Overview of the firm
Zucker Bakers is a small family owned and operated business established in 2008 along Long Island in New York. It is a full-service kosher bakery where skilled bakers handcraft none-dairy and nut-free backed products in-house using the finest ingredients to produce quality standard products.
Due to a small market share, small family ownership and in-house backing, this business is classified under small market enterprise. It also specializes in assortment of delicious backed goods.
Marketing environment
All departments in this business environment work towards effective good marketing strategies. It has finance and research centres which are bound to keep their expenses under set budget. The marketing department always receives recommendation from the research department. The marketing department is result-oriented, customer-driven, leadership-committed and recognizes the views of the people.
The marketing environment also provides for public responsibility, management by process, proactive action, rapid response, continuous improvement and a learning manager. This small enterprise has differentiated the customer markets into consumer, business, government and online markets (Pagell, and Michael, 154).
The company targets most advertising campaigns to consumer markets. The competition in this industry has affected Zucker Bakers’ approach towards the marketing process. The company has, for a long time, concentrated on targeting nearby consumers until they realized that competitors have ventured into e-commerce.
It now has joined the social sights such as face-book and twitter. The company’s website has a welcoming interface where customers are attracted to the pictures of the products. This type of marketing environment influenced by the competitors has existed for long in this company because of the struggle to fit in.
Mission and objectives
The products are meant to remind the customers of childhood memories. The company has an objective to outdo its competitors by offering a ray of items such as breads, onion rolls, cookies, cupcakes, rye bread, pastries and custom cakes. The customers are provided with a variety of items to make them choose their bundle of interest.
The company has a mission to offer the best services in this industry because of its competitive nature. In order to achieve its objectives, baking is done fresh in the company’s oven to allow customers to get what they want at the right time. Customers are allowed in the living rooms or to take the products out.
The company also offers coffee and espresso made by experts using ingredients such as special teas, hot chocolate and Stump town coffee. The owner of this company and also a chef, Zohar Zohar, has a mission of keeping the family together and providing a homely feeling in the business. She also works towards touching customer’s nostalgic memories through cookies’ taste and the shop’s design. The company tries to accomplish these missions by maintaining the quality of standards expected by their customers.
Marketing strategies
Zucker Bakers focuses on expanding the network of contacts and potential clients. The company has a target market segment strategy where it sets marketing goals and works towards achieving them. The company signs contracts with potential partners who include distributers, suppliers and even customers.
The company always looks for a low price before contracting a client or making such a move. It came up with a strategy of sharing its expertise freely by stating that they are specialized in the assortment of delicious baked food. This has since improved the number of customers because they believe the company shows them what it is exemplary.
Promotional give-away done on twitter and face-book has helped the company to reach the young generation. The consumers today are more informed and less loyal to a product hence marketing requires e-commerce to reach most people (Pagell, Ruth and Michael, 34). This strategy has also helped in inspiring customers to call by placing their contacts alongside the advertisements.
Marketing by generosity where surprise gifts are given to loyal customers also forms part of the marketing strategy. This strategy has also helped in increasing the sales because people would get to taste these products first before buying them.
Zucker Bakers’ policy of ‘feed them and they will come’ has increased customer loyalty. This company does this by providing a living room where customers are served and treated with respect to their satisfaction. The products can also be packed for customers to take away if they want to.
These products are meant to trigger customers’ childhood memories. It is important to note that memorable stories are also marketing strategies meant to keep customers coming. The free contents like reports provided by this company on a monthly basis have helped in marketing its products.
Key strengths and weaknesses
Even with such effective marketing strategies, this company has strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This report, however, focuses on the key strengths and weaknesses of its marketing approach. Expanding the network of contact approach is considered an excellent move because of the large population that consumes the company’s products.
The company meets so many clients in a day. This is its strength due to the fact that many relations can be made to generate more contacts. The importance of this approach is that food is a basic need hence many people would want deliveries to be made to them. This is considered as strength because in the process of making deliveries, more contacts are made to create a large network.
Many customers have always enjoyed better services offered at the company’s living room. Research done recently by the company has shown that people like taking most of the company’s products in the living room and only a sample take them away.
This shows that the ‘feed them and they will come’ marketing philosophy is creating a large customer base. The company has also ensured that various products are made available to the needy customers thereby making it easy for a customer to make a choice concerning at least one of the products.
This company does not focus on building a market share but instead focuses on connecting with the target. This, therefore, makes some strategies hard to implement. Giving free gifts, for instance, costs the company especially when the target market becomes used to the free offers and always expects more of them even when the company is not stable.
This is a weakness because the company is currently going through the last phase of production where profits are not so much. Other competitors in the same field use this to advance their market because they have not yet experienced a full production cycle. This has created so much pressure to Zucker Bakers who tries, at all cost to, maintain its existing customer base.
There is a challenge with the e-commerce management at Zucker Bakers thereby making it hard to perform well in internet marketing. The company has a weakness in providing online services because it already has too many people at the bakery.
Many people now prefer to take the products at the living room hence the company management feels it unnecessary to handle the few customers who want deliveries at their door steps. This company is, therefore, loosing such type of customers at an alarming rate. The company has, surprisingly, not developed a better marketing strategy to handle this situation (Pagell, and Michael, 26).
Recommendation for improvement
The responsibility of marketing should be left to all the stakeholders. However, managers should be well trained on marketing skills so that they can impart the same to their subordinates. Since these are food products, the quality standards are very important. The company can adopt the philosophy that ‘a good product sells’ (Potre, Erick and Michael, 111).
Once the customers develop their interest in the product, they will be loyal to the brand as long as quality standards are maintained. It is the same customers who will suggest the products to friends and family which is simply marketing (Forte, and Michael, 97).
The company should focus on market shares as well rather than just sticking to the target markets. It is easier to lose a customer but Zucker Bakers gains new customers every day. Therefore, some time should be spent in improving market shares. Some well informed and well connected consumers consider the market shares of companies before sticking to them. This is also common with long lasting clients who express their loyalties only to companies with large market shares.
The company should fully adopt e-commerce and ensure that the internet users are not just aware of the products but can also make orders online. A team should be created to handle the online marketing program.
Work Cited
Pagell, Ruth A, and Michael Halperin. International Business Information: How to Find It, How to Use It. New York: AMACOM, 2000. Print.
Forte, Eric J, and Michael R. Oppenheim. The Basic Business Library: Core Resources and Services. Santa Barbara, Calif: Libraries Unlimited, 2012. Print.