Innovative Marketing Campaign: Kmart Australia's Popover Hoodie Essay.

Kmart's Product and Marketing Mix Strategies

Discuss About The Greener Marketing Responsible To Business.

The marketing campaign is the campaign that promotes the product through different media which include television, print, radio, and online platforms (Charter 10-25). The paper talks about the innovative marketing campaign of Kmart Australia. The company is an Australian chain of retail stores that is owned by Wesfarmers. Currently, it is operating 214 stores in Australia and 20 in New Zealand with the headquarters in Mulgrave, Melbourne. Moreover, the company performs all the essential strategies so that they can enhance their customer base and sales of the product. Kmart brings the marketing campaign through which not only they promote the product but also make a good positioning and customer base. Therefore, the marketing campaigns of Kmart are innovative. One of the innovative marketing campaigns introduced by the company is Popover Hoodie which was launched on 27^th March 2018 (Ricki). Kmart Australia believes in keeping the things cool with its new Popover Hoodie campaign from BWM Dentsu.

BWM Dentsu is the well known creative agency that is situated in Sydney and specialized in brand strategy, advertising, integrated campaign, digital marketing and many others. The major client of the company includes Kmart who take help of agency for the marketing campaign. The agency has delivered a campaign that provides leverage to the great body of work and drives the brand (Ricki). The managing director of the agency made the campaign innovative by bringing together the creative idea, venue, the design, music and Popover hoodies. the campaign consists of a 30-second TVC, a 60-second film for content and cinema and a 98-second extended film that is present on the Kmart website (Cuthbert, Shannon). This is one of the innovative things that make the campaign innovative for Kmart as well for Customers. The campaign was innovative because it was transported to the coolest venues in Australia that is Melbourne's Palais Theatre just to celebrate the fun features and casual comfort of the Popover Hoodie.

Kmart business is trying to achieve the position and strong customer base through this campaign of Popover Hoodie and this was one of the major objectives of the company. The objective due to which the company initiated the marketing campaign was to boost its winter sales. In winters Kmart was not able to attract the customers towards it’s due to which they were not able to make the winter sales effective. Therefore, the company decided to introduce the marketing campaign for the winter clothes which helps Kmart in boosting clothes sales in winters. In addition, the company decided to bring innovation in the marketing campaign so that they can achieve a better position along with the customer attention.

Target Market of Kmart

Kmart targets the customers of different segments as it includes Geographic, Demographic, Behavioural and Psychographic. The company targets both urban and rural areas with the all the age category male and female. Moreover, the company generally targets the people with the low and middle age group. In the market of Australia, it has been found that the customers can easily switch from one departmental store to other due to which the company believes in targeting the people who can ensure the brand loyalty and believes that this will add value to their lifestyles (Kotler 125-150).

The major target of the company for this Popover Hoddie market campaign includes customers with different age groups through its marketing communication message or campaign. Kmart pays major attention to young customers as they are the one who gets attracted towards the marketing campaign of the company. Moreover, the young people are mainly loyal towards the brand due to which the company likes to target youth. This reflects that this target is based on the segmentation of the demographic.

This innovative marketing campaign of Kmart Company also includes the product strategy. This strategy is the foundation of a product lifecycle. Generally, the departmental store makes use of the product differentiation strategy in which the company they offer the different types and range of the products to the customers under one roof (Hill, Jones, Schilling153-155). Considering the marketing campaign of the company, Kmart product strategy is focus strategy in which they are focused on the winter clothes and also on youth target segment of different age group. Along with this, the Kmart ensure that the products they are offering to the customers are good at quality. This is clear with the marketing campaign in which they have shown the comfort of the products at the winter place. This strategy is based on the customer needs and demands along with the sales of the company. The company has addressed the need of youth for wearing Hoddie in winter.

Apart from the product strategy, the company is also focused towards the other marketing mix strategy which includes pricing strategy. The pricing of the product matters a lot not only for the customers but also for the company. Therefore, the company makes use of the economy pricing strategy (Negi, Aashita). According to the strategy, the company keeps the low prices of the products. The marketing campaign Popover Hoddie also reflects that the company is offering the products at low prices. This strategy is based on the customer satisfaction and also on the competitors of the company. The product's pricing is kept low so that the company can meet the affordability criteria and they should not switch to the other providers of the same product (Nagle, Hogan, and Zale 1-10). Moreover, the competitors of the company are offering the products to the customers at low prices due to which Kmart also keeps the low prices of the product. 

Conclusion

Another marketing mix strategy that is considered by the company is Place. Over here, the place is the location from where the company sells or distribute its products to the customers (Tomczak, Reinecke, and Kuss 1-8). The company distributes its product through its departmental stores. Kmart makes use of the hub-and-spoke distribution and cross-docking strategy. In this strategy, the company optimizes the distribution network to enhance the low-cost bulk transportation and reduce route-trade. Along with this, the cross-docking operation decreases the requirement of the warehouse real-estate and resources (Logistics Bureau). The company directly offer the products from its departmental stores so that customers can make the purchase of all the products under one roof. The recent campaign of the company will also be seen in-store in the catalog and on social media. This strategy is based on the operations of the business which is essential for the Kmart to be taken care. The strategy is taken after considering all the aspect that can also affect the other activities of the business.

The final and major marketing strategy considered by the company is promotion strategy. This strategy reflects the way company generates awareness about its products in the market (Khan 95). The company believes in marketing and advertising campaign as this is one of the effective ways to promote the products. The commercial advertisement on television helps the company is targeting new and potential customers (Creative Revolution). Kmart introduces different new and innovative marketing campaign through which they can promote their products in the market. Therefore, the recent marketing campaign of the company is Popover Hoddie under which the company promotes its winter products. Along with this, the campaign is famous for different social media channels which include Facebook, YouTube and details related to the campaign are available on the website. The strategy is based on the customer because the company wants to target the maximum customers to whom they can offer their services.

Considering the analysis of the innovative marketing campaign, it is suggested to the company make use of the maximum effective channels for generating the awareness among the customers. Though, this is the fact that company has utilized the YouTube, Facebook, and website for promoting the products but this is not enough for the company. Kmart should extend their range so that they can make the maximum people aware about the same. This will contribute to sales and customer base of the company. Moreover, the company should ask the customers to share the feedbacks related to the campaign so that Kmart can improve its marketing campaign. It is recommended to the company to initiate the contest in which they can keep the quiz related to the company and products. The person who will win the contest will be awarded free hoodie. This is one the effective technique of promotion that helps the company in generating awareness for the campaign. In the end, it is recommended to the company to bring new campaigns for other products which will reflect that differentiation theory is followed by the company.

The overall paper reflects that marketing campaign of Kmart is innovative which helps the company in forming an effective position, customer bases and increase the sales of winter. Moreover, the marketing campaign of the company is linked with the marketing strategies of the company. There are some of the variances in the marketing strategy which unfit the marketing campaign of Kmart but the aim of the company will get fulfilled.

References

Charter, Martin, ed. Greener marketing: A responsible approach to business. Routledge, 2017. 10-25.

Creative Revolution. Cut-Price Chic: Six Strategies that made KMART Cool, 2017. Web. 6^th May 2018, < https://www.creativerevolution.com.au/mi/cut-price-chic-six-strategies-made-kmart-cool>

Cuthbert, Shannon. It’s A Musical 90s Flashback With New Kmart Campaign From BWM Dentsu, 2018. Web. 6^th May 2018,https://www.bandt.com.au/marketing/kmart-bwm-dentsu-winter-campaign

Hill, Charles WL, Gareth R. Jones, and Melissa A. Schilling. Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach. Cengage Learning, 2014. 153-155.

Khan, Muhammad Tariq. The concept of'marketing mix and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business, and management 6.2 (2014): 95.

Kotler, Philip. Framework for marketing management. Pearson Education India, 2015. 125-150.

Logistics Bureau. How Supply Chain Strategy Misalignment is Killing Kmart USA, 2017. Web. 6^th May 2018, https://www.logisticsbureau.com/how-supply-chain-strategy-misalignment-is-killing-kmart-usa/

Nagle, Thomas T., John Hogan, and Joseph Zale. The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: New International Edition. Routledge, 2016. 1-10.

Negi, Aashita. Every Day Low Price- K Mart Pricing Strategy, 2016. Web. 6^th May 2018, https://mpk732t12016clusterb.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/every-day-low-price-k-mart-pricing-strategy/

Ricki. Kmart Australia pushes its Winter apparel in new 'Popover Hoodie' campaign via BWM Dentsu, 2016. Web. 6^th May 2018 https://www.campaignbrief.com/2016/03/kmart-australia-pushes-its-win.html

Tomczak, Torsten, Sven Reinecke, and Alfred Kuss. Introduction. Strategic Marketing. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden, 2018. 1-18.