What recommendations could you give to Paynes to improve the marketing mix of Poppets Essay Example

What recommendations could you give to Paynes to improve the marketing mix of Poppets? Essay Secondary aims: Product: * Find out which flavours should be added/taken away from the current range. * Find how the packaging could be changed to make the product more appealing. We will write a custom essay sample on What recommendations could you give to Paynes to improve the marketing mix of Poppets? specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on What recommendations could you give to Paynes to improve the marketing mix of Poppets? specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on What recommendations could you give to Paynes to improve the marketing mix of Poppets? specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Price: * Find out what customers think of the current price. * Which gender thinks that Poppets are over-priced, as compared to the other? Place: * Find out the most popular point of sale for products such as Poppets * Find out where most 15-18 year olds buy their chocolate products. Promotion: * Find out which types of promotion are effective. * Make specific suggestions and give examples of how promotion should be developed. * Concentrate on the 15-18 age group, and which advertising works best to encourage them to buy the product. How aim will be achieved: Desk and field research will be carried out, to ensure that enough data is available and that it is of a high variety. This will mean getting a relatively large sample to be surveyed, and collecting a lot of secondary data. A small focus group will be used to gather data about the product and its packaging, as well as the web-site. Data Gathering The most important research obtained was the primary data gathered through field research. This was the data from the questionnaire. All students of Business Studies in Year 10 had to survey at least 10 people with an identical questionnaire (set by the board). All of the results were then entered into a database, giving everybody a very large sample (665 completed questionnaires). This database could then be interrogated to show trends throughout the results. Another source of primary data was obtained by interrogating a focus group into their views on many aspects of Poppets marketing. The focus group consisted of the following people: * 1 Male in 18+ age range * 2 Females in 18+ age range * 1 Male in 15-18 age range Details of opinions, which were obtained from this focus group, are included in the sections relevant to the information obtained. Secondary data was obtained primarily from research into the Poppets advertising schemes. Television advertisements for the Poppets range of products were viewed, and the web site was visited and downloaded. Looking at the promotion of Poppets was my main method for finding out their sales strategy, as the advertising the company employs shows clearly their target audience. Advantages / Disadvantages of secondary research: There are some problems with the methodology used to obtain data and to analyse it. The database was compiled by people who lived in London, so practically no data was obtained from other areas within the United Kingdom. Also the sample was not huge, as it contained the data from about 650 people. Although this is a relatively large number, it would not do for a serious market research attempt. Using a database to record all the results is an advantage of the methodology, as it means we can get all sorts of data, and trace trends among consumers. Appendix A houses the questionnaire used to collect primary data. Appendix B houses the main secondary data found (web-site material). Background: The company which makes Poppets is called Paynes (full name is George Payne Company), and has been around since 17th April 1896). However, Poppets have been made since 1937. Before then, the company specialized in blending tea and coffee, and later cocoa. Recently however (1998), Paynes was bought by a large corporation called Northern Foods. All the raw materials are refined on the Paynes site, so Paynes has total control over the production of all its goods (apparently). Poppets used to look very different to how they appear now. The packaging back in the early days was very boring and bland, and we have a photograph of very early Poppets packaging. The packaging we can see on the left is completely different and is very plain compared to the vivid colours, which appear on the current packaging. Poppets promotion always has very bright colours, and has a slightly retro feel. We can see examples of this in the above packaging, and in images from the Poppets.com web site, as shown below: The language used to promote Poppets is for younger people, and is an attempt to be very retro. For instance, the Poppets.com web site constantly refers to viewers as suckers, and the characters believe themselves to be the slickest Poppet eating people you will ever see!!! They are apparently the funkiest, coolest people on out world and we are invited to enter the funky world of Poppets. This is hardly the sort of language most adults would feel particularly drawn to, which highlights the fact that Poppets is targeting a relatively young audience (about 12-18). Promotion: Promotion is a very important aspect of marketing, as it will have a very big impact on the number of sales achieved, and therefore the future of the products and the company. Promotion basically means advertising, but not just in the most obvious sense. It also considers packaging, the logos and graphics a company uses to get people to recognise it. Branding is also part of promotion. If a genuinely good product is backed up by good promotion, a strong brand name will be created, and a good reputation will follow. Word of mouth will then be an important form of advertising and promotion in itself. In fact, many consider word-of-mouth to be the most important form of advertising, as people are more likely to believe their friends/colleagues than claims on television adverts. But to get this going, a strong promotional strategy is needed from the start the product becomes available, and in some cases even earlier (some products become successful due to excitement from consumers alrea dy around before the product was released). This of course not something Poppets can try. But Poppets do have to consider advertising and packaging, and their web-site. Their promotion is not as strong as some competitors (like Cadburys), so to improve the marketing mix, promotion needs to be looked at in detail and changed. First it is important to know how many consumers have had experience of the Poppets product. These results were the ones I expected, and show a definite trend. As people get younger, more have tried Poppets. The reason that this is true is that the advertising is aimed more at younger people (just look at their advertisements and their web-site). Therefore, the result for the amount of over 18s who have tried Poppets is the smallest. To make sure this is the case, we can find out how many over 18s have heard of Poppets as compared to other age groups. The results are all of course higher than the ones for how many people have tried have tried Poppets as not everyone who has heard of Poppets will have tried them, but everyone who has tried them has heard of them. But again less over 18-year olds have heard of Poppets. This supports the previous assumption that Paynes advertising strategy is not working for this age group as it is aimed solely at the younger age groups. Perhaps, in addition to the current promotional activities, some of the promotion should be made a little more serious (talking about the positive nutrients, etc.). We shall see examples of promotion aimed at this age group to give Paynes some examples of good promotion which should lead to increased sales. It is interesting to note that even though more 12-14 year olds have heard of Poppets, more 15-18 year olds have tried Poppets (proportionally). We know that the advertising strategy is aimed at these two age groups primarily (observing the advertising itself and primary data back this up), but in this case why have more of the older group tried the product even though less of them have heard about it. To find out, we must look at the social reasons not just the sales aspect. 12-14 year olds are in many cases more cautious than older people and often more observant. They would not necessarily be pushed to trying a product just because they have heard of it. This may not be true of 15-18 year olds, and they may be more affected by the advertising. Less of this age group would have heard of Poppets as they have a larger workload, and will spend less time being shown advertisements as they may be spending more time on studying (especially 16 and 18 year olds for GCSE and A-Level e xams respectively). We have hypothesized that the reason that Over 18s are not buying Poppets very much compared to the other age groups, and in fact less have heard of Poppets that in any other age group is because the advertising is not aimed at them, and therefore they are not the target audience. To make sure that this is correct, and that we can go on to develop ideas of how to make the advertising more appealing to Over 18s we need to prove that this is the main problem. We can compare how many Over 18 year olds think that advertising is the weakest aspect of the marketing to the other age groups. We can see that 15-18 year olds are the age group which most thinks that promotion is the weakest area of marketing. This could be because they think that they are being targeted in a patronising way (with all the references to cool and suckers, etc.). This result is unexpected, as it shows that more 12-14 and 15-18 year olds think that promotion is the weakest area, proportionally to 18 year olds. However, less Over 18s were questioned than 12-14s and 15-18s, so the accuracy for that age group is going to be the worst. Also, the 15-18s group includes 18 year olds, not the Over 18s group. To provide further information on this, we can find out the reverse data, which percentage of age groups think that advertising is the main strength of the Poppets marketing scheme. From this we can see that only 17% of over 18 year olds think that promotion is the strongest aspect of Payness marketing plan, so they are not too enthusiastic about it. We can also see that 15-18 Year olds are very passionate about the promotion, as among them, it is the most popular choice for strongest AND weakest area of marketing. We know that 69% of 15-18 Year Olds voted for promotion as either the strongest or the weakest part of advertising. If the old adage Any publicity is good publicity applies to advertising, then 15-18 year olds are truly being targeted very well! Poppets have recently attracted people to their web site by doing a pre-election vote. This advertising stunt could possibly have been to attract older people, and people who would not normally spend time on this site. Since performing this sort of short-term advertising scheme doesnt cost money (just a simple web-page on their site) it is viable and may have increased sales, and talk about the range. But which sort of advertising works best? Consumers were asked which forms of advertising would most influence them to buy Poppets. Here we can see that TV is by far the best method of reaching people through advertising. This is because nearly every household in the country has a television which they watch every night. Since advertisements always interrupt programmes, people are forced to watch them all the time. The audience reached by advertising on television is absolutely enormous, as millions of people will be watching TV at any one time. But an advert is only effective if the right audience sees it. For Poppets, this means teenagers. So, the adverts should run at a time when it is more likely that many teenagers will be tuned in. This will be around programmes aimed at teenagers, like films, comedies, and sports. However, starting a television advertising campaign is very expensive. If Poppets make enough profit, the wisest thing to do would be to reinvest it back into marketing and make a series of television commercials, better than the ones which they have already screened (which are quite poor). Adver ts in cinemas may also help but not to such a great extent. They would be useful because if a person sees a Poppets advert in a cinema they may latter return to the cinema, and subconsciously remember Poppets, and buy them before their film begins. Therefore, it would only make sense to screen adverts in cinemas if Poppets sell their product at the cinemas themselves. We can see that among 15-18 year olds, Television and Cinema advertising is even more popular. So, to target this age group better, Poppets should release more television advertisements, with subjects relating specifically to this age group (the current most popular music / mobile phones). More detail about when adverts should be screened is given above. We can see that there is only a difference of 3% between the number of males who have tried Poppets and the number of females. This is a negligible difference and we cannot conclude that females are the target audience of the advertising. However to make sure this is the case, we can see how many females/males have heard of Poppets, proportionally. Here, the gap is twice as wide. But, surprisingly, more MALES have heard of Poppets than females. The gap is 6%, so we cannot be sure that if our sample was much larger that the gap would be as large. With both results the difference is not enough to conclude for definite that more females across the UK have tried Poppets, and that more males have heard of them. So why is there practically no difference. The product itself does not seem to be biased in any way to a particular gender. Most people like to consume a good-tasting chocolate product. Also, all the adverts have both males and females in them (usually fighting with each other). The web site did not fair as well as the product and the packaging for the focus group. The focus group agreed that the site was designed well but it tried too hard to be cool and hip. This was mainly in reference to the text on the web site. However, the graphics (mainly the characters) were also said to be to retro and babyish. Price Since the product is going to be sold to consumers, it is important to find out what they think of the price. If most people think it is too expensive, sale are not going to be high, especially if competitors prices are lower. A price should be chosen which brings more income than expenses and is attractive. One of the most important ways of making sure a product is successful is finding this golden middle when sales and income are multiplied to make the most profit. So what do consumers think of the current price of Poppets (which is 35p)? We can see that the graph is a straightforward curve. The more extreme or passionate statements have the least percentages, whereas as the statements about the price become less extreme, the results are higher. Perhaps another factor which is at play here is that people tend to generally not bother agreeing with the passionate statements, and go along with the least meaningful ones (average value) as this requires less knowledge and thought on their part, and they know they cant go wrong with answering like that. But on the other hand, if Poppets were VERY expensive or VERY cheap, enough so that consumers noticed and remembered this, the results would reflect this. What we can conclude from this is that the price of Poppets does not differ much from the average, and people and not surprised by it at all. However, there is a tendency towards Poppets being regarded as priced above average. 37% believe Poppets are priced above average, whereas only 24% the price is below average. This t ells us that pricing is not an area in which Poppets is lacking, and should not be the main concern for now. We should find areas in which Poppets is not doing very well, and consider how they should be improved. This graph shows us what consumers from each age group think of the price of Poppets. Each line corresponds to an age. We can see that 0-11 year olds did not like the word average at all, but preferred to say Very Good or Very Poor. This is most probably because they are not use to prices and cant really tell whether a good is priced well or not. They would not take the question seriously, and give the most extreme answer they could. However, since it is more often the case that adults would buy Poppets for their 0-11 year old children, their view of prices is more interesting. So, over 18 year olds replied to the survey with average most often, but were inclined to say that Poppets were a good price. 15-18 year olds said that Poppets were priced very poorly much less than any other age group, and were generally impressed by the price. This is because they have to use their own money to buy Poppets, so they would appreciate a good price much more than 0-11 year olds, and people with enough money to not worry about prices of such products (many adults). All age groups were more inclined to vote for Poppets being a good price rather than bad. Production We know that the advertising, which Poppets uses, is not very effective but probably the most important aspect of the Poppets marketing mix in the end, is the product itself. So what did our sample think of the product as compared to other aspects of the marketing plan? As we can see here, the product was voted as the main strength of Poppets marketing. Price was also high, 7% lower that the product. Therefore, promotion and place were the two worst aspects of marketing, and the difference between them was only 1%, so these are definitely the two areas, which need to be, tackled the most. However, the product is still not absolutely perfect, as it got 36%, so we can look at ways in which it could be improved. For instance, Poppets are sold in small boxes. But is this the most effective packaging, according to consumers. Consumers were asked which type of packaging they prefer, out of four choices, with box being one of the options. From these results, we can see that Paynes have done their market research well and that their chosen form of packaging is in fact the most appropriate for this type of product. But, Paynes do also sell Poppets in bags, which is the third most popular form of packaging. Therefore, it may be profitable to also package Poppets in tubes, as it was not far of from being as popular as box packaging. Selling Poppets in bags could be replaced by tubes as most of Poppets customers will be people who want a quick snack, not a large 200g packet as sold by Poppets. People who wish to buy a large quantity would go for a more budget bulk buy option (a large box of chocolates, large bars, etc.). People like to buy chocolate products in boxes and tubes because these are more sturdy, have less chance of getting crumpled, and can be placed in a pocket so that the chocolates will not fall out. Plastic packets are easily torn, so chocolate can be lost. With a confectionery product such as Poppets, one of the most important things to consider is which flavours should be in the range. We asked consumers which flavours they liked the most out of the current range, and which flavours they would like to see added in the future. The reaction from the focus group on the design of the packaging (normal sized boxed Poppets) was generally positive. They believed that the packaging made good use of colour, and that the explosion effect would make them look at the product if they were after some chocolate products in a small quantity. An example of the Poppets packaging is given below. What is more important, however, is to find out which flavours which are currently not part of the range would influence more people to buy Poppets. Out of four choices, these were the results: The results here are more interesting, as we see straight away that many people would be influenced to buy Poppets if the caramel flavour was available. This leads us to think that perhaps it would be advisable to get rid of the current fruit flavour and replace it with caramel. Also, Nut got a high vote, so possibly it could replace the mint flavour currently available. In fact, perhaps no flavours should be taken away from the range, and Caramel and Nut should be added. The focus group believed that the taste of the Poppets themselves was very pleasing. The flavour, which received the most praise, was the Fruit flavour. This does not coincide with the information from the database. The other flavours were also said to be good. The mint flavour was the most unpopular. Place Where do most people buy products like Poppets? This would be valuable information because the most popular areas could be focused on. If in these areas Poppets were to become very popular, sales would increase dramatically, and sales in other less popular areas would also be affected as people who usually buy Poppets in popular areas, would also buy them when they bought from the less popular areas. Consumers were given four options of where they usually bought chocolate products. We can see that local shops and supermarkets are by far the most popular areas for the selling of chocolate goods. This is because they are easily accessible, as most people have a local shop within walking distance of their home. Prices are not too bad at these places, and kids can easily get there. It is considered the classic place to buy a small snack when in a rush. Poppets should concentrate their efforts on these areas this will increase sales dramatically. From the above graph we can see that teenagers in general prefer to buy their chocolate products in local shops more than customers of all ages put together. Noticeably, females of 15-18 years old buy more of their chocolate products from vending machines than males, and less from local shops. Why is this? Perhaps they prefer having a quick snack more than males while males prefer spending time on going in and buying their product. So, Poppets should target vending machine sales at females (more females in adverts) and target local shop sales at males in a similar way. Findings and Recommendations: * Some more adult-style advertising should be used (sparingly) to increase sales for over 18s. Adult humour could be used on boards outside shops, and at bus stops. Places above tube seats where there are always slot-in adverts could be hired. Opportunity cost of this may be the introduction of a new flavour. * Television adverts should be increased in quality and become shown more often. They should be shown in between films, comedies, and sports programs, as these are often watched by the target audience (usually 15-18 year olds). So, running the commercials at daytime would be a complete waste of money. Opportunity cost will be large, due to the large amount of money needed to run TV ads. So, other advertising may need to be dropped, and new flavours may need to be put on hold. * Add caramel and nut flavours to the current range possibly at the expense of the fruit flavour. The opportunity cost of doing this may be the introduction of other flavours in other products (e.g. Just Brazils). * Concentrate on selling more in local shops. Perhaps sell large Poppets signs to newsagent, like the famous red Coca-Cola sign. Sell budget multi-packs in supermarkets, as this is a place where many buy their chocolate products for the week for the whole family. Opportunity cost may be a new flavour, or the expansion of another product manufactured by Paynes. The advantages of implementing these recommendations for Poppets would be that in the long-term, sales would increase. However, the opportunity cost may be dividends for shareholders, or expanding another range of products. But as Poppets is part of a much larger corporation, Paynes other products can bring in enough income to keep the shareholders happy, while Poppets increases sales. Each recommendation needs to be considered in turn, and prioritised by Poppets. They should start with screening more and more television adverts at strategic times. As these adverts are viewed, sales will increase, and eventually the adverts will bring in more profit than cost. Then, the range can be expanded, and adverts released telling customers about the new flavours. More advertising can then be used (on radio, boards, etc.). These findings are all important to the company as they highlight some major problems with the marketing and if these were corrected, sales of Poppets would increase, and in the long-term, bring more profits into Paynes. Nestle also provided some interesting statistics, which Paynes should take into consideration. Women buy 65% of the confectionary goods. However, they consume only 33% of it. They probably give most of it away to children. Children buy 4% of the total confectionary goods sold but consume 38%, which backs this up. Men buy roughly the same amount as they consume, therefore making them less generous than women. How does this affect Paynes? It shows that women are the most prone to buying, but for their children. The product should therefore be appealing to children, who will then ask their mothers to buy the product. Mothers should agree rather than disagree, so nutritional information could be provided, showing that Poppets can be healthy as well as tasty. This is but one of the strategies which Paynes could attempt to boost sales. Some information was obtained form Nestle regarding popularity of confectionary products. This information can serve as a guide to how well Paynes are doing with Poppets, and how much they need to improve. The top 20 Confectionary brands of 2000 and 1999 are given in the table below. 99 00 Product 1 1 Kit Kat 2 2 Mars Bar 3 3 Dairy Milk 4 4 Twix 7 5 Celebrations 5 6 Roses 8 7 Wrigleys Extra 6 8 Maltesers 10 9 Quality Street 11 10 Aero 9 11 Snickers 12 Rowntrees 12 13 Galaxy 15 14 Milky Bar 13 15 Milky Way 20 16 Straburst 16 17 Crunchie 14 18 Smarties 19 Bassetts Fundays 19 20 Qrigleys Orbit Poppets do not appear in the Top 20 list (and are not even in the Top 30), so they have a long way to go before they attain the same brand name status as Cadburys and Nestle. Appendix A Appendix B The following information was obtained from the Paynes web site. It shows the prices of all Poppets products, and other retail information. Product Code Product Unit Weight R.R.P. à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ Units Per Outer Poppets Poppets Cartons 00090 Toffee Poppets Carton 0.31 36 00092111 Fruit Creams Poppets Carton 0.31 36 00096111 Raisin Poppets Carton 0.31 36 00099111 Mint Creams Carton 0.31 36 Poppets Kingsize Cartons 00110 Toffee Poppets Carton 0.50 24 00114 Original Peanut Poppets Carton 0.50 24 00116 Mint Creams Poppets Carton 0.50 24 Poppets 200g Hanging Bags 02590 Toffee Poppets 200g 1.05 12 02591 Peanut ; Raisin Poppets 200g 1.05 12 02592 Fruit Creams Poppets 200g 1.05 12 02593 Raisin Poppets 200g 1.05 12 02594 Mint Creams Poppets 200g 1.05 12 02595 Original Peanut Poppets 200g 1.05 12 NEW Poppets Chocolate Toffee Popcorn 02601 Chocolate Toffee Popcorn 30g 0.29 24 02602 Chocolate Toffee Popcorn 70g 0.69 18 02604 Chocolate Toffee Popcorn