Marketing Plan
Involved in multi-manufacturing of Fast Moving Consumer Goods such as non-alcoholic soft drinks and snacks, Marc Inc. is an American-based multinational food and beverage corporation with its headquarter at Bronx, New York. The company was established on March 2011 targeting the population of the Bronx to supply with very good quality of soft drinks and snacks. The company has a healthy pool of approx. 1350 employees managed very well by a very capable team of management.
Blackcurrant Knight is a blackcurrant juice; the company is manufacturing and supplying and now intends to penetrate further. This paper renders the marketing plan for Blackcurrant Knight hereinafter known as "the product." Blackcurrant Knight is the soft drink prepared from Blackcurrant fruit as the basic input. The concept of the product was to meet the demanding omega 3 rich, healthy drinks from the health conscious population. Also, the product intends to center the interest of people who only concerns about the flavor and taste. Hence, the product being rich in both taste and omega 3, now intends to penetrate the larger size of the population.
Following are the marketing objective of this marketing plan:
Penetrate market by 25%
Raise the awareness among the people by 55% in the coming year through digital media promotion and magazines.
Maintain the quality of the drink
Increase profit by increasing sales and by decreasing expenditure on marketing
Maintain steady growth in each financial quarter
Target Market
Local people of Hempstead are the target market of this promotional project. With a total population density of the city being 4000/sq. mi, Hempstead is one of the densely populated areas in the US. Women comprise 53% of the population and male 47%. The majority of the population are of working age group. The age group 15-35 comprise 34%, 35-65 comprise 31%, and 12% comprise individuals over 65 years. People from different races and ethnicity have inhabited the city, however, have their culture are now merged with American subculture. Despite being mixed culture, the dominant people in the society are of American-afro culture. Also, the city has sports diversity from cricket, football, basketball and rugby. The beverage market, however, consists of two extreme groups; a group with high incomes that are usually individualistic and group with lower income who are more social. This provides us insight for crafting a marketing plan keeping an aim to improvise the commodity's purchasing power.
Market competition
The leading FMCG industry or say the dominant one is the CG Company in our target market. The company has maintained its goodwill from very long time with its very well marketing strategy as well as they have different varieties of pods. Also, another strength the company has is its water reservoirs which are big enough for the continuous mechanical operation. However, the use of preservatives and another health risking chemicals in their product has raised issues currently (Ishikawa & Tsujimoto, 2008). Our focus on both health and flavor are intended to capitalize this opportunity. Further, varieties of strategies for marketing mix are our intention, which includes the use of digital media for online marketing so as to meet out marketing goals.
Also, unlike CG, who have targeted high-income customers, we are targeting to bring all the individuals on the board from all classes for our product ensuring that we shall hit many customers as possible from all age groups, ethnicity, gender, and so on.
Following is the matrix giving brief but clear outlook of competitor
Putting in view of above scenario, this product targets 4 different groups of the beverage consumers: Health Conscious group, Taste Lovers, Both Health Conscious and Taste Lovers and People with no specific choice. The prime reason for these segmentations is so as to increase sales and increase revenue because of high band operation scope, as a wider range of population will be captured. Different marketing and promoting tools and option will be utilized so that the marketing strategy would tap all the potential customers in raising brand awareness which would be the major step in the conversion of potential customer to the real customer. The health and taste part of the product with less preservative and Eco-friendly and healthy container strategy is the challenge of innovation enhancement in the product which is now the increasing concern of the local people (Ishikawa & Tsujimoto, 2008).
SWOT
Strength:
Though a young company, we have a good capital resource, human resource of talented people, good networking and dynamic business model with adaptation capacity. Also, we have very good information technology system and business intelligence as well as have modern plants and machinery for quality production.
Weakness:
The weakness is, we being a young company; we have less awareness in the market. The existing competitors are old have built a strong brand which could attack our entrance very easily.
Opportunity
The recent hot concerns of people are our opportunities, which the leading brand has just lost. With our modern technology and business intelligence and the good pool of talented people, we can easily grab the opportunity. Since the communities of the market have the sporty culture with diversity, the juice has wide chances of increase in penetration.
Threat
The competitors have very good brand awareness and the good resource as well. Hence, they could swiftly have come back with strong products to shadow their previous failures.
Marketing Strategy
The mobilization of product through the direct store delivery (DSD) is the strategy that the Marc Company will adopt. Also, the collaboration with other distributors and bottlers will be to operationalize the direct store delivery system so that the products are delivered directly to retailers without an in-between mechanism, merchandised by our employees or say our bottlers. The reason behind this is for ensuring the optimum charm and visibility. The concept of DSD is actually for the ultimate replenishment of the frequent restock requiring products, which usually have very short lead time (Harun et al., 2013). Further, it also integrates in-store promotion as well as merchandising. Manual Distribution Centre model is the model that the company will adopt as the further reinforcement which is for targeting the areas that have dense population such as New York City as well as other largely populated similar areas. In order to make the opportunity grab faster of this strategy would be a perfect fit.
Use of Digital media for promotion is another aspect that we will go for. We have the very good pool of experts in IT field well equipped with modern software which would extensively promote the product through digital media. The digital focus will be continuous throughout the marketing process. The IT will also focus on branding and be updating the potential customer base. Easy feedback mechanism and sharing among the colleagues through the digital media will be our feature. Tracking the market need and trend and updating the product and container of product accordingly with flexibility is another strategy that we would utilize our strength to grab the opportunity.
Apart from all these, advertisement through sponsoring sports and other community service activities will be our promotion model.
Following messages shall be floated in the public with timely manner through different promotional channels.
The nutrition and health value of our juice is always prime.
Price of the product is respectful for varying economic condition
We need and value customer support for continuous upgrading.
The growth of customer and our growth is win-win
Further, the marketing strategy also will concern on branding which includes flavor, taste, brand logo, container design, product quality as well as another aspect such as pricing and product line.
Five F’s strategy will be used to inform the customer and potential customer (Moskowitz, Saguy, & Straus, 2009).
Function: Juice of high quality that addresses the health concern, taste and flavor preference of consumer will be produced. Energy and omega 3 that supports the sports culture will be another feature. The drink will also make the consumers refreshing.
Finance: The product will be fairly priced such that neither does it degrade the brand value nor will it be considered as an extremely expensive product. The price adjustment according to economy is another feature.
Freedom: The product is directly supplied to retailers and shall be available in all the stores next door giving customer easy access to the product.
Feelings: The product shall dignify all the diversity of sports and works equally putting the feeling of "our brand" in people's mindset. Also, connection in all the situation and emotion such as happiness, tiredness, sadness, joy and so on is nature of our product.
Future: The future of our consumer is also a concern for us. Our product that helps to boost energy for our consumer’s future and to maintain long term relation is another feature of the product.
Marketing Vehicle
Marketing Budget
The marketing budget is shown in the excel file.
References
Harun, Md. Ashraf, Kamal, Mohammad Afsar, Mustafi, & Mohitul Ameen Ahmed. (2013).Analyzing the Marketing Strategy of Soft Drinks in Bangladesh: A Study on RC (Partex Beverage). The International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE.
Ishikawa, A., & Tsujimoto, A. (2008). Creative marketing for new product and new business development. Singapore: World Scientific Pub. Co.
Moskowitz, H. R., Saguy, I. S., & Straus, T. (2009). An integrated approach to new food product development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
