Discuss about the Concept of Marketing Mix and Its Elements.
The report is based on the case study of Scooby tours that came into existence in the year 2017 December. The company is operating its current operations in Queen Street, Auckland CBD. Scooby Tours provide the offers to the customers for a day tour from Auckland to the movie set of Hobbiton via Waitomo Caves and Great Lake Taupo. The report includes the marketing strategies that the company should develop in order to achieve the market objective of the company and to improve the business performance.
It is a process of dividing a broad consumer or business market into the sub-group of the customers. The segmentation is divided into the demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral (Hanlon, 2018). Segmentation of the Scooby Tours are discussed below: –
A target market is a market to which the company is willing to sell its products and services. It includes the targeted set of the customers for whom it directs its marketing efforts (Hanssens, Pauwels, Srinivasan, Vanhuele & Yildirim, 2014). Considering the fact that the company is not able to grab the attention of the domestic customers it is decided that the company should target the specific segment which helps the company to attract more and more customers.
The company should target the demographic segment which helps the company to enhance their business performance in Auckland. The demographic segment includes many elements like age, race, religion, gender, family size, income, and education. Scooby tour mainly targets the youth who are in the 20s, both male and female. This target segment will be effective as most of the youth people are educated enough about the day tours that are offered by the company.
The positioning refers to as the place that the brand occupies in the mind of the customers (Khan, 2014). Along with this how the company is differentiated from its competitors. The Scooby tour is the new business due to which maximum numbers of people are not aware of the company. Therefore, the positioning of the company can’t be stated.
Marketing mix refers to the set of the controllable, tactical marketing tool that a company makes use to produce the desired response from its target market (Kotler, 2015). Scooby tour found that most of the customers come from the market of China and Australia. Moreover, according to the ratio of domestic to international passengers for the first four months of the operations was 1:2.
The objective of the company is to increase its domestic market customer number by 20% for the next summer season against the customer’s number during the first 3 month operations.
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Marketing Mix Strategies for Scooby Tours |
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Product |
Scooby tours offer a day tour to their customers from Auckland to the movie set of Hobbiton via Waitomo Caves and Great Lake Taupo. This tour consists of the 45-minutes Waitomo Glow-worm Caves Experience which includes choices like water rafting, boat tour, kayaking and many others and it is guided tour through the movie set of Hobbiton. The package offered by the company includes the barbecue lunch in the restaurant that is overlooking the Great Lake Taupo. |
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Objective |
The objective is to improve the services to provide the lifetime experience to the customers. |
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Strategy |
· The company should add more places and activities on the tour. · Appointment of the tourist guides who can speak in regional languages. · Customization in services. |
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Price |
The price is the amount that is paid by the customers to purchase the product. Scooby tour provides a day tour package at the price of $370 to adults and $175 for the child. |
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Objective |
The objective of the company is to make the service affordable for the customers belongs to the middle-income group. |
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Strategy |
The strategy that can be used by the company to achieve the objective is: – · Reduce the prices of the services. · Lunch facility in other restaurants at low prices. · No extra charge for customizing the services. |
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Place |
The Scooby tours provide their services through different places such as online reservation, telephonic booking and the booking by a personal visit to the office. In addition, the company works with the agents who help them in increasing the number of bookings. |
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Objective |
The objective of the company is to enhance the places from where the company provides the services to the customers. |
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Strategy |
The strategies that should be used by the company are: – · Initiate tie-ups from different tour companies. · Initiate the tie-ups with hotels and travelers. · Mobile App |
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Promotion |
Promotion is the activity that communicates the product’s features and benefits so that the customers can purchase the product easily (Chernev, 2018). The lack of promotion activity is one of the major loss due to which the company is not able to achieve its objective. |
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Objective |
The objective of the company is to generate the awareness in the domestic market about the services that are offered by the company as most of the people in Auckland are not aware of the services. |
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Strategy |
The strategies that should be used by the company to accomplish the objective related to the promotion of company are given below: – Advertisement a) Print media: – Scooby tours should print their advertisement on magazine, newspaper, and on pamphlets. b) Television: – Scooby tours can involve the popular TV actor in promoting the service on Television. c) Hoardings: – Company can post the hoardings on prime and tourist locations where they can grab the attention of people. Online media: – The company can promote the services with the use of social media platforms which include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and many others. Sales promotion: – The company need to provide some coupons and discount to the customers to promote the products (Babin & Zikmund, 2015). |
An action plan is a detailed plan that outlines the actions that are required to reach one or more goals. Below given is the action plan for the Scooby tours that helps the company in deciding the steps that are essential to take for achieving the goals and objectives. Moreover, this action plan is linked to the marketing mix strategies of the company.
|
Marketing strategies |
Task/s or actions required |
Person/s in charge |
Schedule/Timeline |
Place |
|
P1- Product strategy |
||||
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Adding more places or activities |
Identification of the places or activities. |
Research person |
2 months |
Te Mata Peak (as the place is famous for Paraglide) (Stuff, 2016) |
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Appointment of Tourist guide |
Recruitment of new employees. |
Human Resource |
1 month |
Auckland |
|
Customizing the services |
Conducting research so that they can meet the needs of domestic customers. |
Research person |
2 months |
Auckland |
|
P2- Price Strategy |
||||
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Reduce the prices |
Initiate tie-ups with service providers |
Manager |
2 months |
Auckland |
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Arrange the lunch facility at low prices |
The company should search the best places for lunch at low prices |
Incharge |
1 month |
Auckland Central |
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P3- Place strategy |
||||
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Initiate tie-ups from different tour companies |
Research for the tour companies |
Research person |
2 months |
Auckland |
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Tie-ups with hotels and travelers |
Research for the hotels and travelers who can initiate the tie-ups. |
Research person |
2 months |
Auckland |
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Mobile App |
Forming Scooby Tours mobile App |
Technical |
4 months |
Auckland |
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P4- Promotion strategy |
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Advertisement |
Promotion through Print media Television and Hoardings |
Marketing |
2 months |
Television Advertisement- Across the world Print media- Auckland |
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Online media |
Awareness on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram |
Marketing |
2 months |
Across the world |
|
Sales Promotion |
Providing discount and coupons to customers |
Marketing |
1 month |
Auckland Central |
Product: – The strategies of the service of the company will satisfy the needs of customers. The company can provide convenience to the customers by providing the people who speak in regional languages. The company can make different customize packages for which there is need of the action plan which states that it will take approx. 5 months in achieving the strategies with the help of task and actions.
Price: – Company needs to perform the tie-ups with service and lunch providers so that who can offer those services at low prices. The action plan reflects person designation that will perform the task of research and forming tie-ups to satisfy customers. It will probably take 3 months to perform the tie-ups for decreasing the price of products.
Place: – The Company needs to conduct research for tours and hotels so that company can perform tie-ups. Along with the mobile app of the company will enhance the customers from the domestic market. This is one of the effective ways to enhance the place of services. The action plan reflects the same strategy and the steps that the company will take in 8 months.
Promotion: – The action plan reflects the different places majorly which are used by the company to promote their products to achieve the strategies from by them. The company is willing to promote their products through advertisement, online media and sales promotion. It will take 5 months to achieve the objective of the promotion of the company.
Budget is the financial plan for a specific period of time and this budget is prepared for the estimation of the expenses and revenue over a specific period of time (Miller, 2018). It is recommended to the Scooby tours to include 4 important expenditures in the budget which is discussed below: –
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Expenditure |
Amount |
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Marketing cost |
$ 15,000 |
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Rent |
$ 5,000 |
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Salaries |
$ 6,000 |
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Capital expenditure |
$ 4000 |
The four items that are discussed in the budget are very important considering the objective of the company to increase 20% number of employees. The marketing cost is very important as the company should know the estimation of the amount of cost that they are spending on generating the awareness in the market. Rent and Salaries are two expenditures which are mainly bear by every small business in the current situation. Every company estimates the amount they have to spend on rent and personnel for achieving the objective of the company. Lastly, capital expenditure is important as it maintains or increases the scope of organization future activities because the past expenditure affects the current activities.
The four performance indicators that could be used to assess the marketing performance of the Scooby tours are: –
Conclusion
In the end, it can be concluded that the Scooby Tours there are numerous strategies which will help the company to achieve the objective of increasing the number of customers by 20%. These strategies are recommended to the company after considering the current operations of the company. Along with this, the action plan states that it will take time to accomplish the objective of the company. This is also assessed that the company needs to spend a huge amount of implementing the strategy.
References
Babin, B. J., & Zikmund, W. G. (2015). Exploring marketing research. Germany: Cengage Learning.
Baker, M. J. (2014). Marketing strategy and management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chernev, A. (2018). Strategic marketing management. Chicago: Cerebellum Press.
Goulart, M. (2016). 5 Critical Marketing Metrics to Follow. Retrieved from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/278758
Hanlon, A. (2018). The Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning model. Retrieved from: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-segmentation-targeting/segmentation-targeting-and-positioning/
Hanssens, D. M., Pauwels, K. H., Srinivasan, S., Vanhuele, M., & Yildirim, G. (2014). Consumer attitude metrics for guiding marketing mix decisions. Marketing Science, 33(4), 534-550.
Helm, R., & Gritsch, S. (2014). Examining the influence of uncertainty on marketing mix strategy elements in emerging business to business export-markets. International Business Review, 23(2), 418-428.
Katsikeas, C. S., Morgan, N. A., Leonidou, L. C., & Hult, G. T. M. (2016). Assessing performance outcomes in marketing. Journal of Marketing, 80(2), 1-20.
Khan, M. T. (2014). The concept of’marketing mix’and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business, and management, 6(2), 95.
Kotler, P. (2015). Framework for marketing management. India: Pearson Education.
Miller, G. (2018). Performance based budgeting. New York: Routledge.
Stuff. (2016). 10 lesser-known New Zealand holiday spots. Retrieved from: https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/nz/80795398/10-lesserknown-new-zealand-holiday-spots
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