‘The Cat Café’ is one of the favourite destinations in Singapore for those young and working people who want to enjoy their free day with a cup of tea and the small cute cats. It is always a fun and relaxing way of chilling out there and spending sometimes with the small cute creatures. The location of ‘The Cat Café’ is at Victoria Street in Singapore. ‘The Cat Café’ provides socialize and relax environment to its patrons with premium coffee, pastries, and a cup of tea. However, it was launched on the 22nd June 2014, and were running well its business, but from last few years ‘The Cat Café’ is facing problems regarding a heavy decline in its visitors, because of some rumours and negative news analysis about the other Cat café in Singapore (Tristram, 2018). Therefore, before analysing the actual problem of the café, it is essential to analyse the Café on SWOT parameter because it helps us to provide the different external and internal factors surrounding of the cat café. The SWOT analysis helps to formulate an effective promotional campaign for the Cat café and display a better understanding of problems of the Café
SWOT analysis helps to understand the overall business and identify the key factors such as Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT). Its strength and weakness based on internal factors, such as its services and product, how it can gain competitive advantages over its competitors, or identify its USP (Unique Selling Point). While the opportunities and threats belong to external factors and help to understand the uncover opportunities for the organisation in near future and eliminate and minimize the threats which are posed by the external macro-environmental factors (Khan, 2014).
According to research conducted by Huang, Yeoh, & Toyota (2012), employees and workers of Singapore are doing their job in the longest working hours in the world. It has been stated in the above research of the Regus company that more than half of employees of Singapore working more than eight hours in a day, while one out of five employees working more than 11 hours in a day (Huang, Yeoh, & Toyota, 2012). If we consider other cat Café in regards to ‘The Cat Café’, it provides more facilities to its patrons in compare to other cat café. The Cat Café Singapore facilitates its visitors to interact with Cats with enjoying favourite coffee or well-baked pastries, with a cup of tea. This can be considered as its strength as it provides unique services to its visitors and enjoying their day with small cute Cats, making one feel relaxed, comfortable, and helping in stress relief of people. Thus, we can say that ‘The Cat Café’ provide relaxation and stress-free environment to the people, because people are facing stress and anxiety because of the heavy competitive environment in Singapore and long working hours of job. One another strength of the café is that it is located in Victoria Street, thus it can target and react out the working class populations because this area is the focal point of the city and surrounded by large numbers of commercial and business centres.
However, the weakness of the café lies in its brand awareness among people and customer awareness. As it was established in 2014, very few people know about it and one could say that the majority of the general population do not have any idea or information about its existence and services.
The Cat Café is the only café in Singapore that provides adoption of cats in the premises. Its cats were previously adopted by Kittycare Haven, a non-profit shelter, which provides houses for lost and reckless cats. As the number of Stray cats are more than 60000 in the Singapore, Cats Café convert this social issue into a business opportunity by showing people that caring of cats is the essence of their well-being and people relaxed with these small kittens and cats (Channel News Asia, 2016).
Although the major threats for this café have come from some misconception, negative perception, and fake viral news spread by people about other cat café located in Singapore, which poses threats for the survival of The Cat Café. For example, according to a newspaper report in Straits Times by Hussain (2014), blamed on ‘Caddle Cat Café’ that their staff were not trained enough to handle the cats and this could be identified as a serious case in declining the number of visitors in the Cat Café (Hussain, 2014). People perceive after this news that they care for cats only because of commercial purpose.
If we consider the SWOT analysis, we found that the major problem with the Cat Café is brand awareness and the misconception and negative perception of people about the café or simply lack in awareness about the service and facilities provided by the café. Hence, the major focus of the promotional campaign should be on creating awareness among people and build a positive ‘brand equity’ or image of the Cat Café. Brand equity refers to the result of brand awareness, where people ask for the brand by their self. It is connected with brand recognition, brand awareness, and brand preference (Todorova, 2015). The major strength of Cat Café is that its present location and the antithesis of Singapore’s working conditions. The café can make those employees who are working as their primary customers and including the general public as a secondary target to visit in the café.
The major problem of the café is the brand awareness and if it can be solved then the number of visitors can be improved up to 70% and rest of 30% increases by the visitors who visited at its outlets in next few months. To achieve this objective the café can use the concept of promotional mix, such as IMC (Integrated Marketing communication) that helps to implement various strategies and tactics to attract patrons towards the café (Belch, Belch, Kerr, & Powell, 2014). Actually, IMC refers to the integration of all promotional activities such as advertising, personal, internet marketing, sales promotion, direct marketing, word of mouth advertising etc. To strategies and implement this campaign, it is essential to use mass media advertising and public relations. It helps in increasing the brand awareness of the café among the working people as well as among general people (Oladepo & Abimbola, 2015). Thereafter, sales promotion and personal selling can be used for attracting new customers and generating leads for the business, while social media, other online means of advertising, newspaper, Local FM radios, and direct marketing of Café helps in building a strong relationship with customers. This methods of promotional strategies can help to build its brand equity and also eliminate the negative perception of people about the Cat Café and differentiate it from its other competitors as it provides unique and superior class facilities to its clients (Fixson & Jobber, 2015).
One of the major means of reaching out its patrons is mass media advertising, such as newspapers, magazines, and local FM radio channels can be used for creating brand equity of the café. Although these are the paid form of advertising media, it is more effective and spread messages to mass about the cat cafe (Moriarty, Mitchell, Wells, Crawford, Brennan, & Spence-Stone, 2014). Through this media of advertising Café can publish its images, shows (Newspapers and magazines) and talk (FM Radio channels) with people about their interior environment, and about its product offerings (Jugenheimer, Kelley, Hudson, & Bradley, 2015). ‘The Cat Café’ can also highlight the benefits of interacting with animals, to create value propositions. The cafe can also use posters that can be strategically placed in several key areas of the city such as near central business district or in those working area where working people are living with their family. Through this, the café can also target the children of the city for playing with cats. Apart from this, posters can be placed on the bus stops, doors of railway stations, and at some key public venues where people reach out at large numbers (Markovic, Iglesias, Singh, & Sierra, 2018). Through this step, cat café can reach out the primary audience through this promotional campaign. Newspapers and magazines are generally read by the working people in the way during the travelling time to the office, and business professional read magazines through which we can target the primary patrons for the café.
In the course of this promotional campaign, public relations can also be used to build brand awareness and positive publicity of the café. Public relations refer to developing a positive relationship with people, customers, media, and the public. It involves creating a good public image by creating favourable publicity through media (Curtis, Edwards, Fraser, Gudelsky, Holmquist, Thornton, & Sweetser, 2010). This step can minimise the negative image of people and decrease their misconception and negative perception about the café. As a part of public relations and creating positive publicity, the café can focus on CSR activities as well. The CSR activities can be defined as the voluntary activities undertaken by the company for the welfare of the society and community in which it operates its business. CSR has a positive impact on building brand awareness and creating brand loyalty among customers. The Cat café can also donate its small portion of its profit to the welfare of Kittycare Haven (The Cat Café, 2014). These activities help cafe to improve its brand awareness and image among people. The Café can also release a press release about its CSR activities and talk about their social work with the people on their different outlets located in Singapore.
To encounter the negative perception of people and about the misconception that cares if cats can only be done because of commercial purpose, ‘The Cat Café’ can release a press release under its CSR activities and should talk about the benefits of caring pets and how it helps in stress release and give relaxation to mind. This leads to word-of-mouth publicity about the café and people more attract about the Cat Café business and towards its benefits (Brooks, 2015). Apart from this, social media such as Facebook and Twitter platforms can be used by ‘The Cat Café’ to attract and aware people about the benefits of interacting with cats. This helps to introduce the concept that influenced the ‘opinion leaders’ and further these people spread these messages to other people in form of positive or negative word of mouth advertising (Godey, Manthiou, Pederzoli, Rokka, Aiello, Donvito, & Singh, 2016).
Personal sales and direct selling are other two concepts through which ‘The Cat café’ can target its primary audience. The salesperson can distribute coupons among people to enjoy their weekends with the Cats and also they can offer free visits of people by giving an offer that after 10 days, there will be a free day entry in the Cat café (Rodriguez, Dixon, & Peltier, 2014). One of the major problems for the Cis handling cats properly, and this leads to the big misconception among the people about the cat café. The café should provide opportunities for people to talk with their staffs and freely raise their query about any misconception or negative things they know. This important step can improve the image of Cat café in Singapore.
Conclusion
In conclusion, advertising, CSR activities, regular customer interaction, and effective use of public relation strategies can create brand equity of ‘The Cat Café’ and helps to eliminate those misconceptions and negative perception of people, which are created by fake news and negative word of mouth advertising. Apart from this, personal selling and direct marketing can be used to attract new customers and building a strong relationship with the customers. It also increases the sales leads of the Cat cafe. However, direct and internet-marketing tools can also be used to communicate with a large number of peoples and spread information about all the features and facilities provided by the ‘The Cat Café’.
References
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Brooks, R. C. (2015). Word-of-Mouth” Advertising in Selling New Products. Journal of Marketing, 22(2), 154-161.
Channel New Asia (2016). 942 stray dogs, 888 stray cats and 623 wild monkeys euthanised in 2015: MND [online]. Retrieve from: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/942-stray-dogs-888-stray-cats-and-623-wild-monkeys-euthanised-in-8135710
Curtis, L., Edwards, C., Fraser, K. L., Gudelsky, S., Holmquist, J., Thornton, K., & Sweetser, K. D. (2010). Adoption of social media for public relations by nonprofit organizations. Public Relations Review, 36(1), 90-92.
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Hussain, A. (2014). Cuddles Cat Cafe licence will not be renewed: AVA [online]. Retrieve from: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/cuddles-cat-cafe-licence-will-not-be-renewed-ava
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