Essay: Marketing Mix And Target Market Analysis Of Red Bull And Lucozade Energy.

Target Market of Lucozade Energy and Red Bull

LO 1 Analyse the effectiveness of the marketing mix for any given company or brand.

LO 2 Demonstrate knowledge of STP  marketing planning process

You need to carry out in-depth research into the brand’s target market (who they are, their likes/dislikes, their levels of personal disposable income etc.) using market research databases – e.g. Mintel reports and TGI. You then need to look at the brands themselves, their brand values and competitive positioning in the market before going on to discuss their application of the 4Ps – product, price, place and promotion. The key to getting a good mark on this is to prepare a comparative analysis. Do not describe the brands in isolation – always look at the two together and explain why they do things differently.

This assignment should be based on secondary and observational research only. You are not required to carry out any form of primary research. You need to research the following:

1.Target Market

You need to develop a detailed target market profile for each brand using data sources such as Mintel, the companies’ own websites and other secondary sources. You need to think about age, gender, personal disposable income, social class, level of education, family life cycle, lifestyles, other brands they like, TV programmes they watch, hobbies etc.

2.Product /Brand

Using Levitt’s model of a brand, try to analyse your two selected brands (their shape, packaging, colour scheme etc.). How different are they at the functional and emotional level? What are the brand values that the companies are trying to portray? In addition, have a look at Aaker’s brand personality framework to see which personality type(s) each brand follows.

3.Price

You need to carry out some on-line and in-store research to establish a market price for each of the brands and any competing products. Display all this competitive pricing research in a table and draw conclusions about which pricing strategy they are adopting.

4.Place (Distribution)

You need to look at channel management. Which stores stock this product? Is it a mass market product where the company has maximised distribution outlets, or is it a luxury brand where distribution is deliberately limited? Explain your answer. If possible, take photos of the product in-store/on-line. What does this tell you about brand values?

You need to research their past methods of communication (e.g. cinema, TV, outdoor, print, social media, mobile, own website etc.). Which communication methods do they use to build their respective brands? – and how do they do this? How are they positioning themselves in the minds of target audiences? (E.g. affordable, luxury, healthy, socially conscious etc.)

THIS IS WRITTEN LAST (because it is a summary of your research) BUT IT APPEARS FIRST (before the contents page), in order to catch the attention of the reader and encourage them to read further. It should cover in one page or less:

Contents Page (Use the feature in Word to do this automatically)

This should be quite brief – it’s NOT a detailed coverage of a 100 years of corporate history. It should include the aim of the report and some background information on each of the chosen brands – I.E a brief description of the brands with useful data such as market share, market size and trends in sales, which you can find from the most recent Mintel reports as well as in the trade press.

Use sub-headings to make your report easier to follow. We suggest you adopt the following headings:

1.Comparison of Target Markets

2.Product - Evaluation of the Products and their Brand Values

3.Price - Evaluation of the Pricing Strategies Used

4.Place - Distribution of the Brands

5.Promotion – Communication of the Brands

You should try to put relevant raw data in the appendices with only a summary of the data in the body of the report. Every time you state a fact you must provide a referenced source for that fact (both in the text and in the reference list based on the Harvard referencing rules). XYZ Product Category Market Share; or if it’s a table, Product Category Market Share with a source written directly underneath and to the right of that table Mintel (2014).

This is where you provide some element of evaluation of your research findings.

• How has each brand applied the 4P’s?
• Why have they applied the 4P’s in this way?
• Which brand has been most successful in its application of the 4P’s?
• How could each of the brands improve their use of the 4P’s?

Target Market of Lucozade Energy and Red Bull

Red Bull is an Australian company of energy drink created in 1987. It solds the 6.302 billion cans all over the world in 2017. At the end of year 2017, it employed around 11,886 people over the 171 countries of the world. As compare to the year 2016, employment level has increased. It has created tagline “Red Bull gives you wings” is helping the company in increasing its customer base all over the world (Red Bull, 2017).  In spite of focusing on traditional approach of marketing, it has generated the awareness. On the other hand, Lucozade is manufactured by the Suntory, a Japanese company.” It was created as Glucozade in UK in the year 1927. In recent time, Lucozade is planning for its largest product launch. Through this launch, it will shake the “bottled water industry” by targeting the fitness-addicted people (Roderick, 2017). However, in the recent year, Lucozade has lost the title of biggest energy drinks of Britain. In the report, discussion is carries on the marketing mix and target market of Red Bull and Lucozade.

Lucozade energy drink is a brand that is engrossed and has great market presence. Through its product, it has targeted the young men between the age of 18 and 30. The brand has attempted the wider audience besides the sports market such as manual workers that consumes the Lucozade as the soft drink rather than taking it as sport energy drink. This is also the focus of its strategy. It has also targeted the university student by contacting with various universities. Due to this target market, it has budgeted the £2.2 million out of £5.5 million budget for the outdoor presence (Akgun, Keskin, Ayar, and Etlioglu, 2017). It has done this because target audience is highly mobile addicted as well as TV viewing. Mostly it has targeted the sports person, athletes or gym lovers who need such type of drinks to gain some energy. The schedule on TV has programmed for the 16 to 34 year audiences. Therefore, its main target is to boost the energy of younger generation people in order to achieve their daily goals by taking energy drink.

As compare to Lucozade Energy, Red Bull has targeted the people between the age of 16 and 30 years. These contain the major customer base of the company. Besides this, it has also targeted the middle age and elder people by serving zero calorie drink (Roderick, 2017). Therefore, it has mainly targeted the male but females are also targeted. Usually those people afford the band that has good disposable income. Overall, working professions, students, athletes, and sports persons are targeted. Based on lifestyle segmentation, it targeted the working class people, business class, and students. In terms of personality and occasion, it targeted those who are open to experiences and can use the product regularly as well as on special occasion (Lin, Swarna and Bruning, 2017). hrough its tagline, it is clear that it wanted to give the wings to customer by using its energy drink. In various countries and parts of the world, it serves its product. Red Bull is one of the biggest energy drink seller in the world by its existence in 171 countries. For targeting all these, it uses various promotional strategies by taking sponsorship of inspired personalities, music events, and sports person with the high media coverage.  Among all the strategies, marketing strategy is its core strategy

Marketing Mix of Lucozade Energy

Product- Being the market leader, Red Bull has kept its product mix too simple. In order to bring some changes, it has added various flavours that suit the varied customers taste and needs. In this way, it has adopted the product mix strategy. As per Levitt’s model, it has four steps. The flavours of Red Bull are Coconut, Blueberry, Tropical fruits, Cranberry and Kiwi. In today’s time, sugar free drinks are continuously becoming the need of customers (Richter, 2013). Therefore, to meet their needs, it also comes up with sugar free drinks. Besides this, it also has drink mixers by adding the non-alcoholic ingredients in cocktails and mixed drinks. As compare to Red Bull, Lucozade Energy has four product lines including Lucozade energy, Lucozade Alert, Lucozade, and Lucozade sport. It was launched to give the energy boost to the people. As per Levitt’s model, it has six flavours of Apple, Orange, Lemon, Original, Tropical, and Cherry. It is specially designed for gym goers and exercisers. All the product line of Lucozade Energy serves the different purpose. As Lucozade Alert is made to sharpen the metal level of people and it is of low calorie. Lucozade Sport was designed to meet the needs of football player, athletes, as well as sports lover.

Price- Red Bull has various competitors like Tzinga, Rockstar, Cloud 9, Monster, Gatorade, and KS. By giving its best service, it is market leader. Due to its dominant position in market and high quality, it charges premium prices for many of its products (Fairchild, Broughton and Morgan, 2017). East access to customers, high quality and massive awareness of brand, it charges premium price for its products. Even though it charges premium prices for its products, customers are ready to pay for them. Due to loyalty also, customers are willing to pay higher prices for its products. As compare to Red Bull, Lucozade Energy also gained the various experience about reducing the cost of its products. Therefore, it has adopted the low cost pricing strategy as compare to Red Bull. However, the prices of Lucozade Energy are somewhat high as compare to market average. It has helped the brand in getting high quality image. It has also faced many disadvantages after the global recession due to its pricing strategy. At this time, many customers went for getting cheaper products due to the diminishing purchasing power. When the growth of economy continues to recover, it has also restored the growth patterns.

Marketing Mix of Red Bull

Place- Red Bull is serving it products in various parts of the country. It has market presence over 171 countries. From a report, it is founded that Red Bull is able to sell about 60 billion cans by the year 2018 (Red Bull, 2017). Due to its easy availability in nightclubs, supermarkets and grocery stores, it is successful going in the market. In addition, Red Bull has special refrigerators that attracts the customer to buy its energy drinks when they go in bar as well as grocery. It products also available online where customers can buy its product in single piece or in bulk. As compare to Red Bull, Lucozade Energy started from UK has over 15 countries approach. It is getting recognized as household name in various parts of the world. To ensure the supply on time, it has active team to serve its products in hypermarkets, shopping malls, supermarkets and other outlets. It has also link with several universities to stock its product in their canteens. In this way, customers are not required to go extra miles in order to consume its product. Besides this, Lucozade Energy also has effective distribution system that helps in satisfying its customers for its brand.

Promotion- In order to promote its products, Red Bull spends huge amount of money. For creating it top most brands in the mind of customers, it spends millions of dollars. Foe this, it uses mix of BTl, ATl as well as digital channels for crating the awareness among customers all over the world. The Red Bull that helps it in communicating with customers successfully cracked the art of storytelling (Lin, Swarna and Bruning, 2017). The marketing campaign of Red Channel with tagline “Red Bull gives you Wings” helps it in successfully getting into the mind of customers. It has given the best example how a better content marketing can help to achieve the greater heights. In comparison with Red Bull, Lucozade uses various components of marketing process. It believes that market needs to be firstly aware its product. For ensuring this, it promotes its product through promotional campaigns, advertisements, and direct selling. All the advertisement is done through newspapers, televisions, and magazines (Mullin, 2018). It also do the advertisement on social media sites in order to target the younger generation.an initiative taken by Spotify and Lucozade is best example of this that is popular among the youth.

Conclusion

In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that Red Bull is one of the biggest energy Drink Company all over the world. In recent time, both the companies are growing well due to increasing fitness concern of people. In terms of Red Bull, Lucozade is serving its products in the fewer countries. Therefore, it is recommended to Lucozade to increase its market base by initiating its several strategies. Besides this, Red Bull has grown well in the year 2017. Therefore, it can also adopt add various products in its product line for gaining more competitive advantage for its products.

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Fairchild, R.M., Broughton, D. and Morgan, M.Z. (2017) Knowledge of and attitudes to sports drinks of adolescents living in South Wales, UK. British dental journal, 222(12), p.931.

Lin, H.C., Swarna, H. and Bruning, P.F. (2017) Taking a global view on brand post popularity: Six social media brand post practices for global markets. Business Horizons, 60(5), pp.621-633.

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Mullin, R. (2018) Promotional marketing. United Kingdom: Routledge.

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Red Bull. (2017) Wings when you need them. [online] Available from: https://energydrink-us.redbull.com/en/red-bull-energy-drink [accessed 5/12/18].

Richter, F. (2013) Red Bull is the No. 1 Brand on YouTube. [online] Available from: https://www.statista.com/chartoftheday/ [accessed 5/12/18].

Roderick, L. (2017) Lucozade plots biggest ever product launch as it enters water market. [online] Available from: https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/08/02/lucozade-water-market-launch/ [accessed 5/12/18].