Developing a Culturally Aware Marketing Plan for Tohu Wines

Background on Tohu Wines and its Established Reputation

Your Role: You are a consultant working for the company which has developed a new product range. You are to make recommendation regarding the setting of marketing objectives, a culturally aware marketing plan with the use of critical thinking to design monitoring processes

You must acknowledge the source of all evidence collected and justify all of your choices by reference to the evidence, the company’s situation, and academic literature - as appropriate.

The Case on which this assignment is based is: Tohu Wines

Tohu Wines is a Maori organization that produces wines from its own and contract vineyards, selling its range both in New Zealand and internationally. It‘s well established on the market since 1998, producing quality wines that have been acknowledged as such:

‘Tohu Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2010’ wine wins, in 2010, both the ‘Champion Sauvignon Blanc’ and ‘New Zealand Wine Cellars Spence Brothers Trophy’.

With Tohu Wines being a Maori organization, its identity clearly shows in every detail of the organization, from the logo and vision, to the Maori values explicitly presented. Tohu Wines vision is “to share our culture, story and values with the world”, while the logo is the Maori symbol ‘koru’, that refers to nature, growth and life. The organization is committed to being kind to the people and the environment whilst maintaining quality of products and a spiritual connection with the land.

Over the last 5 years Tohu has been doing research into the NZ and International wine market and it was decided to look at introducing a range of organic wines into the market. They went through a rigorous appraisal by BioGro and in early 2019 were able to officially sell “organic” wine.

Their first bottles of organic wine are now available. Tohu are looking to sell both white wine and red wine over the coming few months and establish an ongoing market for this new market. They will continue with their current range of product from their own and contract vineyards. The organic wine only comes from the vineyards which has been certified.

The international market has just stopped because of the Covid-19 virus and so they are looking at the local market and new ways of distribution to cover this shortfall. The distribution options are:

· Supermarkets

· Specialty Retail Stores

· Business to business – restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels

· Online

Tohu has been a financially successful organisation to date but this has changed with a cancellation of all export orders. Therefore it is important that the new product and markets are successful to overcome the risk of being dependent on one or two key markets.

Using your industry analysis you need to forecast sales for the coming 6 months. The cost of producing organic wine is higher than normal wine despite the savings from less chemical use because it is very labour intensive.

Required:

You must write up your assignment as a report to senior management covering the following areas:

1. Select and describe a Target Market using the segmentation bases to be the subject of some of Tohu’s marketing activities, justifying your choice by reference to a situation analysis. Incorporate cultural awareness to the NZ market. You do not need to include a situational analysis.

2. Use critical thinking to formulate marketing objectives in relation to the Target Market described, justifying the objective, standards and conditions with reference to the situation analysis and cultural awareness of the NZ market.

3. Use critical thinking to determine a product strategy in respect of the target market, acknowledging the perceptions of the product, the brand, positioning and the product life cycle.

4. Use critical thinking to determine a price strategy for the product range

5. Use critical thinking to discuss a distribution strategy to achieve sales to your target market.

6. Critically analyse a promotional strategy and say how and when you would promote the brand/products during the next six month period.

7. Produce a programme, schedule and budget to promote the products for the next six month period

8. Critically analyse the monitoring processes and procedures you will put in place to ensure that the objective is achieved.