Due to the unique characteristics of the Lush Company’s industry of operation, it is vital to balance the elements of intangibility, inseparability, and heterogeneity in the 4Ps of its market mix (Eldring, 2009).
Therefore, it is important to establish means and ways of reaching the potential market consisting of sensitive clients through the following strategies.
Online Placement
Though currently operational, the company should redesign its online purchasing website to increase it visibility. The main objective and goal of this online marketing plan is to attract the young adults’ market bracket that spends nearly a quarter of a day online.
This will be achieved through optimization of the company online portal website to improving on visibility of the products online. It is necessary to revise the company’s online sales algorithms constantly for the search result for the company’s products to remain at the top.
This can be achieved through revising the content to ensure that all the information in the website pertains directly to the needs of potential clients (West, Ford & Ibrahim, 2010).
Retail Stores
In order to further the current market expansion strategy, the Lush Company should explore the option of franchising its products to smaller retail stores across the UK. Specifically, the kiosk model will increase the visibility of the company’s products to the low quantity purchasers.
The retail stores will then use the parent company’s supply chain channels to reach out the market segment (Jobber, 2012). For instance, the company may use the services of the famous Iman Cosmetics distributors that have small retail stores across the UK.
Since the Iman’s distribution channel is well developed, the Lush Company will increase their product visibility in all regions where Iman Cosmetics distributors have retail stores.
The current distribution channel of the Lush Company consists of 50 distributors with each selling an average of 100,000 products annually. Thus, an addition of 10 distributors will certainly increase the annual turnover by 100,000 products.
In three years, the turnover will stabilise at 6,000,000 pieces of Lush beauty products, which is almost 20% increase in the market share.
Thus, a 15% increase is very viable within three years. As the market share increases, Lush Company’s market visibility will also increase in the same proportion (Eldring 2009).
Partnerships with the supermarkets
Reflectively, all the supermarkets in London have store space for the cosmetic products. For instance, Sainsbury and Tesco stores have some of the largest shelves for cosmetic products.
Thus, Lush Company may sign a memorandum of understanding with Sainsbury, Tesco and other supermarkets located within the cities of London, Bradford, Birmingham, and Peterborough among others.
The memorandum of understanding will entail an agreement with the supermarkets to allocate special shelves for the Lush products besides running promotions on behalf of the company.
In return, the supermarkets will retain an agreed percentage of returns from these products. When this strategy is successfully implemented, Lush Company will greatly increase its visibility in the above cities through its products in these supermarkets.
Product distribution channel
To further penetrate the expansive cosmetic industry of the UK, the Lush Company should improve its distribution network by adding a fleet of ten automobile cosmetic shops that also acts as the source of transport for the company’s products to different stores and supermarkets (Wormeli, 2007).
These automobiles will be fitted with visible posters of the company products. The automobiles will be allocated to different regions of the UK such as Truro, Wakefield, and Wolverhampton where the availability and visibility of the company’s products are minimal.
In order to successfully implement this strategy, the Lush Company will have to double its current expenditure on product delivery to the market.
However, this cost will substantially drop after a short period of time as the company will start to benefits from economies of scale as a result of dispatching more products into the market due to improved product visibility.
Reference List
Eldring, J 2009, Porter’s (1980) generic strategies, performance and risk: An empirical investigation with German data, Diplomica-Verl, Hamburg.
Jobber, D 2012, Principles and practice of marketing, McGraw-Hill Publishers, New York, NY.
West, DC, Ford, J, & Ibrahim, E 2010, Strategic marketing, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Wormeli, R 2007, Differentiation: From planning to practice, grades 6-12, Stenhouse Publishers, Portland.