Executive summary Kettle defines marketing as "a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering, and exchanging products of value with others. " his view on marketing looks at marketing being more of an exchange process.
[Kettle, 1991] In Elements of marketing, Prentice Hall, 1975;"Marketing is all those activities involved in getting goods from producers to users, including buying, selling, storing, transporting, advertising, and promoting he goods" [Baggage, 1975].Now after the definition of marketing, it is important to understand the marketing concept. This concept holds to achieve organizational goals depends on the needs and wants of the target market and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors. This report focuses on the Waitress.
Com, Looking specifically at the Waitress Wine Direct, by creating a marketing plan which will analyses target market and company's position. Major competitors and their strategy will also be reviewed.Through research there loud be an insight of what threats and opportunities does Waitress wine direct Introduction Waitress founded in 1904 by Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor. Today its one of the Auk's leading food retailers and part of the John Lewis partnership established in 1929. Its policy has consistently been to deliver the highest quality of service for its customers and to that end the supermarket has invested heavily in its business to ensure it remains a top retailer. Waitress has chosen a focused differentiation strategy targeting the market with a wide range of quality of fresh reduces and sourcing of fresh meat.
Waitress has developed its own brands products which is important because they give retailers high level of control of these products and generally have a higher profit margin. It has also specialized in the sale of fine wines, which hold a high profit margin. Major competitors include Tests, Sunburst's, SAD, Safely, Somerville and Marks and Spencer. It was found that Waitress would benefit from better integration of various separate stores, possibly even with John Lewis to offer customers a uniform, standardized website, from where a wide range of products can be ordered.
Cultural products that appeal to the typical Waitress customer are an opportunity for new products for online sale, integrating of different stores would be Wines, Flowers & Gifts, Waitress Garden, John Lewis, John Lewis Insurance, Partnership card and SLP Jobs. Now, Waitress supermarket is one of the Auk's leading food. Firstly it opened in 1955 and owned by the John Lewis Partnership , operates 185 branches throughout England, Scotland and Wales , offering the good quality, the best value and the impressive customer service.Its locations range from high streets to edge of town sites and vary in size room Just 7,000 square feet to approximately 56,000 feet. (Waitress company history, 2010). Target market Target audience for the advertising was secondary shoppers, typically mothers or fathers of young families, aged around 35, Waitress appeals mainly to the upper and middle classes with premium pricing and high-quality produce.
Company's position The gross sales in 2010 was E. 4 million (+1 1. 3%) , Profit before tax El 10. 5 million, (+28. %) because of opening the new branches, reformats and re--concepts and strengthen balance sheet.
Waitress positions itself in the premium-mass market with diversity range of quality and fresh goods. ( John Lewis Partnership Reports , 2010) Figure 9: Positioning Map, Major UK Retailer, Quality - Price The positioning map shows how the main five grocery retailers are perceived by consumers. You can see that Waitress is positioned quite highly up the quality and price lines, distinguishing the segmentation towards higher income earners.Whilst we would define our market as the higher income earners who are quality conscious, with price being less significant. Thus Waitress concentrates on providing high quality own brand products (55% of products being own brand), helping to also illustrate the image of exclusivity and elitism.
From the positioning map you can see that Tests, Kingsbury and SAD are all positioned very close to each other indicating the enormous amount of competition through price and quality.All three grocery retailers segment themselves towards new and growing families, as they are huge sector of the market, with much money to be made from. As you can also see Marks and Spence's is positioned at the top end of the scale for both price and quality, showing that they are perceived as a grocery retailer which provides a high tankard of products at high prices, segmenting themselves as an sophisticated grocery retailer. Life-stage segmentation also plays a vital role in defining and segmenting Waitress' market because it looks at family characteristics and whether they match that of Waitress.Whereas Waitresses competitors focus on new family, post-and pre-family groups Waitress inclines towards post family, older couple and single groups, as these groups are more able to afford their prices. One could say that the typical Waitress shopper is the typical Classic FM listener; affluent, interested in culture, travel, fine foods and wine.
The account card, Waitress and John Lewis loyalty scheme, support this by offering reduced tickets to concerts and invitations to wine evenings for example.Marketing magazine placed essential Waitress at No. 3 the highest placed brand in the Top 10 marketing moments of 2009. Market segmentation Market segmentation allows Waitress to 'identify different groups of buyers who share similar definable needs and behaviors. ' (Debbie Anderson) Whilst Behaviorist's responses are fundamental to segmenting Waitresses market as factors such as usage rates, impulse purchases, loyalty, and sensitivity to marketing ix factors allow for conclusions and positioning within consumer markets.Waitress seems to segment its market based on simple variables such as incomes and geographical (stereographic).
This has been identified by associating the number of Waitress stores in the south of England with the average incomes, showing that Waitress is aiming at the higher income earners at the upper end of the market, and segmenting itself toward the social groups. There are no Waitress stores in areas such as Newcastle, Middlebrow's, Liverpool and Bradford, Britain's poorest regions indicating that Waitress would not benefit financially from these areas.The use of Gee demographics is a fast and efficient way of identifying trends within certain geographical areas, allowing Waitress to divide a market into different groups based on social class and lifestyle characteristics. Competitors While Waitress has been increasing its market share - which now stands at 4.
PC, compared with 4. PC a year ago - Tests, Sad, J Ginsburg, and Morrison are all losing share. Http://www. Telegraph. Co.
UK/balance/newsworthy/ridiculousness/ 10538240/Changing-the-market-perception-of-Waitress. HTML In 2013, Price built on this plan by ramping up the imitations loyalty card.More than 3. Mm shoppers have signed up for the card, which now offers a APPC discount compared with Tests on hundreds of products, a free newspaper when shoppers spend E or more and a free cup of coffee every day. The result of the loyalty card is that Waitress is now the second biggest seller of coffee in the I-J behind McDonald's, shifting mm cups of coffee a week.
The marketing mix The marketing mix consists of everything the firm can do to influence the demand for its product. It is considered that a common model for achieving this is the 4-P ramekin as put forward by Kettle and Levy (1969).Literature (1990) proposed that there were twelve dimensions of marketing, however, McCarthy reduced the model so that it became known as the ups: Product, Place, Price and Promotion Waitresses Marketing Mix There are many factors that encourage Waitress to vary its product mix, promotional offers pricing from store to store as place (location) is also very important to Waitress..
Price Although Waitress tries to operate a uniform national price list (all products sold at identical prices) it does admit to some price flexing to keep in line with its monitors.A variation of prices between stores can be in response to the size of the store, position of a store, regional incomes, and customer preferences, which can all have major affects. To illustrate the picture, a Waitress store situated in the centre of London may have higher prices compared to a Waitress store out of town in Surrey. This can be due to the high operating costs of trading within the city centre. Transport costs can also have an affect on prices especially to stores situated in London, as they will now experience the cost of the congestion charge, resulting in an increase in the cost of delivering stock.
Also stores may face higher costs because they are remotely located. Yet stores that have a local monopoly, because no alternative shop is located within reasonable traveling distance, Waitress may decide to exploit this by setting high prices. On the other hand, fierce competition will see low prices to attract the consumer who would have a choice in this case. Regional incomes and customer preferences can also have an effect on prices as certain areas may have lower incomes so prices of certain products may have to be creased to meet the wealth of certain areas.All these factors have to be considered when Waitress prices it products.
Overall prices within Waitress tend not to vary as most stores are situated in the south of England so incomes and operating costs are fairly similar. Product Product mix may differ from area to area because of varying consumer tastes. For example, the Canary Wharf store is tailored to meet the needs of its affluent customer base as they offer designer breads, a sushi bar, a wine bar, a steak and oyster bar, and an exclusive wine cellar offering vintage wines.Product mix may also ray in relation to what Waitresses competitors are doing, as Waitress may feel they have to supply certain products Just to keep up to date and in competition with its competitors.
Additionally, Waitresses product mix may vary due to the size of the store and the space allocation of products. Waitress may choose to supply certain products in certain areas as they are good sellers and so the bigger store the more they may sell. Sales data is a good way of identifying where certain products should be situated between branches and a process of achieving sales data is by the use of electronic data interchange (DE').Varying the product mix is part of an efficient consumer response system (ACRE). By focusing on the efficiency of the supply system and thereby reducing cost enables Waitress to offer products tailored to a region. A major advantage of own brands is their extremely short maturity process.
Since own brands are commonly exact imitates of branded manufacturer's products. They benefit from this, by being immediately familiar with the customer. Most popular own brand products are those that show little difference to branded products, so-called inferior goods, where there is little room for differentiation.Retailers have the advantage of tracking market needs fast and react to the change in social life style (take away, healthy eating, alternatives food, exotic, ethnic foods) that encourage expanding in new own brand categories. 'The retailers have often been quicker than the major branded producers to respond to consumers tastes, as it tends to be easier and quicker to alter lower volume, private label products specifications than higher volume manufacturer branded products.
Promotion Promotional offers may be carried out within certain stores to help grow specific lines which do not sell well, in hope of increasing sales, and matching sales targets of other stores, while encouraging shoppers to increase their spend within the store. Another reason for promotional offers to contrast between stores is so that they can compete against their local competitors offers in aim of keeping and gaining (counter competitor activity). A new store may also have promotional offers running at different times to other stores a means of winning customers, and increasing awareness of the new store.Different levels of store traffic can also have an effect on rumination offers, as stores with low traffic may carry out promotional offers in an attempt to increase the number of people visiting the store.
An alternative motive for the variation in promotional offers between stores can be to stimulate customers switching to own brand products, as certain stores may have low own brand sales. Place Waitress is located mainly in the south east of the UK with stores only as far north as Newark. The typical Waitress Store is located in town centers next to other major shopping facilities.
