Marketing Management in Dog Foods Sector - Case Study Example

? Marketing management Background and objectives Currently, dog keeping has become very popular in different cities with no exception of Birmingham city. This practice mainly involves old people who keep these pets as companions. For many decades dogs’ diet has been ignored with dogs being fed with leftovers. Mainly, the objective of developing Frozen foods for Fido is to tap the opportunity of the available gap in dog foods sector. Mainly dog food need to be cooked and cannot be handled when one is in a journey. This product will offer an opportunity for people to be able to share the ice cream with dogs. Strategy The main strategy is to ensure that the ice cream is available in the market at ease. This will create customer loyalty towards the product. In addition, diversification of the product will reduce risks that might affect one product. It will also help to attract different customers who have different tastes of products. Another strategy is ensuring that the product satisfy the expectations of the customers. This will enable the product to remain competitive in the market. Tactics In order to get adequate profits from the market, the marketer will be expected to use different sales persons in order to reach customers from various regions. In addition, the cream will merge with ++++ ice cream parlour in the Bullring. This tactic will reduce the cost of distributing the cream. Once the product penetrates the market, it will become easier for the producer to distribute the product on its own. This tactic will also be able to reduce the price of the commodity in the market. This is because merging will help in lowering the breakeven price of the commodity therefore, creating a larger profit margin. Lower price of the product will therefore; attract customers who will be willing to test the product. Intense advertisement will also be a tactic that will play a major role in ensuring that the product penetrates the market. Different forms of advertising will be used in order to persuade the customers to purchase the product. Implementation Segmentation Segmentation is the division of the market based on the products, age and consumer behaviour. In order to segment the market, one of the most important aspects is to conduct consumer analysis in order to know the pattern of consumption. According to the data collected, the best way to segment the market the market is through the use of age and gender. In Birmingham city, women purchase dog food more than their men counterparts. As a result, they are to be the main target customers. Women are also associated with high consumption of chocolates. This behaviour will make these chocolates have an upper hand in the market as they can serve two purposes. Market can also be segmented through age. Old people mainly look for companionship from dogs. As a result, targeting these people to be potential buyers will be an important aspect that would increase the overall profits. This will be achieved through producing creams that are fit for old people i.e. not so sugary. In addition, advertisement of these creams should be targeting the old people. Location of the people is another tool to be used in segmenting the market. This involves pricing of the product according to geographical location and the level of competition in that region. Customers who are near the source of the product will have an opportunity to purchase the product at a lower cost as the cost of distributing the product is low. In addition, market that is saturated with competitors will require price segmentation in order to attract customers to purchase the product. Use of price as a tool of segmentation should be well calculated. This is because many customers especially in Birmingham believe that cheap products are of low quality. Another method that will be used to segment the market is through product differentiation. This involves branding the products to make them unique. This will be important as the customers will be able to identify the product easily in the market. Product life cycle Product life cycle is expected to follow four stages During the first stage marketing department will seek to build product awareness and develop a market for a product. This will be through 4ps of marketing. Pricing Two forms of pricing will be used in order for the product to penetrate already existing market. One of the methods is pricing in order to build market share rapidly. This involves use of low price to attract potential customers to purchase the product. Another form of pricing will be skimming pricing. The main aim of this strategy is to recover developmental costs. At this stage, a lot of costs are incurred to develop the product and place it in the market. As a result, this method can be crucial in ensuring that these costs are recovered in order to give a product financial support as capital of the company plays an important role in helping the product to be competitive. Product In developing the product, branding is very important. Well branded products are associated with high quality by the customers. In addition, intellectual property protection will also follow. This process plays a great role in protecting the product and product idea from being taken away by the competitors. Some of the protections include patents and trademarks. In addition, the quality of the product should be high as compromising quality of the products can give it a negative image an aspect that can put away current and potential customers from purchasing the product. Promotion Promotion can be defined as any activity e.g. sale or advertisement campaign that is mainly aimed at increasing the product visibility. In promoting the product in the market, it is important to strategize on how to select the mode of communication to the target market. Selecting media to be used in advertising the product will be based on the cost of the media geographical reach and the type of audience that are expected to be using that media (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011). Once the product grows the level of profit increase and become almost constant at maturity level. After dominating the market at maturity level, the product performance starts to decline as new competitors enters the market and consumers tastes and preferences changes. Branding Branding determines the performance of a product in the market through differentiation of the product to those of competitors. Branding also ensures that there is a clear relationship between consumers and producers. In addition, branding is a tool that can be used to segment the market. In order to achieve the products ‘goal, I would select aspirational branding. This means that a huge segment of audience wishes to purchase it but for the economical reasons they cannot. This would make many consumers yearn to have a taste therefore; once they get money they will purchase the product. The main reason behind selecting this form of branding is because people associate expensive this as of high quality Boston Consulting Group Model In using Boston Consulting matrix method, the portfolio of the company can fall in four categories. Stars This category is characterised by high growth and high market share. This may involve use of huge sum of money in order to generate a lot of returns. This model may not be effective as the money spent may sometime not be recovered. Cash flows This category is characterized by low growth and high market share. In this model profits are enormous as investment needed is low. This may be used especially when forming financial base of the company. Question marks It is characterized by high growth and low market share. This category is not suitable for the product as growth may stop as the product matures in the market without any share of the market. This will result because of high demand and low returns due to low market share. Dogs This category is characterized by low growth and low market share. This category is the most appropriate for a young product in the market. It aims at preventing losses through minimizing the number of dogs in the company. Porters’ 5 forces model Threat of new substitutes When a product enters the market and makes enormous profits after taking the opportunity available, the number of competitors is expected to increase as they try to gain a share of available profits. To prevent the product from being substituted, frequent studies should be done to the market in order to identify any changes in consumer behaviour. This will help the producer in manipulating the products in order to fit the interests of consumers. Creating loyal customers and retaining them will also be a strategy to ensure that the product remains competitive in the market. Threat of new entrance Many companies look at the performance of their predecessors in the market in order to access risks and opportunities in the market. Entrance of new companies in the market, especially multinational companies will be a great challenge to the product. This is because some of these companies can have financial power an aspect that can be used to push their product in the market. In order to prevent such a challenge, it is important for the product producers to ensure that they create customer loyalty towards the product and also position the product strategically in the minds of consumers. This will make it hard for new producers to attract customers towards their products. Intense rivalry among existing players Currently, there are other producers that concentrate on producing dog food. These players will not give up easily and allow the product a go ahead in dominating the market. These players are expected to use any strategies available to eliminate the product from the market. As a result, marketing department should keep a close relationship with the customers so that they can be able to know tactics that are used by competitors. This treat can also be reduced through intense advertisement of the product to keep on reminding the customers about the existence of the product in the market. Bargaining power of suppliers The power of suppliers to bargain for better prices and domination of the market depends largely on the effort put by the marketing department in familiarizing the product to the customers. This will also attract new suppliers to distribute the products to customers. SWOT analysis Strength One of the major strength that the chocolate will have in the market is its multiple uses. Chocolates in the market are only for human consumption. Therefore, this form of chocolate will put a stiff competition in the market as customers can either buy for their consumption or for their dogs. In addition, diversifying the product is another strength that will make it hard for competitors to put a stiff competition. Weakness One of the major weaknesses is that people will involve chocolate with food for dogs only. This will reduce the rate of consumption as consumers will look for food that is meant either for a dog or man. This can be changed through advertisement. Opportunities Dog food sector has no many competitors. As a result, this offers a great opportunity to the producers to dominate the market and create a barrier for new entries to the market. Threats One of the major threat is the entry of well establishes multinational company. This will have a negative impact on the young product in the market. Such a company can use its financial superiority to force its products to the market and also produce its products at a lower cost due to use of high technology. Control In order to prevent any diversion of the product from the main goal, it is important to undertake frequent audits. This will be important in ensuring that all the set procedures are followed. In addition it would help in identifying any gap that might prevent to achieve the set goals. In addition, use of balance score card will also be important in analyzing finances, customers and internal performance of the product. Conclusion For the product to succeed political environment must be considered. In addition, economic factors should also be taken into consideration, and their overall effect to the product be addressed. Some of the economic factors include inflation. Social factors also have an impact to the product performance in the market. In United Kingdom, the population has been ageing therefore, believes of aging group should be taken into consideration in developing the product. Lastly, product performance depends on the legal environment in the country. As a producer, it is important to monitor legal trends as some trends may bring in opportunities while others can eliminate the product form the market e.g. taxation. Read More