David's Tea: Target Customers, Loyalty Strategies, Essay.

Discuss about the Retail Sales for Journal of Marketing Communications.

David’s Tea will help in providing the local upper and middle class community an effective place to socialize. The customers will be facilitated to indulge with different varieties of fine teas. The people will also find varieties of loose teas to gift their friends and family. This would be unique present as souvenirs of their holidays. For tourists, David’s Tea will prove to be a destination centre while being in town. It would be a break from the shopping and also be a warm-up visit. The potential customers will be glad to pay the premium price for the product in exchange of great taste, high quality and sense of prestige that they are going to receive.

Higher prices for the few of the teas would definitely lead to increase the sales of the tea. As customers eagerly accept the idea that higher prices means higher quality of tea. The customers want to buy only the best (Jaworsk). The audience are highly educated enough to know the subtle differences. In the recent times, the American tea market is rapidly increasing. The sales of tea have increased up to 165% since the year 1990. The number of shops selling loose tea has also increased to about 200 shops.

The interest of American people in the tea business is also to a great extent depending on the increase in the proliferation of coffee shops. The working segment of America has a common belief that hot beverages are affordable luxuries. Moreover, fashion within the country is always on the move (Guèvremont and Grohmann). Fancy coffee drinks is so widely accepted worldwide that now people in America are looking for more unique and new treat to enjoy. Hence, the target markets are those consumers, who have been turning towards tea as the more affordable and natural or original luxury as compared to coffee.

In the gourmet teahouse segment, competition mostly depends on the skilled tea tenders, education and cultivation of loyal consumer base. Previously the consumer used to have teabags and various other low quality and tea dust offerings from the grocery stores. The target customers are amazed with the range of textures, tastes and fragrance from the high and real quality tea.

Tea Drinkers: committed tea drinkers always choose quality over convenience and price. The customers seek out fresh whole leaf as well as tippy varietals in the area. The customers also drive to a large extent to buy quality loose teas so that they bring home with them (Ruiz and Kowalkowski).

Loyalty strategies

Comestible gift buyers: in the recent times, the people want something different to gift their friends and family. In earlier times, peoples used to gift local cheeses and organic meats to their families and friends. Couples and teenagers looks for unique and different items from standard boutiques. Instead of some cheap box of chocolates they want something more indulgent.

Tourists: the tourist has variety of reasons for visiting any particular place. The tourist often seeks high-quality foods, gifts, beverages and service. The consumer prefers small-scale, local businesses to larger chains (Gummesson, Kuusele and Närvänen). In addition to this, the consumers also want to be highly assured about the quality. Once such tourist or visitors tries the tea from the David’s tea would definitely does not want to return.

New tea drinkers who never had nice flavored tea are the other potential customers of David’s Tea. Moreover, people pursuing healthy lifestyle are also the other potential customers that are to be acquired by the Company.

The communication and marketing strategy of the David’s Tea need to accomplish two major considerations. This includes making the target customers aware about the David’s Tea location and secondly educating the potential customers about the company. Through advertisement in the food sections and “entrée” of all the local papers within the radius of 30 miles will help the people to effectively communicate about the quality of the tea (Nobre and Silva). Organizing flyers in the coffeehouses and grocery stores is also a very useful idea. Advertisement in the local magazines also helps Fairfield review and Westchester Magazines. The socializers should be made the potential customers so that they get appeal by the sense of its good taste and sense of prestige (Srivastava). In the local market, women are targeted who organizes social gatherings and other fun loving people.

The tea should be promoted with the help of local churches and women’s organization. Monthly ‘tea tasting’ campaign should be launched with different kinds of themes each month. Coupons in the local newspaper for the special tea packages are also useful. Flyers in the local salons, boutiques and restaurants are also useful. A press release in the local newspaper that includes gift suggestion is also effective in communicating the local people about the variety of tea.

In addition to the extensive menu describing varieties of teas, a ‘tea profile’ card for the new tea drinkers and customer’s helps in broaden the customer’s tea experience. The card would include questions related to the consumer taste preferences. Every week ‘tea testing’ plates is offered to the loyal customers. These plates will therefore allow the customers to taste small cups of different labeled tea to provide maximum satisfaction to their customers.

Acquisition of new customers

David’s Tea should develop a strong lead so that all the employees clearly understand the management techniques. It is important for the organization to effectively install a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This helps in capturing information about the relevant interactions with the prospects and customers. People often hear about the company and its products and services from the advertisements, referrals and some online banners ads. It is important to develop the campaigns that would provide maximum revenue. Furthermore regular meetings with the sales staffs would lead to review the lead quality, tracking customer relationship management as it helps in improving the sales effectiveness.

Space management is the procedure by which managing the space would facilitate the consumers to increase sale. The store space in the tea company is a limited resource and hence it should be utilized wisely. Proper space management is highly crucial in the David’s Tea retail business. The company’s gross profitability and sales volume mostly depends on the amount of space used to generate the sales of David’s tea.

The tea industry in America is lucky to have huge domestic market that annually consumes around 20% of the tea produced in the country. Tea is one of the cheapest beverages all over the world besides water. There is ample opportunity to increase the tea consumption in the domestic market. Tea is both a healthy and lifestyle drink that is served with variety. Tea especially green tea is becoming popular among all the age group and youngsters of all the age groups also prefers to take iced tea. Different flavors such as Pepper, cinnamon and mixed fruits should be promoted to the cola addicted young generation.

The future is also great for all such tea company that deals with the organic certified handmade tea, green tea, purple tea, white tea and other specialty teas. In the recent times, Small tea growers have started establishing their own gardens and processing units to generate green teas. In addition to this the demand for variety of teas has also lead to opening up job opportunities for various people. Small cold storage also would prevent the tea from quality degradation. Other area of opportunities for David Tea’s includes value addition. Such as packaging of the tea with indigenous products like cane, jute and bamboo highly appeals the target customers.

References:

Guèvremont, Amélie, and Bianca Grohmann. "Can good news be bad? The role of brand communication strategy and brand commitment in the announcement of product improvements." Journal of Marketing Communications 20.5 (2014): 352-365.

Gummesson, Evert, Hannu Kuusela, and Elina Närvänen. "Reinventing marketing strategy by recasting supplier/customer roles." Journal of Service Management 25.2 (2014): 228-240.

Jaworski, Bernard J. "Commentary: advancing marketing strategy in the marketing discipline and beyond." Journal of Marketing Management (2017): 1-8.

Kumar, V. "Evolution of marketing as a discipline: What has happened and what to look out for." Journal of Marketing 79.1 (2015): 1-9.

Nobre, Helena, and Daniela Silva. "Social network marketing strategy and SME strategy benefits." Journal of Transnational Management 19.2 (2014): 138-151.

Ruiz, Carlos A. Diaz, and Christian Kowalkowski. "Market representations in industrial marketing: Could representations influence strategy?." Industrial Marketing Management 43.6 (2014): 1026-1034.

Srivastava, Rajesh. "Measuring the effectiveness of the communication strategy by using the brand score technique–a conceptual study." Journal of Asia Business Studies 9.2 (2015): 133-146.