Developing A Food Marketing Strategy For Burger Urge Fast Food Chain Essay.

Target Market Segmentation

Question:

Discuss about the Food Marketing Strategy of Burger Urge.

This report sheds light on the concept of food marketing and the purpose of this report is to develop a food marketing strategy with coherent knowledge of consumer decision-making. Food marketing brings together consumer and food producer through a chain of marketing activities (Lang and Heasman 2015). In this report, Burger Urge fast food brand has been chosen in order to develop food marketing. In the following section, the target market of the organisation with consumer decision-making process will be evaluated. In addition, marketing mix of the brand will be modified setting a supply chain plan that is integrated with marketing mix. In the later section, branding strategy of the selected brand will be developed. In the later part, marketing activities will be discussed that can interrupt routine behaviour at the point of sale.

Fast Food services market in Australia is growing the industry and the major players in this industry are McDonald's, Subway, KFC, Domino's Pizza and Yum Restaurants Australia. These are mostly international brands and it is difficult for local brands to capture the market share from international fast food giants. Annual revenue of fast food industry in the year 2016 was $19 billion (Ibisworld.com.au 2017). Moreover, annual growth in this industry from 2012 to 2017 was 3.9%. Numbers of employment provided by this industry were 153,300. Consumers in Australia are now more health aware than before and demand has been increased in the nutritional content in the fast food. Low calories and less Tran's fat are the main concerned with the employees and people search for healthier options. Burger Urge is Brisbane based burger chain in Australia; however, it has more than 19 outlets in Brisbane, Gold Coast and New South Wales. Burger Urge was established in the year 2007 and it's headquartered in Fortitude Valley, Queensland (Burgerurge.com.au 2017). This fast food brand mainly provides burgers, soft ice cream and alcoholic beverages.

The market can be segmented into four categories based on geographic, demographic, behavioural and psychographic. In geographic segmentation, organisations can choose the target market based on customer, location, region and classification based on places. Moreover, in demographic segmentation, customers' age, gender, socio-economic group and occupation are judged as a target market (Wilkinson 2013). In behavioural segmentation, organisations try to target the customers based on a rate of usage of products, benefits sought, loyalty status and readiness to purchase. In addition, in psychographic segmentation, food organisations can target the customers through lifestyle, personality, attitudes and class of the customers.

Consumer Decision-Making Process in Fast Food Industry

 In case of Burger Urge, in selling the burger, the organisation can target in a mostly demographic segmentation of target market. 

Primary target market

Customers between ages of 18 and 35 are the primary target of Burger Urge. In this age group, most of the customers are out goers and students belong in this age group also. This age group mostly provide attention on the appearance and visit the outlets with friends and families. These customers are reachable as they need to visit the outlets for a break and they are sustainable as most of the customers are aware of the benefits of healthy eating and they are young, want to have fun.

Secondary target market

Young professionals are the secondary target market. This target is set based on the income group and socio-economic condition of the target customers. These customers are aware of the advantages of healthy eating habits and they find a place for informal meeting with lunch and snacks. This customer group is sustainable as they have a deep sense of greenification. Customers get attracted as Burger Urge uses sustainable and biodegradable packaging in taking away.

In the fast food industry of Australia, there are various international market players who occupy significant market share. In this industry, competition is high and Burger Urge needs to do promotion well that the customers can consider it as their choices. Consumer's decision-making process starts with ‘problem recognition' as a purchase cannot happen without recognition of needs. This need can be triggered by internal stimuli as hunger or thirst (Huang and Sarigollu 2014). In the second step, the customers’ fetch the information in order to find out the solution of ‘problem’. In the next stage, the customers try to evaluate the alternatives with different brands and products as in fast food market, apart from Burger Urge, there are McDonald's, KFC and Subway. The customers try to understand the deliverables of the products, in case of food items, the customers try to judge its taste, prices and other customer satisfactory factors like services of the restaurants and outlets' ambience. In the next stage, the customers actually take the decision of purchasing and in this stage, the purchase is taken place. Two factors are important in this step, first one is negative feedbacks from the other customers and the second factor is motivation to accept the feedback to buy this product. However, the decision may be disrupted due to the unforeseen situation of the customers. As commented by Mintz and Currim (2013), in the last stage of post-purchase behaviour, it is important to retain the customers. If the customers are satisfied, they will purchase again, if not, they will not make the purchase again. Customer satisfaction is important for Burger Urge and this may result in the brand loyalty of the organisations.

Products

Products:

Burger Urge mainly operates in fast food industry and it is treated as quick service restaurant. The main offering of Burger Urge is burgers, with this Burger Urge provides soft ice cream and alcoholic beverages as well. Burger Urge is famous for burgers and customers can have classics burgers of American style with Boston Cheese and New Yorker. Moreover, in the chicken segment, Burger urge offers Pineapple Express and Hotel California, in the Beef segment; it offers The Big Boppa and El Diablo. Burger Urge provides sauce and food items and these are free from preservatives, chemicals and additives. Burger Urge offers free-range mayonnaise and free-range chicken and free-range eggs. The beef burger of the Burger Urge is sourced from Western Australia. Moreover, Burger Urge can use hand baked bread that delivers fresh without artificial emulsifiers (Burgerurge.com.au 2017).

Price:

Burger Urge takes the pricing strategy as price skimming. In this strategy, Burger Urge keeps the price high when they introduce any products in the market. With the time, they lower the price of the products and this strategy increases the demand and interest in target market's minds. However, as there are various large competitors in the industry, Burger Urge has to take low pricing strategy as it increases the sales and customers' footfall increases in outlets. Everyday Low Pricing (EDLP) strategy can increase the market share in the market with increasing quantity of sales.

Place:

Burger Urge’s products are available in outlets in Brisbane, Queensland and Gold Coast, they are going to open new outlets in New South Wales and they are going to open online services also where customers can put their orders. Burger Urge has its website existence where people can check the food items. Burger Urge uses the supply chain utilising intermediaries and most of the raw materials are taken from local Australian suppliers using partnership policies (Nurgerurge.com.au 2017).

Burger Urge can use the three-legged system in implementing supply chain management. Among the three legs, the first leg is employees of Burger Urge and the second one is operators who run the outlets (franchise) and the third one is suppliers' partners. As Burger Urge uses mainly local partners, they do not need cold storage. Procurement is the first stage and then it can come to warehouses. The raw materials can then come to the franchise through transportation. However, Burger Urge cannot implement the e-technology as this is a small business. Burger Urge needs to decrease the transportation in order to reduce the supply chain cost. This strategy of Burger urge is sustainable supply chain.

Price

Promotion:

Burger Urge is a small business and it has been doing the promotions through social media. It has its social media page on Facebook where they provide discount ads and product information to allure customers. Moreover, Burger Urge needs to do advertisements in newspapers and they can use the billboards strategy in buses and outdoor vehicles. These strategies increase the visibility of the brand and sponsorships in local teams or in donating money to fundraising charities can increase the social values of the organisation.

Burger Urge has identified its target audience as it primarily targets the young customers who are students and family persons. Target customers mainly want healthy food items with the cosy ambience that feel comfortable in outlets. Burger Urge does not have messaging strategy that can translate brand positing into a message to the target market. Burger Urge already has the logo of the brand and they are established in the market with more than 19 outlets in Australia. An organisation needs to develop a tagline that can communicate well with the customers (Sacks et al. 2017). Burger Urge has already made itself famous in burger chain among family and young generations. Burger Urge has a transparent policy and it has made its food making policy transparent. It has near proximity in regard to outlets and quality of food is fresh and good. Moreover, visibility of brand can be increased through social networking strategy of the organisation. Burger Urge has a page on Facebook; they need to open an account in Twitter and Instagram. In this way, Burger Urge can start content marketing strategy by posting engaging contents by professional service teams. Burger Urge has its website and they have to link this with social media pages. Discounts, membership and referral programmes can increase traffic to the website and social media pages (Cairns et al. 2013). Burger Urge can make ‘sales sheet’ with core offering and share this with customers and it is important to brand development.

The purpose of promotion of the organisation is to reach maximum target customers and persuade them to buy the products (Baker 2014). Burger Urge has more than 19 outlets and these are beautifully maintained. Customers like cosy ambience and Burger Urge provides this. Point of sale marketing is meant putting all efforts in order to increase the sales in purchasing of the customers. Burger Urge needs to use mainly merchandising strategies. The first thing that Burger Urge needs to do is to show the customers frequently purchased items. Moreover, a high percentage of sales can be increased through drawing customers at outlets and be consumers will understand that the restaurant is famous among customers. As stated by Solomon (2014), turf defending is one such merchandising that draws traditional consumers and in this strategy, restaurants need to show the comparable items to the consumers of the key competitors. Burger Urge can use this strategy to change the consumer behaviour at last time and make the customers happy. Burger Urge can display gifts cards and soft desserts at the billing counters and in this way, customers get to know about the gift cards and other products of the restaurants.

Place

Burger Urge can take advantage of the packaging strategy as they use mostly biodegradable packaging in distribution and storage as it is environmental decisions. In the packaging of the food in transport is also important and that is related to the delivering of the products to the end customers in food marketing. Moreover, in labelling of the food products in the packet, Burger Urge can write about nutritional values and ingredients as most of the Australian target consumers are health conscious. Moreover, Burger Urge needs to consider the media that support promotions and sales of food items. They can take support from a brochure and sell sheets and these images can be uploaded on a website or social media pages. Social media advertising and advertising through leaflets can be helpful. In this way, the digital marketing collateral can increase the footfall in outlets and customers will visit more rather than the competitors' outlets.

Conclusions

It has been observed that Burger Urge has its own market share in fast food segment and it is one of the famous burger chains in Australia. It makes target to the young generation and family persons that visit outlets in large numbers. Products that they offer are mostly in good quality and they need to do low pricing strategy. In branding, it needs to engage marketing team that can increase social media marketing with billboards. In this report, a simple supply chain strategy has been specified that may help in reducing the expense of supply chain. Moreover, in increasing point at sale marketing, merchandising the products with good looking packing can be helpful.

References

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Burger Urge. 2017. Our Food | Burger Urge. Available at: https://burgerurge.com.au/our-food/ [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2017].

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Ibisworld.com.au. 2017. Fast Food Services in Australia Market Research | IBISWorld. Available at: https://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry-trends/market-research-reports/accommodation-food-services/fast-food-services.html [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2017].

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