Marketing Mix Strategy For Sushi Sushi: Essay On Targeting Health-Conscious Customers.

Discuss about the MMk101 Marketing Strategy of Sushi Sushi.

Marketing mix of an organization is critical to the success of the business. This marketing mix highlights upon the brand’s product, price, promotion and place (Riaz & Tanveer, 2012). The strategies for the three elements of the marketing mix that are critical to the success of Sushi Sushi within the new target segment are as below:

The product of the marketing mix for Sushi Sushi is the predominant offering by the brand. For the new target market, Sushi Sushi restaurant must venture into designing their menu to adopt to a healthier menu. It is essential for the brand to ensure the quality and the hygiene of the product offered in order to effectively cater to the target market of the business. The product offered by any brand can be described based on three levels. These include the core product, the actual product and the augmented product (Kolb, 2015).

Core Product: The core product offered by Sushi Sushi is food. It enables people to satiate their hunger. The core benefit of the product is the nutrient content received from the product.

Actual product: The actual product offered by the brand includes the ambience of the outlet as well as the facility of free delivery up to 10km of the restaurant. When delivered, the food is packaged effectively in order to remain hot and fresh by the time it reaches the customers. The packaging of the product forms an important part of the actual product.

The store ambience is elegant yet very comforting. The chefs and the delivery executives too must be fast and efficient in order to effectively serve the target market. These are the actual needs of the customers. No customer would be comfortable waiting for food for a long period of time. Maintaining a high level of food quality and hygiene level is an absolute must. These are certain factors of the product that may not add to the excellence of the product or create demand but their absence will surely lead to customer dissatisfaction.

Augmented product: Augmented product is the intangible part of the product or the value offered by the product (Schleenbecker & Hamm, 2013). For the new target market of Sushi Sushi, the additional value offered by the brand includes the health benefits that would be derived out of the food served at the restaurant. The increasing health consciousness among people would make the product more valuable. The menu would also include the calorie content and percentage of fat, protein, vitamin and calcium in the product. This is surely an added advantage for people who are obeying a healthy diet and monitoring their calorie intake.

Positioning Statement

After introducing a new product for a new target market, it is essential to promote that product. Promotions of the product assist the brand in reaching out to a wide customer segment. The following strategies for promotion are recommended to the brand:

Digital marketing: Digital marketing refers to the promotion of a particular brand through various digital platforms (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2016). Through digital marketing a brand can enhance their reach and optimize their search on various search engines including Yahoo, Google, UC browser’s search engine. Digital marketing strategies of the brand would primarily include search engine optimization and marketing. These strategies would help Sushi Sushi to enhance traffic on their website, increase overall brand awareness, reach out to targeted customers using extensive data analytics and at the same time improve their TOMA (Top of mind awareness) score.

Social media marketing: Social media marketing involves the process of promotion of a particular brand through social media channels including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and even Snapchat (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Sushi Sushi must actively promote their new products to the desired target market. Sushi Sushi must ensure that they actively conduct social listening. This refers to the ability of a brand to be aware and respond to every mention of the brand on social media by existing or potential stakeholders. This will enhance the restaurant’s reach and improve their positioning in the market.

Billboards and Hoardings: Sushi Sushi must also put creative and innovative billboards across different locations in order to enhance the awareness of passerby citizens about the new offerings of the product as well as the new target market that the brand wishes to cater to. Placing creative billboards grab passenger attention and hence lead to increased reach of the brand in the minds of consumers (Goldfarb & Tucker, 2011). The billboards can also be effectively placed to set the right positioning of the brand in the minds of its consumers (Durmaz, 2015).

Television advertisments: This is a traditional form of advertisement that is extremely effective. Creatively curated television advertisements can not only result in improved awareness but can also assist in creating demand for the product (Boyland & Halford, 2013). Sushi Sushi must ensure that the television ads are broadcasted on leading television channels and at the most appropriate time in order to enhance TRP of the ad and hence leading to improved reach.

Relationship marketing: In order to market the product based on the relationships of the brand, Sushi Sushi must tie up with gyms and health centers. A small discount could be offered to members of these health centers. Existing customers must be targeted through email marketing. Loyalty rewards must also be awarded to customers who are frequent visitors. This would lead to increased footfall as well as a high number of repeat purchases from the brand (Peck et. al., 2013).

Product Strategies for the New Target Market

Price skimming strategy refers to the process of pricing a product relatively higher than the market price in order to set a positive positioning of the brand and recovering costs (Spann et. al., 2014). Once the brand awareness and reach increases, the price of the product is slowly reduced in order to target another target segment. This strategy has proven to be successful while introducing new products in the market especially when the competition is less (Shavandi & Zare, 2013). Sushi Sushi must adopt this strategy in order to ensure that the brand reach enhances, brand positioning is defined and acceptance to the product increases.

Price skimming strategy initially aims to target higher income groups and earn a premium brand status. Once this has been achieved, this strategy allows the brand to reach out to lower income groups with the same positioning and enhance their target market as well as reach. The first phase of the strategy creates a demand for the product and the second phase of the brand increases the markets targeted by the brand.

Conclusion and Implications

Sushi Sushi is a well-established brand. This report highlights upon the marketing mix of the brand as it aims to target a new customer segment. This segment involves health conscious people. This strategic move has been adopted considering the increasing health consciousness among the people.

The first marketing mix element is the Product. Sushi Sushi offers food as its core product, great taste, hygiene and delivery facility as its actual product and health consciousness and awareness as its augmented product.

The second marketing mix element of the brand is Promotion. Sushi Sushi must adopt to digital marketing, social media marketing, television advertisments, hoardings and relationship marketing strategies to promote their product and enhance brand awareness.

The last marketing mix discussed in the report highlights the price skimming strategy which is recommended to Sushi Sushi in order to establish a premium positioning of the brand and enhance the brand’s reach.

All these marketing mix recommendations would have various implications including increased reach, stable positioning, entry to newer target markets, enhanced demand and in turn growing revenues for the brand. Appropriate identification of the marketing mix elements clarifies the brand’s goals and enables businesses to enhance their reach.

References

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education. India.

Boyland, E.J. and Halford, J.C., 2013. Television advertising and branding. Effects on eating behaviour and food preferences in children. Appetite, 62, pp.236-241.

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2016. Digital marketing. Prentice Hall.

Durmaz, Y., 2011. A theoretical approach to the concept of advertising in marketing. International Journal Economic Research.[23 Januari 2015].

Goldfarb, A. and Tucker, C., 2011. Substitution between offline and online advertising markets. Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 7(1), pp.37-44.

Kolb, B.M., 2015. Entrepreneurship for the creative and cultural industries. Routledge. United Kingdom.

Peck, H., Christopher, M., Clark, M. and Payne, A., 2013. Relationship marketing. Taylor & Francis.

Riaz, W. and Tanveer, A., 2012. Marketing mix, not branding. Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 1(11), pp.43-52.

Schleenbecker, R. and Hamm, U., 2013. Consumers’ perception of organic product characteristics. A review. Appetite, 71, pp.420-429.

Shavandi, H. and Zare, A.G., 2013. Analyzing the price skimming strategy for new product pricing. Scientia Iranica. Transaction E, Industrial Engineering, 20(6), p.2099.

Spann, M., Fischer, M. and Tellis, G.J., 2014. Skimming or penetration? Strategic dynamic pricing for new products. Marketing Science, 34(2), pp.235-249.

Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage. United Kingdom.