Marketing Objectives, Marketing Strategy, And Action Programs For G RO Carry-on Luggage In Australia Essay.

Question:

Write and make a presentation on marketing objectives, marketing strategy and action programs for the new product. 

The marketing objectives of this product, G RO Carry-on Luggage should be in sync with the fact that is a new product launch in Australia. The 3 marketing objectives of this product till 6 months of launch should be the following

As G RO Carry-on luggage is entering the Australian market for the first time, it is evident that the prospective consumers of the products will not be able of the qualities and uses of the product. Thus, it becomes imperative for the company to first make the consumers aware of the product and make them know of the qualities of the product and how it varies from other similar products or how is the breaking the market.

Once significant customer awareness is generated, this would lead to trials. Consumers would want to try out the product, G RO Carry-on Luggage to find out whether or not they like it. Satisfied consumers would reuse the product and also eventually become advocates of the product. This is typically how the entire marketing cycle should be.

Brand Awareness à Trials à Re-purchase à Brand Advocates

As G RO Carry-on Luggage is a new product in Australia, it becomes imperative for the product to start amassing a loyal customer base. Therefore customer acquisition should be a target for the first six months. Customer Acquisition management should be made an integral part of the marketing objective for the initial six months. This would include lying down of set methodologies and process to identify and acquire new customers and manage old customers to ensure high retention ratio.

It has been statistically proven that new product launches have a high success probability if the customer acquisition strategy is right and implemented in a smooth way. Customer is always the king and we should try to acquire and manage it from day one. And it becomes more important as G RO Product is a new launch. 

A customer who is a new buyer of G RO Carry-on Luggage will not be a loyal customer initially. It is imperative for the company to retain this customer and ensure that the customer does not face any service quality issue.  This reasons for this is

• Customer acquisition is a costly affair and retaining them is of prime importance. Customer retention is always cheaper than customer acquisition.
• Loyal customers would eventually become brand advocates of the product. They would promote G RO Carry-on luggage through would on mouth and the product thus would gain a free advocated PR.

Quantifying the above three marketing strategies, thus

1. Brand awareness at the end of 6 months should be

20-30% Top of the mind recall

30-40% Assisted recall

2. Customer acquisition of 1000 growing at 10% per month
3. Customer service level of 95%(Evans, 2003)

The market segmentation for this product can be best done through demographics. Hence, the demographical segmentation done in this case would be through Age.

The following are the segment chosen:

1. Kids 0-6 years
2. Youth 7-22 years
3. Working professional 22-55 years
4. Retired 55-80 years

This demographic age segmentation will almost cover the entire population. Now, there has to be logic to decide the target market among the segments.

G RO Carry-on luggage is a new, technically superb, trendy and fashionable product. Therefore the target market for this kind of products would be the youth and working professional segments. Typically any adult should be targeted for this product.

This is the age group that would perfectly relate to this kind of product. The reasons are:

• They are trendy and always on the lookout for new and advanced products.
• They are more into technology and prefer products high on technology.
• They are the age group who easily experiment and involve themselves with new products.
• They are more likely to invest into hedonistic products and have a high degree to indulgence

Brand Awareness, Trials, Customer Acquisition and Retention

Hence, all these reasons make this age group perfect for G RO Carry-on luggage.

To determine the positioning of the products, we have to first identify the attributes associated with the product. Let’s first list down all the attributes of G RO Carry-on luggage.

Revolutionary, Travel Companion, Technologically advanced, Trendy, Fashionable, Modern, Latest

The above are the major attributes that come to our mind when we think about G RO Carry-on luggage. The positioning statement thus should reflect what the product stands for. It should reflect the brand attributes and create an imagery of all this attributes. Therefore the position statement should be

“For all young individual who seek technologically advanced products and are willing to experiment, G RO Carry-on luggage is a travel luggage which unlike others is a superior electronically enabled product which is just like your travel companion.”

This positioning statement can be condensed into the following brand tag line

“Now never travel solo. G RO Carry-on, your travel companion. Always.”  (Moutinho) 

The marketing mix has to be perfect for this product in order to successfully dominate the market. A clear thought out strategy for each component of the marketing mix is needed, i.e product, place, price, promotion.

The product is G RO Carry-on luggage. The aspects that we need to think on in this segment are

• Design
• Technology
• Usefulness
• Convenience
• Value
• Quality
• Packaging
• Accessories
• Warranties
• The branding strategy

Each of these aspects has to be clearly thought out. The attributes in these should be

• Design: It should be a trendy and modern design which move eyeballs at the first look. The colour also should be catchy as it will be targeted for youth who usually appreciate bright and modern colours.
• Technology: It should be technologically modern and should incorporate latest electronics. The target audience will be more attracted towards the product if the product is highly technologically advanced as it enhances the ease of use.
• Usefulness: It should not just be attractive and modern. It should serve the purpose of a traditional luggage. It should be of a good size and be sufficient for longer duration of travel.
• Convenience: Luggage should be easy to move and carry. There should be good wheels and handles which make it easy to move across airports, railways stations and bus stations.
• Value: The consumer should be able to feel the value of the product. It should be an optimum mix of a traditional luggage integrated with modern technology.
• Quality: The quality of luggage matters a lot. It should be wear resistant and should be tough on rough usage. Young people are like to have abusive usage trends and hence quality of the product matters.
• Branding: The branding should be a sub-brand of the company. The product should leverage the parent brand and also in turn try to create a brand for itself.

The aspects that need to be looked in the place strategy are

• Retail
• Wholesale
• Mail order
• Internet sales
• Direct sales
• Peer-to-Peer
• Multi channel

The place strategy is basically one to reach the target consumer in the easiest way. We need to find out how to reach the consumers efficiently and cost effectively. Therefore, balancing act should be done between the efficiency and cost to reach.

The place to reach the target consumer should be Retail. The reasons for this should be

• It is new and technologically advanced product. The consumers need to have a touch and feel aspect to the product in order to personally see how the products should be. These kinds of products need to be visible and should allow consumers to try at retails outlets before purchasing.
• Retail is way to reach a wide range of consumers. It will be able to reach maximum potential consumers.
• Retail will provide a perfect balance between cost of outreach and efficiency of sales. Sales conversion ratio is likely to be highest in the retail form of sales.

There needs to be a special section in retail stores which will specifically house G RO Carry-on luggage. This will draw the attention among the potential target audience and will be excited to try out the products. A new section with a very good and catchy merchandising will move eyeballs and will lead to a higher number of trials. 

The aspects that need to looked into the promotion strategy are

• Special offers
• Advertising
• Endorsements
• User trials
• Direct Mailing
• Leaflets
• Free gifts
• Competition

Let us analyse the importance and relevance of each aspect in detail

• Special offers: As G RO is a new products, there is a necessity to provide special offers to drive initial sales. Offers like a discount of 10% should be able to drive sales.
• Advertising: In order to create an initial brand publicity and awareness, a good funding needs to go into advertising. Mass media like newspaper and Outdoor advertising should be used as these will reach the target audience in the most efficient way.
• Endorsements: Celebrity endorsements may be taken to create an initial marketing buzz for the product.
• User trials: Trial products should be kept at retail outlets so that people can try and give reviews. Limited trials should be kept for the first six months to garner a good PR.
• Direct Mailing: There is no need to direct mailing as this will be a time consuming and ineffective process.
• Leaflets: There is also no need to provide leaflets as a publicity aspect.
• Free gifts: Free gifts are not good for a long term perspective and as this is a premium product there is no need to push sell through free gifts.

The pricing strategies that need to be looked into are

• Skimming
• Predatory
• Penetration
• Psychological
• Loss leader
• Cost plus
• Premium

The pricing for G RO carry-on luggage has to be premium pricing. The reasons for this are

• This is a hedonistic product where the buyer feels elated by purchasing a product which gives a feeling of premium-ness. Reducing the price will degrade the premium-ness attached to the product.
• This is typically a low volume high margin product. Hence, if pricing is not premium, profits made would be sufficient to sustain operational and marketing costs.(Emerson)

Once we have defined the marketing strategy for R GO carry-on luggage, there is a need to define executional actions that would help us achieve those on-ground.

The following are the actions that need to be taken 

A marketing agency has to be hired who would be responsible for developing a 360 degree integrated marketing communication for G RO. This would define how much to communicate, what the content should be, what media channels and apertures do we need to use and what should be the return on marketing investment.

The areas to define will be

• Content of communication
• Media vehicles and apertures
• Return on marketing investment

Before testing out the entire marketing, it is imperative to test market the product in order to find out the effectiveness of the marketing mix. This would be a small geographical area where our target market resides and see how the product performs.

A test market in the city of Sydney for a period of one month and followed with slow expansion covering entire Australian market in six months.

A study needs to be done as to which retail outlets need to be tied up with for distribution of the product. As the product is in premium category, only high end retail outlets need to be targeted. 

References 

Rajagopal. (2016). Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. Sustainable Growth in Global Markets, 188-217. doi:10.1057/9781137525956_7

Selecting target markets and market segmentation. (n.d.). Marketing Your Practice: Creating Opportunities for Success., 18-28. doi:10.1037/10200-002

Wang, H. (n.d.). The effects of marketing mix on brand equity. doi:10.14711/thesis-b854880

Evans, M. (2003). Fragmenting markets: Implications for segmentation and targeting. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 2(3), 210-211. doi:10.1002/cb.102

Moutinho, L. (n.d.). Segmentation, targeting, positioning and strategic marketing. Strategic Management in Tourism., 121-166. doi:10.1079/9780851992822.0121

The Marketing Mix and the 4 Ps: Understanding How to Position Your Market Offering. 

Emerson, M. (n.d.). The Five Ps of Marketing: Product, Place, Promotion, Price, and Profit.