Introduction
Most consumers view gardening products as products that are not essential their day-to-day activities. Therefore, the market for these products is very volatile and can be affected by minor changes in the economy. Due to this fact, consumers find it hard to purchases expensive gardening tools. When there is an economic slump, consumers opt to purchase cheaper alternatives that are available in the market.
The purchase of gardening equipment tends to be higher during spring and summer. It is during this period that as a result of the favorable prevailing weather, gardeners tend to work on their farms and gardens. Statistics on sales of gardening equipment tend to be skewed in the season between spring and early winter. Gardening is slowly becoming one of the of the most popular pass time activities in the United Kingdom.
Moreover, it appears as if global the recession has encouraged gardening. This may be due to the fact that people find it cheaper to plant their own crops rather than purchasing foodstuffs. Women who are in the age bracket of forty years and above form the bulk of the people who are practicing gardening as a hobby. In this light, a sales and Marketing Manager would be wise to target this group when selling gardening products.
Consumers in the gardening market are highly aware of the available brands and the cost of most products. However, companies with recognized brands have shifted their concentration towards the upper end of the market. This action has led to market polarization. Consumers who cannot afford recognized brands opt for cheaper products from overseas rather than buying expensive products from internal companies.
Moreover, these consumers are aware of the substitutes for each product and can easily shift to cheaper goods if prices change. Ordinary consumers aim at minimizing costs when spending on gardening equipments and other gardening products.
This is because these products are not considered basic neither are they goods of ostentation. The shift in consumer preference for cheaper goods has led to companies outsourcing their activities in order to maintain their competitive edge by reducing their operating costs.
Product distribution within the gardening market is highly competitive. Most of the large companies with more than one retail branch account for a large portion of the market share.
Despite this fact, individual gardening centers continue to prosper in the United Kingdom with the majority of their customers being people who need personal contact. Customers appreciate professional help services offered by the individual owned garden centers. In addition, the individual garden centers stock a variety of goods and a wider range of products both from well established brands and non-established brands.
The gardening product market requires sophisticated marketing strategies to penetrate and gain a sizeable market share. Competition in this sector is high and marketers have to establish innovative means of reaching the consumer. A good marketing strategist should adopt a comprehensive model that would ensure he/she exploits the market successfully.
Moreover, he/she has to incorporate the strategies with the company’s policies and procedures to ensure that are working in alignment with other departments. A marketing communication plan is required for the success of these
Market Communication Planning
Integration of a successful market communication plan requires adoption of a comprehensive marketing communications planning model. The stages of achieving a successful communication plan include:
Context Analysis
This is the process of analyzing the consumer to determine their preferences and tastes. This process is achieved by vigorous marketing research on consumer habits. A Marketing Manager must embark on extensive market research before entering into the market.
The manager has to obtain extensive and sufficient knowledge pertaining to the period of high sales. He/she should know the products that have the highest sales and the lowest sales. This information assists the manager in decision making. Generally context analysis involves studying previous market trends and consumer behavior.
Promotional Goals
Once the Marketing Manager has determined the market trends, consumer preferences, the peak season and products with the highest sales, he can decide on promotional goals. The process of forming goals is important since it acts as a source of motivation to the Marketing Manager. In addition, goals also provide a means of measuring performance.
The Marketing Manager needs to set marketing goals on all products depending on their previous performance in the market. Moreover, the manager should set a system that will ensure that goals are communicated to other personnel within the organization. Setting goals acts as a means of formulating marketing strategies.
Promotional Strategies
trategy is an elaborate plan and systematic approach of work. A strategy will ensure that the marketing department can achieve its goals and objectives within a specified time period. A Marketing Manager should determine the strategies to use and the viability of these strategies in a business. Strategy is one of the most important aspects of marketing.
A good strategy usually differentiates a successful organization from the rest. Adopting Michael Porter’s generic strategy in the marketing of garden products will be advantageous to the organization. Porter’s defensive strategy is handy in ensuring that the market share is maintained and expanded. Therefore, adopting any one of Porter’s generic strategies allows the company to improve their marketing. These strategies include:
Cost Leadership Generic
This strategy emphasizes on the need to minimize costs. All companies need to maintain costs that are relatively lower than those of their competitors. A company can achieve lower costs by having lower cost per unit in the course of its operation. Lower costs per unit will ensure that the company’s profits are relatively higher than those of its competitors.
This strategy is considered feasible since it ensures that the company can decrease its prices and fight for a market share with well established brands in the market. The cost leadership strategy also ensures that the company is well protected against powerful suppliers. This is because it provides an ease in absorbing increasing production costs.
When applying the uses cost leadership a company will be able to minimize its cost effectively whereas the other companies will be aiming at outsourcing as a means of cutting costs.
This strategy therefore give the company sufficient opportunity to establish a brand in the market by claiming they are the only local producers of gardening products. Cost leadership can be encouraged by economies of scale. Therefore, the company should be encouraged to produce its gardening products in large quantities to ensure minimum cost per unit of production
Product Differentiation
Differentiating products provides the company with an opportunity of creating something unique. Unique products will ensure that the company is able to create its own market for garden product. Product differentiation can be done by creating a new design, creating a different brand and using different technology.
This strategy is considered defendable because it provides insulation to the company from competitors by creating brand loyalty. This in turn reduces the price elasticity of the products making them less likely to be affected by the changes in price and demand. Uniqueness of a product creates barriers that reduce the propensity to substitute a brand for another.
With no substitutes in the market the company creates margins that can assist in dealing with bigger competition. By differentiating the product the company can control the purchasing habits of the consumer.
Successful differentiation can be achieved by doing extensive market research then implementing the findings of the research. However, while doing research cost are incurred and therefore rendering the concept low of cost per unit useless. Product differentiation requires strong marketing skills.
Focus or Niche Strategy
Niche strategy focuses on a particular group of consumers or product discrimination. Product discrimination is the production of different products for different markets. Marketing products in different niches requires management to use either product differentiation or cost leadership to achieve their goals.
The marketing department can also focus on the target group and do aggressive advertising to capture the market. Niche marketing is considered as a defensive strategy since it directs the resources of the company towards a specified group of consumers thus locking the competition out.
Once strategies have been established, the Marketing Manager should coordinate the communication mix. Coordinating communication mix involves the manner in which information is release to the general public. The Marketing Manager has to decide the on the method of dissemination of information on the product.
The process of passing information to the public is regarded as of advertising. Advertising is usually not person specific. It targets the masses unlike promotion which entails reaching a specific person to ensure information is passed along. The marketing department has to decide on whether to use promotions or mass advertising. Usually the method of marketing used is dependent on the marketing strategy adopted.
Lavidge and Streiner model provides the best communication model to enhance advertisement. This model involves capturing a customer’s attention first by creating awareness on existence of the product. Once the customer is aware the marketers need to build the customer’s knowledge of the product. A customer’s knowledge will determine whether he or she develops a liking for the product.
If the customer likes the product he or she might develop preference for the brand over other brands. Finally, consumers must make a conviction about a product before he or she finally makes a purchase.
The process of capturing consumers’ attention, creating awareness, building his knowledge, up to the process of purchasing summarizes the Lavidge and Steiner model. Understanding Lavidge and Streiner model of communication is important to marketers since it provides insight into consumer behavior.
Analysis of Effectiveness
Use of cost leadership strategy has the advantage of minimizing the organizations cost. This enables a company to operate at lower costs than its competitors. On the other hand maintaining cost leadership is risky since the organization tends to concentrate on costs and forget product innovations.
Using product differentiation strategy is useful when the company wants to create a competitive advantage by establishing uniqueness. However product differentiation can be expensive and undermine cost leadership. Niche marketing is important in elimination of competition from specific areas of the market. Nevertheless, it only entails achieving either cost leadership or product differentiation in a small part of the market.
Conclusion
For marketing to be successful a comprehensive plan is required. This plan should be accompanied with models and strategies that ensure goals and objectives of the company are met. Successful Marketing Managers must therefore have knowledge on strategies available at their disposal.