Target Market
A fictional sports retail shop, Faster & Stronger, will sell high-quality sports goods for fitness and training, summer and winter sports, and outdoor activities. Its target market is professional athletes, amateurs ready to join groups of people engaged professionally, and beginners who purchase sports goods either for the sake of interest or on the recommendations of experienced athletes, including coaches.
Products supplied by Faster & Stronger include clothing and shoes for sports and sports equipment. The store’s strengths consist of a non-banal approach: the store has shopping areas for women and men (Davis-Sramek et al., 2020). Goods for water sports, fishing, diving, hunting, and paintball are distributed in the shopping area for men. Products for pilates, yoga, dancing, gymnastics, and swimming are distributed in the shopping area for women. The store’s weakness in terms of product offers is the lack of luxury goods. The store is focused on the middle-price segment, so there are practically no premium-quality products.
Opportunities & Potential Growth
Retail opportunities include opening new hypermarkets with a more convenient location for consumers, which will increase the flow of buyers. Potential growth areas for Faster & Stronger include introducing more modern technologies into selling goods. An AI tool like Albert AI can enhance analysis and strategy development. By analyzing big data for independent campaigns and using self-learning software, the tool increases the marketing strategy’s accuracy, intelligence, and effectiveness.
Integrated Retail Strategy
The marketing strategy for Faster & Stronger would be focused on focus and cost leadership. Branding will involve shifting the company’s focus from the product to a specific market segment. Buyers will be offered the option of a travel kit, which they can assemble themselves, and due to the optimization of production processes, the company will reduce the prices of its goods (Seong, 2021). Advertising will include positioning, which accurately determines the place of the product in the audience’s minds among competitors’ advertising ideas.
Merchandising Strategy
Priority in the merchandising strategy Faster & Stronger will be the visual channel, emphasizing sports aesthetics. The assortment range will include men’s, children’s, and women’s sportswear and shoes, equipment for sports, and equipment for outdoor activities and tourism. Store layout will be a convenient thematic client area where the buyer can view catalogs and choose the positions they like (Seong, 2021). This will not clutter up the space on the trading floor with the layout of bulky goods.
Customer Service Strategy
The customer service strategy will be an information comfort strategy. The staff must be trained to provide the buyer with complete information about various sports and the necessary equipment. Such information must be available to the client. Moreover, it must be submitted by the employee in a form that would satisfy their requests (Seong, 2021).
Customer retention will be done using a loyalty card that provides promotions and discounts for regular customers. The technological strategy for Faster & Stronger will be changeable since several successive applied technologies will concretize it throughout its life cycle. Using AI and other digital tools, such as Albert AI, to enhance the customer experience will avoid obsolescence in the company’s existing production potential.
References
Davis-Sramek, B., Ishfaq, R., Gibson, B. J., & Defee, C. (2020). Examining retail business model transformation: A longitudinal study of the transition to omnichannel order fulfillment. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 50(5), 557-576. Web.
Seong, D. H. (2021). Sports leadership theories for improving retail service quality on customer value. Journal of Distribution Science, 19(5), 13-21. Web.