress levels and in turn creates an urge to shop. The retail centres in King’s Cross could take advantage of this theory and put it into place. They could collect different footwear mostly the elegant and the comfortable type and they could strategically get a store where they sell the footwear. Since most of the people visit King’s Cross during winter, it could be a good idea to stock warm winter clothing. This can also be applied to clothing and other things like perfumes and sanitary towels. Some of the products could be for emergency cases while others are for the sake of taking advantage of the customer who cannot control their urge of shopping when they get to a new destination. It is always important to have promotional and marketing tools when one is operating a retail outlet in a place like King’s Cross. The written message is always the best way of communicating since it does not require the recipient to talk back. This takes care of the customers who are antisocial and they always have a fear of the people who talk to them in stations. They always suspect strangers to have ill intentions. Written information that promotes the retail centre at King’s cross should be detailed in simple language and if possible illustrated attractively. This could be a booklet or a brochure that could serve as an orientation to people who are new to the place. These could be placed in the waiting bays of the station and in the trains where the tourists could read them as they travel and since the brochures will have the location of the centre, the people who will need the assistance of the information centre will walk to the centre and enquire. If it is a booklet it should have important information like addresses of the prominent hotels and practitioners like doctors. This information should be channelled in ensuring that the customer sees the seriousness of the centre and how rich they are in information. On the other hand, the information centre should work on their collection of information and they should ensure that they have a wide network of contacts where they can always refer their clients. Depending on the customer base, the information centre could form a club where members pay a certain amount of subscription fees and then the members are not charged for any information that they get from the centre (Mcgoldrick, 02). Due to a tendency of inconveniences in travel schedules, many people have made it a habit to arrive at the station half an hour before they get on bard. This in many cases forces them to wait until the time that their train arrives. Such people take advantage of this time (happy hour) to shop for things that could be helpful to them while they are travelling. Such things include books and snacks. For the people with children, they will always look for snacks so that they can keep feeding their children while on voyage. It is therefore a good idea to stock up toys for the people who target parents. Other products that people are fond of buying include cheap music records and players of the artists that they like. For the teenage travellers, having a gaming centre where they could walk in and play a couple of games before the train arrives could make loads of cash. However, the happy hour only exists during the day when there are people of different ages travelling. Past a certain time that is around 1700 Hrs, the people who travel are mainly commuters from work. At that time the shoppers are few and therefore as much as retailers would like to take advantage of the happy hour, it lasts only for a short time. The methods of marketing that could be used to market the services of the retail shops like a tourist information centre could be online marketing and blogging. This is a situation where the tourist information centre creates a website with an attractive home page and then establishes links on other websites. The links should have a catchy phrase that entices people to visit King’s Cross. The link should have an attractive advert above it. Internet marketing at this age will always have a great customer attraction since people from all over the world can get information easily from the websites. A great way of attracting customers to a tourist information retailing outlet could be by ensuring that the centre’s website is always among the first that appear when a potential visitor searches a number of words on the internet. These words are call keywords and they are the words that a potential visitor to King’s Cross is likely to query in a search engine. An example of keywords that one can use on a website when they want it to be seen when one searches King’s Cross are King’s Cross and St. Pancras. These will make the search engine to locate the website that a retailer will have designed easily. The secret behind it is by ensuring that the keywords appear on the website for a number of times. This is called keyword optimization. The blogging way of marketing requires the company to design an online blog where their customers can tell them what they would like them to improve on their products. This will create a channel for feedbacks and this will enable customization. The blog also enables customers to shere experiences that they have when they have used the products (Mcgoldrick, 02). Caution The quality of any product that is retailed at the station should be of high quality. The retailer should therefore ensure that their centre resembles a place that the queen could pay a visit. The attendants should be swift, smart eloquent and friendly. This will amount to quality service and once the client is satisfied, they will always refer their friends to the same place and they will also visit the same place again. It is therefore very important that the customer get the best first impression. The staff that a retailer employs to bring in customers after luring them in the station should be courteous and if possible, it is wise to avoid using sales executives since most of them take advantage of the tourists and exploit them. In turn, the tourists are not pleased with the charges and they shun a place where they were overcharged once they visit again. It is always important to note that it is not only the tourists who can be customers, the people who work at the station too can be a loyal customer base when they become accustomed to the goods that one is selling. This will mainly apply for the goods and services that are not specifically for the tourists like food. A detailed research that I have carried out shows that a company offering tourist services is more likely to have a wide customer base than one that is offering goods. Services like information and transport are the most sought for. Guides and company too is a marketable service that is mostly sought after by the elder tourists. A close look at the railway station showed that most of the shops used banners outside as a way of advertising. This is because they were closed doors and it was easier for someone to locate a food store from the advert that is outside rather than having to walk into a number of stores trying to locate one store. Recommendations I would recommend that for a retail marketing investor to make an all-round profit, they could start a company that offers all tourists information services while at the same time, they retail the goods that could be of interest to the tourists. These will include souvenirs, postcards and other non-perishable goods like artefacts that the tourists will carry along when they go back t their country. Such goods serve as reminders and trigger memories of places like King’s Cross in London. Compared tp airports like Gatwick, there could be audio adverts in the waiting room that should be clear and concise about the stores that are around. This should be done like a way of offering direction to the company where there are audio messages that are played in the waiting lounges. There could also be TV screens that can show the variety of the services that are offered. The retailer could show some of the goods that they offer on a video presentation and this will make it known to the customers that there are information services that are being offered (Mcgoldrick, 02). Given changes in marketing practices and the move towards mass customization, to what extent do you think Kotler’s criteria, which were developed in 1991, are relevant in 2008 There has been changes in market practices all along that are aimed at mass customization, in Kotler’s criteria, the market situation was in 1991 where brand promotion was just done mainly through advertising. Currently, things have changed and therefore the marketers have to work harder to make sure that they cultivate a niche in thye competitive market. This requires them to closely consider customer preferences to the exact thing that the customers want and then they are forced to modify their products to conform to what the customers want. This is mainly the case when a company wants to retail most of its goods. It has to ensure that it gains the approval of majority of its customer base. As a result of customization, many products have been developing various blends of a single product. An example is when a company makes different flavors of yoghurt to ensure that they have the tastes of all customers who buy yoghurt. In the case of shoes and clothing, customers will most of the time want garments like the ones their friends are wearing and it is up to the manufacturing company to make both masculine and feminine clothing that are more or less the same to ensure that they are able to sustain the demand from both sexes. The main benefits to retailers of segmenting airport customers are that the moment each retailer has a special product, they are always sure that all the customers who will be looking for that product are sure to get it from that store only. It is therefore an advantage to them since they are guaranteed of customers. This however is only an advantage to the people who choose wisely on the kind of products that they would like to retail. The Business V Pleasure way of segmenting is the best in a railway situation since the people who are selling luxury goods will obviously have their stores located where they are sure of getting the leisure tourists. The business side will be left with the essential products for retail and this will ensure that there is a streamlined way of handling retail around the railway station (Mcgoldrick, 02). The ways that could come up with of segmenting customers in the following places would be: 1. Railway stations – For the railway stations I would segment the customers on a basis of Business Long Haul and pleasure Short haul. These two would be grouped together since the customers are all after pleasure. The business long haul customer will need to relax themselves once they are in the train. The pleasure short haul will be going to relax so they will buy a luxury for use later in their destination. 2. Bus stations – For the bus stations, I would segment the customers on a basis of nonscheduled pleasure traveling. This is mainly because the pleasure travelers are more likely to shop than the business travelers. It is therefore always wise to have a target customer base to ensure that at all times the sales figure is the highest possible. 3. The bus station segmentation and the railway station segmentation would not be the same since the bus station will mostly be for people who have not arranged for travel therefore there are uncertainties on the people who will be around the bus station. The graph of the customers would resemble the one shown below. Conclusion In conclusion it is important that when stocking up goods for retail marketing in a place like King’s Cross, One should be aware of the preferences of the potential customers while they are stocking up their retail centres. This will avoid cases where there is overstocking that results to dead stocks when there is a change of the customer base. A good example could be a retailer who sells meat and decides to sell pork when there is a large delegation of Muslims visiting. Such a person will lose in sales since Muslims do not take pork. It is therefore important that a retailer should be widely knowledgeable in areas of consumer preferences to avoid such cases. References Peter Mcgoldrick. 2002. Retail Marketing. Europe: McGraw-Hill Education Read More