Impact Of Technology On Consumer Behaviour: Digital Marketing Essay For Countdown Supermarkets.

1. Analyse the impact of technology on consumer behaviour.
2. Critically assess and apply marketing research methods in digital settings.
3. Design and propose a marketing campaign for an organisation that integrates traditional and digital communication strategies. 

Marketing forms an essential aspect of the organization and any firm who is operating in the competitive business environment needs to ensure that they are successfully able to market their products in front of the consumer audience so that they are easily able to ensure that their vision and mission is achieved and that the revenues of the organization are increase considerably (Wright, Paroutis & Blettner, 2013).  With the advent of technology, the digital marketing domain has become fairly popular and due to this reason, it has become highly important for any organization to implement effective digital marketing strategies.

The primary aim of the given report is to present a digital marketing program for the chosen organization. The organization which has been chosen for the purpose of analysis is the Countdown supermarkets as present in New Zealand. The report will be following a systematized format whereby a brief information about the organization will be followed by the Situational Analysis. This will then be followed by the details of the campaign and the monitoring and evaluation campaigns. Various theoretical concepts along with the practical examples shall be provided.

The company chosen for the given assignment is the Countdown brand and the company is a full service supermarket chain as well as subsidiary as present in the Woolworths New Zealand.  The countdown stores are quite large in nature and more than the size of an average New Zealand Supermarket. The first Countdown store was opened in 1981 and by 2017, there have been around 200 stores present (Countdown.co.nz ,2018). The organization faces rivalry from Four Square chain. The organization serves more than 2.5 million customers every week and they are committed towards providing value, choice as well as convenience to the customers. The company has employed more than 18000 team members and the customers are provided with a choice to make use of more than 20000 different products in each of the stores (Zott & Amit, 2013).  The organization has more than two fresh food hubs from where the deliveries are made in order to keep the stocks in the stores stocked.

The company has been doing well since various years however, itch the advent of technology, it now needs to ensure that it engages in successful digital marketing strategies in order to be able to capture the needs of the customers whose needs have been changing considerably (Vinerean et al., 2013).

The situational analysis of the Countdown stores will be making use of various facts and details like the brand perception, customer insights, capabilities and resources along with making use of strategic management tools like Pestle Analysis and SWOT analysis which shall help the company in analyzing the main driving factors of the Digital marketing campaign.

The PEST analysis looks after four main dimensions ranging from Political, Socio-Cultural, economical and the technological aspect.

Political Impacts

The political impacts range from various governmental rules and regulations which limits an organization or supports it (Stone & Woodcock, 2014). The Commerce commission in New Zealand has restricted the anti-competitive pricing behavior of Countdown for the supply of Kiwi and moreover, the organization is required to follow other rules and legislative laws as well.

Situational analysis

Economic Impacts

The organization is a leading supermarket firm in New Zealand and has expanded its business in various parts of the country. However, it needs to take into consideration the fiscal as well as the taxation policies of the firm. Moreover other factors like employment and education level for the campaigns have to be considered as well. Countdown has used the competitive strategy in order to counter the acquisition and merger strategy as used by various organizations.

Social Impacts

The socio cultural factors relate to the values, behavior and systems of the target audience and tend to underline the demand if the target audience and their preferences, According to Ryan (2016), as per a survey being conducted, the consumers expect certain changes regarding the enhancement of value and own brand products. They prefer better and new designs for them so that the customer selection becomes easy. Hence, other than this, the culture and value of the audience needs to be understood.

Technological Impacts

All organizations are required to keep up with the technological advancement and as a result of this, the countdown stores have launched a new application for shopping which makes marketing more convenient. It has also launched a digital shopping application which makes scanning, storing information and the use of the QR Scanners easier (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). This helps the firm to remain in touch with its target audience and engage in a promotional relationship with them using promotions, prices, bonus points and information about loyalty card.

The SWOT Analysis is another critical tool which is widely used for evaluation and helps in the understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the firm.

Strengths

The strengths can be defined as the essential components of a firm which help it in facing future considerations. The strengths of the Countdown store is as follows:

• Large number of stores in the country
• Presence of distribution centers
• Strong supply chain
• The online food campaign in Auckland
• Online shopping application (Stephen, 2016).
• .Strong promotional means like customized offerings and loyalty cards
• Sustainable activities

Weakness

The weaknesses of the organization can be described as the components of it which might get the firm into trouble. The countdown stores have faced potential challenges due to the breakdown of the EFTPOS machines and hence, the different customers faced issues with respect to the billing and checkout (Countdown.co.nz, 2018). Moreover, the company lacks in the marketing segment and needs a better strategy to attract the designated audience.

Opportunity

An opportunity can be described as a presence of such a factor in the external environment of the organization which if sustained can prove to be a competitive advantage of the firm in the long run (Merat & Bo, 2013). The different opportunities which Countdown supermarkets can abide by are the expansion and diversification of their base by generating and investment in fields like pharmacy. This new division will assist it in achieving a competitive advantage and also ensure real growth for the firm.

Threat

A threat can be described as the presence of a factor which if not strategized for may lead to issues in the firm. Recently, in New Zealand there have been issues related to the positing of infant and food products which can have an impact on that section of the firm (Park et al., 2015). Moreover, for this reason, the firm is required to take adequate measures like focusing on enhancing sectary and limiting the use of a CCTB surveillance.

PEST Analysis

Company

The company has been involved in the supermarket grocery retail in the country of New Zealand since a long period of time and due to this, it has been successful. The company has a large range of products to offer to the customers and governs under the culture of Woolworths. The primary aim of Countdown is to become the number one shopping solution in New Zealand.

Collaborators

The suppliers of the firm are locally placed suppliers in Australia and some of the other companies from which Woolworths arranges it suppliers (Royle & Laing, 2014). Moreover, the company has its own distribution centers which work for the steady stocking of the inventory in the stores.

Customers

The organization serves more than 2.5 million customers in a week and the market size of the customers for countdown is very high in number (Martinsuo, 2013). Due to the brand name of Woolworths as attached to the company, the brand is popular in New Zealand.

Competitors

The different competitors of the Countdown are New World, Park n Save, Four square and other related firms. Although these companies have their popularity, Countdown has the largest share.

Climate

The climate has been analyzed using the PEST Analysis and it can be stated that the company need to ensure it follows a healthy competitive policy and provides customized packaging to the customers.

The internal capabilities and resources of the Countdown organization comprise of its brand reputation, excellent supply chain and the top management. Moreover being a subsidiary it also enjoys other relevant advantages.  Countdown is known to have one of the most effective supply chains in New Zealand and as a result of this it has been successfully able to attract the designated target audience and to ensure that their stores are well stocked at any point of time so that the customers do not face any inconvenience in future (Countdown.co.nz ,2018).. Moreover, as the Countdown organization is under the brand name of Woolworths, the organization enjoys a popular brand name and a large majority of the customers flock to the stores because of it. It is stated to have a repute brand value. Lastly, the top management of the firm is also quite effective in nature and have formed well advanced strategies to ensure the success of the organization in the long run.

The campaign aim and objectives can be described as those set of factors which guide the course of the campaign and help the organization in deciding the path which has to be followed by them. The aims and objectives of the digital marketing campaign are given as follows:

1. To gain higher revenue

The campaign will go a long way in helping the Countdown organization to earn a higher revenue as it will attract more sales for the organization.

2. To attract more customers

The campaign aims to attract a larger audience for the organization and convert customer by convincing them to buy the products of the organization.

3. To increase profits

The aim is to increase the profit as well. If the organization engages in higher sales, it will be able to attract a higher revenue which can lead to increased profits (Luo & Zhang, 2013).

4. To promote the brand name of the firm

SWOT Analysis

The primary aim of the campaign is to spread awareness about the offerings about the company and to make the brand name of the firm popular.

5. To increase the use of its mobile application which would assist in bringing about automation in its activities.

Regular customers: These are the customers who generally shop with the organization and have been associated with the Countdown stores since a long period of time and believe in ensuring that the organization offers customized goods for them.

Restaurants: There are various restaurants present in New Zealand, who tend to act as customers of the Countdown organization and tend to buy the inventories for their stores.

Homemakers: Various customers tend to purchase the goods for their own convenience and for their household thereby acting as a primary customer.

The key messages of the campaign for the organization will be as follows:

Customized products at reasonable prices!

The main highlight of the Countdown store is that it is able to prepare customized products as per the convenience of the target audience and hence, the campaign through this digital marketing campaign wants to send out the message that the stores are ready to prepare customized items for the products for regular prices (Kireyev, Pauwels & Gupta, 2016)..

The strategy as used by Countdown with respect to the campaign is as follows:

AIDA Model

Awareness: The first step of the campaign is to create awareness among the customers of the products and services being sold to the customers. The customers of the organization are required to be provided information about the offerings being made.

Interest: This step involves attracting the customers who have been called for in the beginning and showing them that the organization is concerned with the requirements of the customers in the long run.

Desire:  The third stem is to create desire among the users of the campaign. This step comes after the Interest phase. Moreover, after this is done the companies aim to provide specific information to the different users of the products.

Action: The next step of the campaign involved when the customers purchase the products of the organization (Kritzinger & Weideman, 2013). This means that, once the valuable information like price, product and other aspects are given to the selected buyer.

The digital marketing campaign will be carried on for a period of three months. The intensity of the particular campaign will remain the same throughout but for the purpose of measurement and success metrics, the time drama as chosen is three months.

The digital marketing tool and channel tends to form an essential aspect of the marketing campaign and it tends to go a long way in making the organization understand about the different tools which they should be using and the channel which should be rightfully adopted by the organization in order to reach out to the designated target audience:

The search engine optimization has greatly evolved. This involves creating highly engaging content and optimizing the pages which are present to guarantee that the high level keywords are used in the business and that when a customer will be searching for those keywords, then, the website of the company should be visible to the customers (King, Abrahams & Ragsdale, 2015). When searched on Google, the website of the company needs to be the first aspect that should be visible to the customers. For countdown, the optimum key words should be grocery, home products, customized packaging, New Zealand grocery, Woolworths and others. When the customers will be searching for these keywords then they will be shown the website of the Countdown.

5C Analysis

The social media marketing medium forms an essential aspect of the digital marketing channel which will be used by the Countdown organization (Lasserre, 2017).  The social media has become one of the most important used mediums by the customers and hence, for this purpose, Countdown will be making use of the social media medium so that it is easily able to ensure the success of the organization.

Facebook is a social networking channel and hence, used by a large number of users. For this purpose, Countdown has selected Facebook as a channel to carry out the social media and digital campaign (Killoran, 2013). The store will be advertising using its own page b posting videos, potters, shopping links and other related mediums to attract the audience.

Twitter

The twitter is another popular channel which will be used by the Countdown. The organization will be tweeting about its offers, the response received at the stores and other popular means of communication in order to reach out to the designated audiences.

The social media marketing as a channel makes the entire campaign cheaper and popular as well.

The mobile advertising tends to form an essential part of the digital campaign. Mobile in today’s age can be described as a device which is used by all customers. Hence, countdown will be sending text messages to the different customers and will be attracting the audiences through push notifications and mobile poser and video advertising (Kee & Yazdanifard, 2015).

The pay per click advertising technique tends to assist the organization to increase the traffic towards a website and works in a similar manner to that of the SEO. In this mechanism any key term having been typed by the customer would lead them to the particular advertisement in order to ensure that they get directed towards the website of the company and enables the pop ads as well.

Email marketing is another popular technique as having been used by various organizations. In the email marketing technique, the organization tends to send out various newsletters and other essential adverts to the company which then enables them to attract the designated target audience (Kannan, 2017). Countdown can also use email marketing as a strategy under their digital marketing campaign in order to ensure the success of the campaign (Sahni, Wheeler & Chintagunta, 2018).

The countdown stores can also make use of published content, case studies, blog , testimonials, articles as well as white papers in order to increase the authority of the company`s website but also help the consumers to see the firm from a lifestyle perspective (Bull et al., 2016). When the customers will view that the company is highly concerned about the lifestyle of the consumers as well, they will be encouraged towards the conversations.

The affiliate marketing can be stated to be a form of advertising which attracts the consumers by making a contract with various influencers who have a large following and a positive response towards their blogs and ads (Kalkan & Bozkurt, 2013). The performance based marketing ends to act very good for the firm and hence, the Countdown can make us of this medium.

A campaign theme can be rightfully described as the sentence which links the issues of the organization together and differentiates it from that of the competitors by thereby contrasting them. A fair campaigning theme can be described as the one which contrasts.  The campaign these forms an essential aspect of the campaigning and assists it by making it more successful in nature. The theme of the campaign of Countdown simply involves why the store is running the campaign. The company can keep the theme as creating awareness among the customers about the customized products being offered by the company at reasonable prices. The various mediums used will be social media channel, mobile advertising, television advertising and other digital channels, whereby the total theme will remain the same (Alkhafaji & Nelson, 2013).  The countdown store will aim to portray that they understand the needs of the customers and their convenience is their top priority. Moreover, for this purpose, the store will be providing new packages and aim to make different packages of different sizes so that they are easily able to sell the themes of the campaign to the different consumers.

The measurement of the effectiveness of the digital marketing campaign tends to form a crucial aspect of the organization. Any company who leads out a digital marketing campaign is required to measure the effectiveness of the campaign using certain tools and procedures. This helps in understanding the response which the audiences have given towards the firm and also the response as received by the audience. There are various tools which are available to measure the effectiveness of the digital marketing campaign.

• Google Analytics –The Google analytics can be described as a major player in the search engine domain and it can be described as one of the most popular ways to measure the success of the campaigns. The Countdown organization can open a GA account and with the help of it the firm can establish, track and measure the traffic as received on the designated website (Abushova, Burova & Suloeva, 2016). Moreover, the origin of the given traffic can also be tracked. Hence, through the given measurement tool, Countdown will be able to track if the digital campaign as given by the firm has been successful or not.  
• AWR Cloud– The AWR cloud is another platform which can be used by the Countdown firm in order to understand and receive the ranking of the key words which the firm has been targeting (Grant, 2016).  Moreover, this will help the firm to understand the effectiveness of the website by understanding whether the digital marketing campaign has been successful or not.

The success metrics can be rightfully described as the quantitative as well as qualitative metrics which helps in understanding whether the designated organization, Countdown has been successful in its domain or not. Some of the metrics which can be used by the company has been given as follows:

Social traffic: The social traffic can be used as a measure in order to understand the contents of the campaign and check the success of the effectiveness of the in platform content. Moreover, the effectiveness and the content of the websites can also be measured by countdown.

Direct traffic: The direct traffic helps in understanding different positional sources to understand the effectiveness of the digital marketing campaign on various platforms like the email marketing, websites, and social media platform like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as well (Hahn, 2013). Although the direct traffic measurement does not give enough information about the effectiveness of the content posted but it provides adequate data about the different dimensions of the brand awareness over a range of time.

New visitors: The new visitor’s metrics helps in understanding how many visitors have been visiting the website after a particular point of time during the advertising campaign. The new visitor’s traffic also act as a good measure for other measures like referral traffic and social traffic.

Increase in revenue: The increase in the revenue aspect stands as a clear indication of the success of a digital marketing campaign as it assists in the understanding whether Countdown is being successful in ensuring that their campaign hit the correct target market or not (Johnson, 2016).  

Returning visitors: This measure helps in understanding whether the same visitors have been repeated or not.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the given analysis of the direct marketing campaign it can be stated that direct marketing campaign forms an essential aspect of the organization and any organization which wants to succeed in the dynamic yet complex business environment needs to ensure that, it lays down an effective digital marketing campaign in order to achieve its specific objectives. The given report followed a structured format whereby the digital marketing campaign of Countdown was presented and was followed by the situational analysis. This was followed by the campaigning details, budgets, themes as well as measurement metrics. Moreover, the different tools and channels to measure the effectiveness of the organization in terms of its digital marketing campaign has been stated.

References

Abushova, E., Burova, E. & Suloeva, S., (2016). Strategic analysis in telecommunication project management system. In Internet of Things, Smart Spaces, and Next Generation Networks and Systems (pp. 76-84). Springer, Cham.

Alkhafaji, A. & Nelson, R.A., (2013). Strategic management: formulation, implementation, and control in a dynamic environment. Routledge.

Bull, J.W., Jobstvogt, N., Böhnke-Henrichs, A., Mascarenhas, A., Sitas, N., Baulcomb, C., Lambini, C.K., Rawlins, M., Baral, H., Zähringer, J. & Carter-Silk, E., (2016). Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A SWOT analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem services, 17, pp.99-111.

Countdown.co.nz (2018). Countdown - New Zealand's Leading Supermarket Brand Retrieved from https://www.countdown.co.nz/

Grant, R.M., (2016). Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Hahn, R., (2013). ISO 26000 and the standardization of strategic management processes for sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Business Strategy and the Environment, 22(7), pp.442-455.

Johnson, G., (2016). Exploring strategy: text and cases. Pearson Education.

Kalkan, A. & Bozkurt, Ö.Ç., (2013). The choice and use of strategic planning tools and techniques in Turkish SMEs according to attitudes of executives. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 99, pp.1016-1025.

Kannan, P.K., (2017). Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), pp.22-45.

Kee, A.W.A. & Yazdanifard, R., (2015). The review of content marketing as a new trend in marketing practices. International Journal of Management, Accounting and Economics, 2(9), pp.1055-1064.

Killoran, J.B., (2013). How to use search engine optimization techniques to increase website visibility. IEEE Transactions on professional communication, 56(1), pp.50-66.

King, M.A., Abrahams, A.S. & Ragsdale, C.T., (2015). Ensemble learning methods for pay-per-click campaign management. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(10), pp.4818-4829.

Kireyev, P., Pauwels, K. & Gupta, S., (2016). Do display ads influence search? Attribution and dynamics in online advertising. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(3), pp.475-490.

Kritzinger, W.T. & Weideman, M., (2013). Search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing strategies. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 23(3), pp.273-286.

Lasserre, P., (2017). Global strategic management. Palgrave.

Luo, X. & Zhang, J., (2013). How do consumer buzz and traffic in social media marketing predict the value of the firm?. Journal of Management Information Systems, 30(2), pp.213-238.

Martinsuo, M., (2013). Project portfolio management in practice and in context. International Journal of Project Management, 31(6), pp.794-803.

Merat, A. & Bo, D., (2013). Strategic analysis of knowledge firms: The links between knowledge management and leadership. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(1), pp.3-15.

Park, L.S., Yu, J., Yu, S. & Liao, L., BrightEdge Technologies Inc, (2015). Search engine optimization for category specific search results. U.S. Patent 9,116,994.

Royle, J. & Laing, A., (2014). The digital marketing skills gap: Developing a Digital Marketer Model for the communication industries. International Journal of Information Management, 34(2), pp.65-73.

Ryan, D., (2016). Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.

Sahni, N.S., Wheeler, S.C. & Chintagunta, P., (2018). Personalization in Email Marketing: The Role of Noninformative Advertising Content. Marketing Science, 37(2), pp.236-258.

Stephen, A.T., (2016). The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, pp.17-21.

Stone, M.D. & Woodcock, N.D., (2014). Interactive, direct and digital marketing: A future that depends on better use of business intelligence. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 8(1), pp.4-17.

Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. & Veríssimo, J.M.C., (2014). Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.

Vinerean, S., Cetina, I., Dumitrescu, L. & Tichindelean, M., (2013). The effects of social media marketing on online consumer behavior. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(14), p.66.

Wright, R.P., Paroutis, S.E. & Blettner, D.P., (2013). How useful are the strategic tools we teach in business schools?. Journal of Management Studies, 50(1), pp.92-125.

Zott, C. & Amit, R., (2013). The business model: A theoretically anchored robust construct for strategic analysis. Strategic Organization, 11(4), pp.403-411.