Background
Mortimer’s Castle is amongst monumental buildings found in Ludlow, Clun and Wigmore within England. Mortimer’s Castle at Wigmore is believed to be built in 921 AD and is situated within an interesting beautiful landscape on a hill besides village site.
Surrounding the Castle is a rich land comprising of historic jousting field, defensive ditch, woodland forest, Babican and a Lake with wildfowl. Mortimer’s Castle is considered potential treasure by HTB and other bodies hence up for sale to be used as tourist attraction centre. HTB would want to use Mortimer’s Castle as tourist attraction site.
Objectives of the case study
- To critically investigate the nature of impact experienced in variety of services offered and modification techniques to be applied in Mortimer’s Castle case
- To analyse and report on probable marketing strategies which could be applied to ensure long-term effective management and survival of Mortimer within the tourism industry.
Strategy
The matrix provides simple way of looking at the interaction amongst strategies within the every market segments, applicable technology, distortions and necessary amplifiers required for the enterprise. Segmentation is provided by Graham’s matrix.
Market segmentation by use of Graham’s matrix
Table 1: Graham’s Easy Matrix
Segment Attractiveness
Rainbow = England, Wales, Ireland= geographic
Blue = demographic: Children; Middle aged; Teenagers; Old generation
Brand Positioning using Perceptual Map
Target market comprises of all ages, most importantly from 10 years onwards. Mortimer’s Castle is a rich place for tourists and learning institutions. This means that for the marketing processes to succeed, available sales strategies should ensure provision of ideas on penetration of many market segments for the purposes of sustenance.
Focus should be placed on building site’s brand based on its services, hence improving customer relationship and loyalty towards the site as a leisure ground.
Such loyalty levels can be achieved through promotional activities, where HTB would allow free ferrying of clients in and out of the site during holidays. Currently there are host of households within United Kingdom worth of target with more than three people (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007).
Ideal 1 Tourist Holiday, Ideal 2 Business near city centres
PESTLE Analysis is usually implemented to identify workable marketing strategies for HTB. There is a need to focus on separate variables which are based on the board’s marketing objectives and future goals.
Concepts that are based on political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal categories should be capable of defining external variables that influence Castle’s operations. Such factors can have positive, negative or neutral impact on profitability of HTB’s ownership, Mortimer’s Castle (Kotler, 2006).
Politically Mortimer’s Castle is located in Wigmore, England. England enjoys relatively stable political environment which presents fewer challenges to HTB’s operational activities. The only political problem might be based on conflict of interests between private ownership of Mortimer Castle and government’s stand on maintenance and service provision.
However, political stability in the region facilitates faster development of tourism, hence encouraging development of positive trade policies (Kotler, 2006). Such destinations may present venues for illegal trade and this may pose a threat to safety of the environment.
Beautiful woody plantations of the site and ‘wintering wildfowl’ of the lake present rich hunting ground for poachers hence should be given enough protection from the government. There is possibility that it beautiful and rich fauna may be destroyed, if the wild fowls are a target for food instead of tourist attraction purposes (Dubois et al., 2007).
This can be avoided if appropriate taxes and tariffs are placed on activities and businesses conducted within Mortimer’s vicinity. HTB can handle such cases by providing tax increases while, at the same time, holding the same prices for consumers. HTB may detriment their market share if they are tempted to increase their charges and, at the same time, this move can reduce brands attractiveness (Kotler, 2006).
Economic conditions are crucial for tourism industry. In this case, positive economic cycles encourage positive results as opposed to recession times. One challenge for HTB is the volatility of European market economy which normally affects currency exchange rates. In many cases, exchange rates dramatically affect the level of success obtained from foreign exchange activities (Kotler, 2006).
Within social context Mortimer’s Castle is seen by old generation as place for reflecting beautiful memories of their past life, while modern generation enjoys current technology driven experiences. Such societal differences affect consumer activity, hence should be considered when making operational decisions. Other social aspects which require attention involve increased number of customers from immigrant population (Kotler, 2006).
Changes in technology can be utilized in modifying transportation system within the site. Use of locomotive steam train presents environmental hazard, especially air pollution hence should only be used as a cultural heritage. Competition within current tourist market requires provision of modern accommodation services, for example building five-star hotels within the vicinity of such sites.
In addition, creation of new advertising methods through social media and Internet are also crucial for promotional activities within the tourist market. This calls for the need of streamlining HTB’s value chain to match with current technological innovations (Kotler, 2006).
HTB’s Approach to social responsibility concerning its heritage sites such as Castle buildings, woodland and wildlife rich lake, determines the level of attractiveness of their brand. HTB can attract a great number of customers; however, it should take into consideration environmental issues, otherwise irresponsible actions may reduce sales. Finally, laws of the country should be followed even by the visiting tourists (Fill, 2009).
SWOT Analysis
Mortimer’s Castle enjoys outstanding relationships with the government, as well as the tourism sector forming the basis of its strength. This contributes towards freedom in operational activities within the site providing greater advantage in branding and marketing of products. The organization has strong financial background granting them capability of funding future projects and operations.
There are varieties of attraction sites surrounding Mortimer Castle (Fifield, 2007). Weaknesses are realized due to poor maintenance services from the government and, at the same time, Mortimer Castle does not enjoy sustainable competitive advantages. Tourism industry experiences high level of rivalry which at times weakens strength of destination centres.
There are host of opportunities enabling HTB to capitalize on English roots for the purposes of attracting world attention. High number of visitors to the site provides an opportunity of building luxury hotels and starting other modern attractive recreational centres and leisure activities.
Concerning threats, profitability of the organization is dependent on the nature of various economic activities around the sites. At the same time, fluctuation in exchange rates may affect frequency of visits (Barnes et al., 2009).
Marketing Strategy
There is a need to focus on company’s reputation which should be maintained based on excellence of services and beautiful sceneries within the castle and surrounding are. The existing diversification in sceneries and attraction sites assists in maintenance of good customer base and would be applicable with future focus on intensive research and development.
Renovations of the transportation system, as well as building hotels and restrooms is a prerequisite in identifying customer tastes and can help expand resources for the purpose of accommodating groups of all ages (Ahmed and Rafiq, 2002).
Price control presents one of the major factors capable of determining rate of customer influx and loyalty towards HTB’s services. Increasing charges on services provided within the site, make clients shy away from exploring the treasures of Mortimer’s Castle. There is a need to work with lucrative business models capable of utilizing appropriate segmentation suitable for current changing market dynamics (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007).
Brand communication
Improving the brand image of the site depends on the nature of services and adoption of modern facilities. This determines visitors’ shopping habits which are majorly dependant on overall information concerning the site, nature of enjoyment alongside leisure activities, pricing methods, nature of advertisement and public relations (Egan, 2007).
Majority of the population in England are health conscious therefore would prefer places that can offer recreation activities. Nature of services and attraction sites surrounding Mortimer Castle provides sufficient information to tourists on the level of satisfaction awaiting exploitation. Strength of company’s brand depends on its unique capabilities and nature of satisfaction consumers can obtain from services offered (Egan, 2007).
Service marketing
Service marketing involved in this case study is based on quality and value obtained from the product. Service Marketing forms one of the basic foundations within tourism since the focus revolves onintangibility, inseparability and heterogeneity of customer-provider relationships (Duncan, 1997). Services provided would range from nature walk in the woods, horse riding, swimming and bird watching by the lakeside.
Tourists would enjoy ride on steam locomotive train and at the same time acquaint themselves with ancient monuments such as Mortimer Castle. Much importance has been placed on service industries owing to current economic turmoil since it has the capability of providing required customer satisfaction irrespective of anticipated challenges (Lovelock et al., 2007).
Tactic using 4 Sir Peters 4 p’s
Fig 2: Product Competition Analysis Matrix (product, place , price, promotion)
Balanced Score Card
This presents basic articulation of linkages between various performance measures and strategic objectives of the organization. The objectives will ultimately be translated into actions capable of improving HTB’s performance (Lovelock et al., 2007).
Fig 1: Balance score card perspective measurements for HTB
Reference List
Ahmed, K & Rafiq, M 2002, Internal Marketing tools and concepts for customer Focused management, Heinemann Elsevier, London
Barnes, C, Blake, H & Pinder, D 2009, Creating & Delivering your Value Proposition,Kogan Publishers, London
Dubois, P, Jolibert, A & Muhlbacher, H 2007, Marketing Management a Value Creation Process, Macmillan publishers, London.
Duncan, T 1997, Integrated marketing communication, Academy of Marketing, Johannesburg.
Egan, J 2007, Marketing Communications, Thomson Learning, London Fifield, P 2007, Marketing Strategy: The Difference between Marketing and Markets, (3rd Ed), Heinemann Publishers, London
Fill, C 2009, Marketing communications: Interactivity, Communications and Content, 5th edition, FT prentice Hall, Italy
Harris, T 1998, Value-added public relations, the secret weapon of integrated Marketing, NTC Business, Lincolnwood
Kotler, P 2006, Marketing Management-Analysis, Planning, Implementation & Control, Prentice Hall, London
Lovelock, C, Patterson, P & Walker, R 2007, Services marketing, Pearson Prentice-Hall, NSW
Lovelock, C & Wirtz, J 2007, Services Marketing People, Technology, Strategy (6th Ed.),Pearson Prentice-Hall, NSW