Market Planning For Services

Product Offering

The cited restaurant offers various products to our customer’s is good food with multiple cuisines.We also offer them ambience which has light music in the background and best service in the city. Being in hospitality sector service is only the main product. Providing the best service is the motive of out restaurant. Product offerings for the restaurant should include light meals for the brunch time, tea time snacks, meals for employees during lunch time, attractive snacks for the students etc. these meals can be divided during the hours of the day to ensure that there is walk-in of the customers throughout the day (England and George, 2007). The product offerings have wide range of choices so that the customer can choose their own meal. Happy hours should be given to increase the audience during certain hours. Presently, the management of the Ledbury is going to introduce vegetarian sizzler in their restaurant. The stated product is produced with a motive to enhance the customers to the cited restaurant.

Market Segments offered

Market segmentation plays an important role in restaurant industry. These segmentations include full service, quick service, eating and drinking place and retail host (Granzin, Kent and Kenneth, 1982). Full service restaurant includes full course meals and served to the customers on the table. These customers expect full service and expect high quality service because they do not have rush. When we talk about quick service, it usually includes buffet and take out service. Here the customers are on self-service and they serve themselves with their own choice. Eating and drinking place gives catering facilities to their customers. Example the restaurant will prove food service to a company for their meal. Retail hosts include franchise in other cities. The owner of the restaurants has handful of restaurants in the nearby city which includes few of eating and drinking places and quick service outlets. The newspaper advertisement will float to all the cities which will create an awareness about the restaurant upgradations to a huge target audience of many cities (Granzin, Kent and Painter, 1999). This advertisement will include their extended services and retail host addresses. The stated organization will segment the market on the basis demographic factors. Here, the eating habits of the people will be analysed and people with the age of 17 to 40 years will be targeted.

Product life cycle

Product life cycle includes 4 main stages. Product life cycle helps the company to understand in which phase they are currently in and what is required to improve it. The restaurant is in the maturity stage currently and it is important for them to maintain it. They should take appropriate measures which will help them maintain their standards and do not enter the decline stage.

The four stages of product life cycle are:

Introduction

Introduction stage is the stage when the restaurant has just started initially.

Growth

In this stage the restaurant experiences increase in sale with increase in time. Many companies achieve their breakeven point at this stage and the restaurant has also achieved the same.

Maturity

In the maturity stage the growth in the sale is somewhat stagnant. This is a very crucial stage for the restaurant. It is important for the restaurant to maintain its standards so that they maintain themselves in the maturity stage and do not decrease their sale and enter the decline stage (Williams, 1998). All the changes and upgradations are to be made in this stage to ensure that they maintain their standards.

Decline

Decline stage is the stage where the restaurant experiences drop in its sale with due course in time. When a company enters this stage, it experiences losses and many of them must shut down.

Advertising Campaign (Newspaper, magazine)

Form of Advertisement: The cited restaurant has placed its advertisement on regional newspaper. Providing the advertisement in newspaper or magazine is the traditional way of advertising which is not much beneficial for the restaurant in this fancy and modern edge (Haley, Russell, 1998). People mostly got attracted towards the business through attractive posters and billboard advertisement. The advertisement is not printed on the first or last page of the paper; instead it is on the middle page and also takes half page for advertisement which is insufficient to notice.

Content and style of the advertisement: Though the advertisement seems attractive due to the font style and images used in the newspaper printing but the black and white print of the ad does not leave much impact on readers’ eyes. Today, it is a world of doing attractive things in more sophisticated way and here, the black and white advertisement doesn’t leave much impact

What message has been conveyed? One of the most significant elements of advertisement is the message conveyed by advertisement for its target audience. The restaurant advertisement printed on newspaper has meaningful and to the point contents (Kenneth, 1991). It stated just what customer wants to know or what in a restaurant. Food provided with the delightful environment and inside pictures of restaurant looks sufficient to attract people toward restaurant.

Target Audience: It is a quick service restaurant and targeted families, middle income people, employers and students by providing variety of foods with reasonable price. Older people also prefer to visit the restaurant due to delightful environment and healthy and nutritious food available at restaurant and there is special seating arrangements for people need privacy or candle light dinners and all.

Advertising Media, Public Relations and PR Audiences

Advertising plays a key role in preparing restaurant’s marketing plan and to attract the targeted customer base, restaurant must engage in the advertisement medium that promotes its product and services in most effective way. Advertisement help to gain publicity and customer attention but at the same time it can open door for criticism. The organization can drag into criticism if they caught providing any false claims in product promotion. Customer satisfaction research is important to conduct for restaurant and there are various reasons behind it. The restaurant has selected newspaper and magazine advertisement as a media to promote its products and services. Advertising through newspaper is a traditional way of promoting company and also has its own advantages like can reach towards the more audience (Henry, Walter, 1976). But, today, increasing use of technology and online media the readership of newspaper is declining. This is especially true in current conditions where more and more people are switching towards online publication from print publication. Another problem with the newspaper advertisement is poor printed image quality which I already stated as a drawback for our restaurant’s advertisement. Next is no control over ad placement.

Advantages of billboard advertisement over newspaper advertisement:

Billboard advertisement is a cost-effective way of communicating to targeted customer base. It also help to reach towards large audience, big holding at rush places like bus stands, on roads and railway station can took gaze of people and more people get to know about restaurant (Miller, Kenneth and Granzin, 1999).

Low cost is big advantage of billboard advertisement. Active response is strength of this advertising medium. People who are viewing billboards are already active in their surrounding places. Whether they are standing at metro stations, or lining up at the local night club, people are likely to notice billboards out of sheet boredom.

Enhancing client’s (restaurant’s) campaign through public relations
Public relation strategies help restaurant to save money on elaborate advertisements. Following suggested methods can be used by restaurant:

Online Presence: Restaurant must have to create a new easy to navigate website which can contain all the information about restaurant including its products, services, location map, information about suppliers, location, past achievement, customer response and feedback and many more information to attract people.Promotions: Develop special promotions and word of mouth publicity. For example, providing loyalty cards or coupens to regular customers.

Community Presence: Increase presence is social activity and within nearby community. Take sponsorship for small public events.

Utilizing the Media: Restaurant can invite food critics from television for a visit. Conduct a special event at restaurant, including special holiday events.
Distribution Channels, Sales Support, Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

Distribution channels and sales support areas use different mechanism to reach towards customers or to take product towards customers. Distribution model of a restaurant should strive to increase visitors towards the restaurant. It is generated through increasing brand loyalty and reputation within targeted customer segment. It is possible through experimenting with different distribution channels (Swayer, Alan G., and Stanley, 2003).

Food supplier is first channel in your distribution activity. Quality of your food decides the multiple visits of customer to your restaurant. In restaurant industry, distribution channel starts with the food suppliers. Hence, selecting and contracting a quality food provider is key and first step towards building good reputation. Next, distribution channels are advertising, internet marketing which we have already discussed in different sections in this report.

Information and communication technology:

Direct and simple relationship exists between ICT functions and business performance. ICT methodology initiates the use of different software and dataset to store information of computer. The methodologies used in the ICT impact to overcome the shortcomings of restaurant and lead the restaurant to create strong brand position with the help of computing technologies (Schiebe, Karl, 1990). The methodology can be tested in a dataset from hotel restaurant by using a non-parametric technique called Data Envelopment Analysis. ICT help to redesign and streamline the operations conducted at restaurant, it increase the billing and other operations conducted at restaurant, can provide fastest booking services. Customers can book their table or hall for functions from restaurant website, can make online payment which save time of customers as well as employees and restaurant can arrange faster services for them.

Market Research

Customer satisfaction research is important to conduct for restaurant and there are various reasons behind it. It helps restaurant to stay connected with their customer. Obtaining useful feedback from customers and clients lead restaurant towards building actionable plan or strategies to improve their performance. One targeted segment is suggested to our client here to ask feedback and implement changes.

The target customer base with whom restaurant can conduct survey is middle income families. In the survey restaurant can ask questions to the customers regarding products and services offered by restaurant, behaviour of the staff, did they satisfied with the restaurant environment? Ask the targeted customer base about providing suggestions from their side to improve quality of food and services.

Where, when, and how such a survey could be carried out:

The methods used for measuring customer satisfaction should be based on the characteristics of customer base and the data restaurant need to gather. The survey should be conducted as per the time availability of the customers. There is no particular place or situation required for conducting survey or asking response from the customers and it can be gathered through variety of ways (Sharpe, Louis and Kent, 2004). First, customers can be asked to provide feedback once they finish their meal. Feedback can also be obtained from customer focus groups, customer usage and attitude surveys. Other forms of asking feedback or suggestions from customers are through telephonic surveys, e-mails, personal interviews. The feedback can be stored in restaurant database. Common methods of gathering

information about customer satisfaction are group interviews or direct contact between customer and staff, mail-based surveys.
Surveys and questionnaire are most common methods used to assess the level of customer satisfaction with restaurant’s products and services. It also helps to determine the factors responsible for customers dissatisfaction. Also help to compare and rank the provider with its competitors. Help to estimate the distribution of characteristics in a potential customer population. Restaurant can determine its service standard through market research.

Recommendation

We would recommend the restaurant to open few stalls in busy areas such as bus stations, train stations, gardens etc. where the audience can experience the taste of their food. At this stalls they can have their newspaper articles or flyers which will have their restaurant address so that the people can walk-in at their restaurants if they are impressed with the food quality and the service. The restaurants can provide food combos at a cheaper price, this initiative is taken for those audience who are students with pocket money. The restaurants can keep some “Grab and Go” pouches for employees who can buy these pouches on the way to their office and have them during their lunch hours.

Conclusion

This assessment was to improve the advertising strategies of the restaurant and suggest them a new strategy which will help them to generate awareness in the minds of the people and increase their sale for their restaurants. Hence we suggested them to go for newspaper advertising with some free food coupons which will generate interest in the minds of target audience and increase walk-ins at their restaurants. There will also be some combo offers on the meals that the restaurants would be offering. Discounts on the eating and drinking places will be given out to encourage more tie ups with organisations.

References

• Granzin, Kent L. and John J. Painter (1999), “Using Benefits as a Basis for Multi-Criterion Market Segmentation,” a paper presented at the annual conference of the Southwestern Marketing Association, Houston, TX.
• Granzin, Kent L. and Kenneth D. Bahn (1982), “Personal Values as an Explanation of Food Usage Habits,”Home Economics Research Journal, 10 (June), 401–10.
• Henry, Walter A. (1976). “Cultural Values Do Correlate with Consumer Behavior,”Journal of Marketing Research, 13 (May), 121–27.
• Kenneth W. C. (1991), “Beyond Benefit Segmentation,”Journal of Advertising Research, 11, (August), 3–8.
• Sharpe, Louis K. and Kent L. Granzin (2004), “Brand Attributes That Determine Purchase,”Journal of Advertising Research, 14 (April), 39–42.
• Shaw, Russell E. and David Pinto (2008), “Where's Your Next Meal Coming From?”Nielsen Researcher(No. 1), 2–19.
• England, George W. (2007). “Personal Value Systems of AmericanManagers,”Academy of Management Journal, 10 (March), 53–68.
• Haley, Russell I. (1998), “Benefit Segmentation,”Journal of Marketing, 32 (July), 30–35.
• Kabish, Richard A. (1981), Exploring Human Values, Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co
• Miller, Kenneth E., and Kent L. Granzin (1999), “Simultaneous Loyalty and Benefit Segmentation of Retail Store Customers,”Journal of Retailing, 55 (Spring), 47–60.
• Schiebe, Karl E. (1990), Beliefs and Values, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Swayer, Alan G., and Stanley Arbeit (2003), “Benefit Segmentation in a Retail Banking Market,”Combined Proceedings of the American Marketing Association, 1973, Spring and Fall Conferences, 124–27.
• Williams, R. (1998), “Patterns of Behavioral Characteristics as Indicants of Recreation Preference: A Canonical Analysis,”Research Quarterly, 49 (May), 135–45.

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