Market Audit, Positioning And SWOT Analysis Essay For Portland Beverage’s Crescent.

1. Conduct a market audit to identify the key influences that offer the opportunity for PDB’s first entry in the U.S. sports and/or energy beverage markets. This includes a macro, micro audit, existing strategy and and swot analysis. (Present Situation)

2. What factors should influence the positioning of Crescent? (What strategy )

The marketing activities are focused on positioning the Portland Beverage’s Crescent as an energy or sports drink. Being a non-alcoholic beverage item, the product is targeted at the health conscious clients for making them feel energized and refreshed. The vision of PDB is to work with Crescent by acquiring it while the mission is to deliver exceptional customers’ services (Armstrong et al. 2014). The differentiator includes the product’s refreshing taste and energizing ingredients present in it along with containing low caffeine and mainly consists of organic juices.

Crescent is considered more of an energy drink rather than a sports drink, because the market size for the energy drinks has been growing constantly by 40 percent, which creates enough scopes for reaching new heights of success in terms of profit and competitive advantage. Most of the consumers who prefer the energy drinks are between the ages of 18 to 34 years (portlandbeverage.com 2018).

Political- Pressure on taurine and caffeine rates along with increased health concerns have made PDB to offer something unique and new that holds healthy features such as natural fruit juices and other ingredients required to revitalize individuals and feel refreshed. Government’s implications related to consumption of energy drinks on health has been considered and this will allow for introducing Crescent as a n alternative to energy drink with better and healthy components present in it (Posner, Williams and Posner 2015).

Economic- High prices often de-motivate clients and with the increase in demands for alternative beverage items, PDB should be able to gain success by offering Crescent to clients at reasonable prices. The people with moderate household income are mainly targeted to create Crescent’s maturity in the growth market of carbonates soft drinks.

Social- Based on the demographic conditions like ageing population and health concerns among people, Crescent will be targeting health conscious consumer while the company could also provide employment opportunities to people.

Technological- The advancement of technology and use of internet and social media platforms will enhance the brand awareness among people about the product to be launched.

Legal- Implementation of restrictive laws due to concerns about energy drinks’ impact on health must be considered by PDB and launch Crescent that can meet the needs of /health conscious clients and at the same time, do not create any negative health impacts (Asiedu 2016).

Environmental- The increased needs for natural ingredients will definitely aloe Crescent to become first choice for clients due to the presence of healthy components, especially natural fruit juices.

The competitors of PDB’s Crescent are Together, Fright, Torque, Razor, Stellar, etc., which holds 85 percent of the revenue generated within the market. The introduction of the new product named Crescent will require a proper team that has knowledge about the product and the ingredient to be used for enhancing its taste and quality along with use of natural juices that can be a craze among the health conscious customers (Littler 2015). 

Cost leadership strategy could be used by PDB to gain higher market share by attracting the price-sensitive clients through setting lower prices for the products. By setting lower prices, positive mindsets will be created among the clients along with utilization of assets properly too. The differentiation strategy will enable differentiating the product, services from other company products, and ensures that the clients are able to recognize the products and check whether their needs and requirements could be met not when compared to the products and services offered by other companies in the energy drinks industry (Kaliappen and Hilman 2013). The focus strategies are implemented for targeting the right market segments and putting good marketing effort for remaining competitive within the business environment as well.

PESTLE analysis

The market segmentation allows for segmenting the marketplace into different portions consisting of different types of consumers. The company’s target market is segmented based on the health conscious consumers and those who are aged between 18 to 34 years, which has been the main target market for Crescent (portlandbeverage.com 2018). The market growth for energy drinks is 40 percent, which is quite higher than 9 percent of sports drinks. The demographic segments include the people with household income below $42500 and also those who are more inclined towards sports activities thus creating scopes for the new energy drink to create a good position within the energy drinks industry (Canhoto, Clark and Fennemore 2013).

The USP of Crescent are its natural ingredients including natural fruit juices and other components that are healthy for people and can both keep them refreshed as well as energized without creating any negative side effects on health. The launch of Crescent could also capitalize on the growth of organic food and beverages, which should bring more clients towards the company with much ease and efficiency. The price of Crescent is quite low as well, i.e., $2.75.

The positioning should be possible for Crescent as an energy drink that could provide the market with alternatives considered as healthy. The organic certification and lack of caffeine content should be great differentiators for the energy drinks available in the market (Helm and Gritsch 2014). The artificial sweetener and excessive stimulants have created adverse health effects and thus, PDB could position the product y stating about the positive attributes of the products, furthermore this could allow the clients to remain aligned with the online consumer demographics of Crescent, PDB.

CRM has enabled PDB to offer products that are healthy while at the same time, introduced a wide range of both energy and sports drinks to cater the needs of people. The internet connectivity along with the use of social media platforms by PDB could assist in making more people aware of Crescent, its features and health impacts. The CRM department should also respond to queries of clients and provide them with solutions to keep them satisfied and influence their buying behaviors too (Armstrong et al. 2014).

1) Target markets- The target markets comprise of segments that hold clients who are health conscious while the other targeted market segments include people aged between 18 to 34 years, to which the product named Crescent has been targeted.

2) Differentiation – Differentiation variables include refreshing quality, taste, natural and organic fruit juice extracts and ingredients required to meet both quality and dietary standards and are safe to consume.  

3) Competition- The competitors often pose threats to the company and few of these include Texas Frozen Foods Limited Co, Glanbia (B) Limited, etc.

4) CRM- The company uses advanced technologies and social media platforms to engage with the clients and keep close interactions with clients for facilitating their behaviors and enhancing the customer service relationships too.

5) Existing mix- Existing mix include the products that were old and were unable to meet the dietary requirements while the clients wanted something uniqye and innovative that can be refreshing as well as healthy for them.

• To create Crescent’s broader appeal with the positioning strategy focusing on health, wellbeing and natural ingredients
• To ensure that the customers are well aware of the product through promotional activities and advertisements for increasing sales and gain bigger market share
• To implement proper promotional strategies for enhancing brand knowledge and awareness among customers, thereby improve their ability to make purchase decisions.

Macro

The growth of energy drinks market act as a great opportunity for PDB to create something unique, i.e., include healthy and natural ingredients for making the health conscious clients inclined towards the company product. The issues were mainly due to lack of understanding about whether to position Crescent as energy or sports drink (Asiedu 2016). With the demographic factors assessed and segmentation being prioritized, it would be easy to attract more clients and generate higher business revenue too (portlandbeverage.com 2018).  

Market penetration- The target markets are identified and Cresecnt is being introduced

Market development- Making the product available at reasonable prices for developing the market and fulfilling clients’ expectations

Product development- To develop the product and make it appealing among the different market segments

Diversification- Though it is unrelated, still it assumes providing differentiable features in the product to make clients find it easy to understand the products of PDB from other similar products offered by other companies

Product- Healthy and natural energy drink consisting of organic ingredients that are good for health

Price- The price for the energy drink is $2.75

Place – The Company aims to distribute products in Melbourne, Sydney and in Washington, California. The products are distributed through retail stores like Tesco, Wal-Mart too.

Promotion- The event sponsorships, social media involvement and promotions done through advertisements on televisions and newspapers could further allow PDB to reach the health conscious target audiences quickly

The digital platforms such as involvement of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram could be beneficial for proper branding while use of websites would allow clients to purchase Crescent online and brand awareness could be created. The demographic profiles should be assessed and proper information about the product must be dispersed among them to influence them and make healthier choices of the energy rink. The prices set must be inclined with the organic label, which could favor the chances of influencing consumer-buying behaviors (Canhoto, Clark and Fennemore 2013). The costs should be around $200 for managing a proper website and involvement of digital platform to integrate the marketing communications with the business goals quite comprehensively (portlandbeverage.com 2018). 

The KPI’s metrics are controllable based on the monitoring of website visits and transforming those into enhanced sales. It is an effective marketing technique that acts as Conversion Rate Optimization to convert the website traffic, i.e., the people who have visited the website of PDB into sales. This is beneficial for facilitating the online responses provided by clients and business and at the same time, improves the relationship between business and its clients. More clients would be attracted and this would allow for higher revenue generation and gaining competitive advantage in business.

References

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.

Asiedu, E., 2016. How to create and sustain a strategic marketing plan through the 4p’s of Innovation: With reference to Red Bull energy drink company.

Canhoto, A.I., Clark, M. and Fennemore, P., 2013. Emerging segmentation practices in the age of the social customer. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 21(5), pp.413-428.

Helm, R. and 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), pp.418-428.

Kaliappen, N. and Hilman, H., 2013. Enhancing organizational performance through strategic alignment of cost leadership strategy and competitor orientation. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 18(10), pp.1411-1416.

Littler, D., 2015. Cost leadership strategy. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, pp.1-1.

portlandbeverage.com. (2018). Portland Beverage. [online] Available at: https://portlandbeverage.com/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2018].

Posner, H., Williams, S. and Posner, H., 2015. Marketing fashion: strategy, branding and promotion. Laurence King Publishing.