Colorado Technical University Miller Lite Brand Overview Presentation

The discussion assignment for this week includes a review of the Key Assignment Outline completed by one of your classmates, as well as a substantial response to at least one other student.

Primary Task Response: Your first task is to post your own Key Assignment Outline to the discussion area so that other students are able to review your plan. Attach your document to the main discussion post, and include any notes you feel are appropriate. The purpose of this assignment is to help improve the quality of the Key Assignment Draft you will complete next week.

Using what you have learned in this course, post an outline of your Marketing Plan to the Discussion Board to share with your colleagues. The information on this outline will be customized to the brand that you selected in the first Week, and it will be the basis for your final PowerPoint Marketing Plan presentation.

Your outline should contain the following headings:

• Brand Overview and Situational and Competitive Analysis
• Technological Opportunities
• Value Proposition and Business Model
• Customer Analysis: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, and Differentiation
• Integrated Marketing Communications Strategies

A brief synopsis should include a note on what is working well for the brand and one area that needs improvement.

Respond to Another Student: Review at least 1 other student’s Key Assignment Outline and provide meaningful feedback. Refrain from general feedback, such as simply stating “good job.” Your feedback to other students is most helpful if you not only point out weak areas but also offer suggestions for improvement. The best feedback takes a three-stage approach to identify what was done well, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

Answering the question from this link.

https://class.ctuonline.edu/_layouts/MUSEViewer/MUSE.aspx?mid=16914713

Responses to students.

1-Samantha Grimm

• Brand Overview and Situational and Competitive Analysis

The brand that I chose to talk about was the Kroger company. Kroger is in a market share battle with companies like Publix, Walmart, Amazon, and Target. Kroger has been having a 2% increase over the last couple of quarters compared to company’s like Walmart that have had 3% and Target had 4% growth (Kalogeropoulos, 2019). Kroger sells grocery, household, and baby items. Kroger works hard at keeping its prices low thanks to their loyalty card program, and private brands (Friesner, 2015). Kroger has around 3,500 stores in the United States (ScrapeHero, 2020).

• Technological Opportunities

Our website design can be a major positive for us if we do it correctly. We need to make sure that the website and mobile apps are as user friendly as possible. Customers do not want to have to spend time frustrated over a website or app that does not work correctly. Another function we want to make sure we have on our website and mobile app is an online ordering function. This way the customer can order their groceries online for pick up or even delivery. This will help to save our customers time in their already busy lives. We need to make sure that we can receive customer feedback on our products, and the experiences that they have in our stores. One way we can receive customer feedback is through email surveys. FluidSurveys suggest that about 24.8% or one in four people complete survey’s that they receive in their personal emails (Admin, 2019). This could be a perfect way to reach our customers and find out about their experience in our stores. Sprout Social states that about 47% of people voice their complaints over social media, which means we must moderate our brand and products on social media to correct any issues right away (Admin, 2019). When receiving feedback, it will help us to understand how to get better as a company and let us be able to recognize the things that we are doing correctly.

• Value Proposition and Business Model

We need to complete a SWOT analysis to understand where we stand as a company today, and to also understand what our competitors see as our weaknesses and strengths. One of our strengths as a company is that we are able to cater to many different people because we have so many products like organic, less expensive, pharmacy, and baby items that people wouldn’t have to go to other stores they can get all their needs taken care of at Kroger (Dalavagas, 2017). One weakness that Kroger has is the fact that it has a high debt load of over 62% which could potentially make it harder for them to get more finical credit (Dalavagas, 2017). An opportunity that Kroger has is to expand its growing organic food offerings as it continues to compete with Whole Foods (Dalavagas, 2017). A threat that Kroger has is that there are many different competitors that are all trying to get a larger market share (Dalavagas, 2017). Kroger needs to work on lowering their debt ratio that way when new opportunities arise, they are able to financially go through with them. Kroger needs to work on stay up to date and expanding their organic foods to help beat out on of their competitors Whole Foods.

• Customer Analysis: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, and Differentiation

Kroger’s biggest consumer group is adults aged 35-44, with both age groups 25-34 and over 65 closely behind (Numerator, 2019). African- American people are the largest population shopping at Kroger with the second largest being Caucasian (Numerator, 2019). Something that surprised me in my research was that the largest demographic by pay scale that shops at Kroger is $100K-$125K respectfully (Numerator, 2019). The largest groups of customers at Kroger have advantage college degrees, and surprisingly have no kids (Numerator, 2019). The majority of customers shopping at Kroger a looking to fill up their pantry’s by buying more than 21 products and tend to shop on Saturday’s and Sunday’s (Numerator, 2019). Customers on average spend about $38 dollars on 12 items every 39 days (Numerator, 2019). Kroger has 3,514 stores in over 40 states with California and Ohio having the most stores (ScrapeHero, 2020).

• Integrated Marketing Communications Strategies

One way we can market to our customers would be to use social media to show our customers our views on the environment, social responsibility, and taking care of our community’s. We can also use newspaper ads and tv ads to help us connect with our older customers. We also want to make sure that we keep our website and app as user friendly as possible for our customers.

References:

Kalogeropoulos, D. (2019, June 16). Can Kroger End Its Market-Share Slide This Week? Retrieved February 25, 2020, from https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/16/can-kroger-end-its-market-share-slide-this-week.aspx

Friesner, T. (2015, July 2). Kroger Marketing Mix. Retrieved February 25, 2020, from https://www.marketingteacher.com/kroger-marketing-mix/

ScrapeHero. (2020, January 8). A look into the number of Kroger Store Locations in the US. Retrieved February 25, 2020, from https://www.scrapehero.com/kroger-store-locations/

Admin. (2019, August 5). 9 Customer Feedback Statistics You Need to Know. Retrieved March 4, 2020, from https://outcry.io/2019/08/05/customer-feedback-statistics/

Dalavagas, I. (2017, January 12). Value Line – The Most Trusted Name in Investment Research. Retrieved March 11, 2020, from https://www.valueline.com/Stocks/Highlights/SWOT_Analysis__The_Kroger_Company.aspx#.Xml-0UBFw2w

Kroger Demographics and Shopper Insights. (2019, April 28). Retrieved March 11, 2020, from https://snapshot.numerator.com/retailer/kroger

ScrapeHero. (2020, March 4). A look into the number of Kroger Store Locations in the US. Retrieved March 11, 2020, from https://www.scrapehero.com/kroger-store-locations/

2- Anjali Patel

Unit 4 Discussion Board

Marketing and the Virtual Marketplace

Brand Overview and Situational and Competitive Analysis

Ever since it was created in 2011 by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, Snapchat has been a social media service that is used worldwide. With over 218 million daily active users (Clement, 2020), Snapchat allows people to interact with friends, family, celebrities, and advertisements for products or services. When it first came out, it was definitely geared more towards teenagers and college kids. The ability to send racy messages and pictures without them being saved made it more appealing to a younger audience. As the social media platform grew, there was a bigger variety when it comes to users and eventually even celebrities started to join. During this same time, there were more social media influencers popping up from YouTube and Instagram. Being able to see bits and pieces of your favorite celebrity or social media influencers lives made this app even more appealing to consumers. Snapchat has grown from an app built by college kids used to socialize, to an app used globally to market products, services, celebrity lives, or even your personal life. It is the perfect hub to get the inside scoop on your favorite artists, events, and internet news. It is updated every day with new content, allowing consumers to spend hours looking at different stories and advertisements. Stories that you see on Snapchat from users are normally raw and unedited. This entices users to download the app and explore to see what kind of content they can find. There are many different features that Snapchat has that made it really popular and used daily worldwide. This can cause a competitive environment with other popular social media platforms. All of these platforms fiend to be the best and have the most users. They have to think outside of the box to make their applications more appealing to all users. Sometimes these ideas are basically stolen from another thriving company and used to get more users. This is essentially what is happening with Instagram and they are definitely Snapchat’s biggest competitor.

Technological Opportunities

The way apps are designed can make or break how popular it is. It is super important for your social media application to be functional, include visual elements that draw in the user, and different features that separate your platform from all the others. Having a smooth, clean experience when engaging with your app will increase activity amongst all users, especially if they have different devices. It is important to make sure your application works on all platforms. This is the reason developers are constantly sending out a new version with automatic updates. This allows them to fix any bugs that may arise amongst different devices. Snapchat has definitely had major bugs in the past and is constantly getting better with every update.

Value Proposition and Business Model

“Snapchat is a one-to-one and group messaging app for sending photos, videos, and text messages that disappear in seconds. It has several features including Stories (photos or videos that can be replayed for 24 hours), Memories (saved photos for future viewing and sharing), and filters and stickers (to embellish messages).” (Oetting, 2020)

Strengths:

• Unique Software: the idea behind Snapchat was the disappearing messages and photos. This is not available on any other application and it’s what makes Snapchat unique.

• Over 210 million active daily users

Weaknesses:

• Price: because Snapchat is a free application, most of the money they make is from advertisements on their feed. 96% of their revenue is from ads.

• Not successful with other products they launched such as Snapchat Spectacles.

Opportunities:

• Smart phone usage: more and more people are able to access internet from their smartphone. I definitely think Snapchat can capitalize on this because they will have a bigger range of users.

• Privacy: consumers want their information to be protected and private. Snapchat does a really good job of this and allows you to have no trace of messages or photos unless you save them in the chat or screenshot.

Threats:

• Competition: there is major competition with other social media applications and the features that Snapchat provides. Instagram has copied Snapchat’s camera features and imbedded it into their software. They have almost identical filters, colors, and fonts which is a major threat to Snapchat.

• Restrictions: there are many countries that are restricting usage of smartphones and internet. This can be a threat to Snapchat because a lot of their users come from these countries and can impact daily usage.

Customer Analysis: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, and Differentiation

Although Snapchat has a lot of users, most of them are age 13-24. If Snapchat markets their app through print media or radio, they might reach an older audience. This will make the app even more popular and have more daily users. The demographics for Snapchat will definitely change as time goes on because more and more adults will have access to smartphones and will be technologically savvy. Although a lot of Snapchat users would fit in many of the six different categories of social media users, I definitely think that girls ages 13-24 are either creators or spectators when it comes to Snapchat. I fit into this category and I mostly watch other people’s stories and only send snaps to coworkers or my boyfriend. Most of the time I spend on the app is to look at influencer’s stories and news. One strategy I would recommend to connect with this group is having some of their favorite celebrities or influencers promote Snapchat on their other social media platforms. When you see your favorite content creator promote a product or a service, you are more likely to use it because it helps you relate to them. I think Snapchat should take advantage of this because I rarely see marketing for Snapchat on other platforms.

Integrated Marketing Communications Strategies

I think Snapchat actually does a really great job with making connections with their customers. I definitely think that brands should have social media accounts to promote themselves and new features or upcoming news coming out. It also allows for consumers to reach out to your company with questions or concerns and feel important. A lot of businesses have a Twitter Support team which I have found very helpful. Normally if you tweet something about a business such as a poor experience, their support account will allow you to reach out via DM to find a resolution. This definitely takes your customer service to the next level. You can expand your network and build more connections when you use social media to your advantage. Snapchat is also available in a lot of different countries and languages. This creates a broader consumer base and social media helps connect you.

References:

• https://www.hubspot.com/snapchat-marketing
• https://www.advertisemint.com/6-types-of-snapchat-ads-should-know-about/
• https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/28/why-snapchat-spectacles-failed/
• https://careers.snap.com
• https://www.snap.com/en-US/community-guidelines