Marketing Strategy, I Finished Parta, All Subject

¶ … MARKETING STRATEGY, I finished PartA, All subject requirment Marketing strategy assessment guidelines I upload. Please find source . include website, journal artical, news paper . 1100 words.

Marketing strategy

The Seorabol restaurant is a local restaurant with Korean features, serving a wide array of foods to various customer categories. Recently, the restaurant has been confronted with risks of decreased competitive position, as revealed in Part A, and the current project aims to propose two strategies on how the restaurant could address its limitations.

Expansion into the social media

Strategy introduction

An important problem at the Searabol (SRB) restaurant is represented by the absence of well developed marketing campaigns. The restaurant is popular among its current customers, but its ability to attract new clients is restricted. In order to address this shortage, the proposed strategy is that of launching the restaurant into the social media. The opportunity of social media would as such be seized while the weakness of poor promotional activities would be addressed.

2.2. Aim of the strategy

The aim of the proposed strategy is that of increasing the awareness of the existence of the restaurant among the users of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter or other such applications.

2.3. The target market

The targeted customer base at this level is represented by the people who normally use the social media constructions, that is young adults, with access to technologies and the internet (Romm-Livermore and Setzekorn, 2009). At this particular level, emphasis would be placed on students at the local university.

2.4. Positioning

Through this new strategy, the SRB restaurant would position itself as the provider of unique food products and services, in a positive and open ambiance, welcoming the young population to enjoy speciality foods products.

2.5. The product

The products delivered by the Searabol restaurant would be the ones traditionally made and sold by the restaurant, with the specification that the restaurant would also develop and create a new dish, which would be a more cost effective alternative to its existent products; its current products are often perceived as expensive and this is a major limitation to young adults, on restricted budgets.

2.6. Recommendations

At this level, it is suggested that the implementation of social media approaches would lead to the attraction of new customers. In order to attain this objective however, several strategic recommendations are made, as follows:

The creation of a website which would represent the restaurant within the social media. In case this option is not viable for the company due to the costs generated by the creation and maintenance of a website by a professional team of software developers, a viable alternative is represented by the creation of a blog, which is simple, inexpensive and does not require vast technological skills (Halligan, Shah and Scott, 2009).

The creation of accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other such social media devices and the search for groups formed from prospective customers

The creation of accounts on LinkedIn, in order to address the student community also as a potential employer, and create a business reputation and image as well

The active participation on other blogs and websites in order to increase the presence and popularity of the SRB restaurant within the virtual community

The development of all social media interactions in a means in which they are accessible from mobile devices; this feature is crucial given the increasing popularity of mobile devices, as well as their specific popularity among the young adult population (Mahony, 2004)

The usage of multimedia tools to promote the restaurant, such as the uploading of videos and presentations on YouTube (Brooks, 2011)

Overall, the necessary approach in all these strategic actions is represented by the need to maintain a consistency of the brand (Kimbarovsky, 2009).

2.7. Strategy evaluation

The evaluation of the strategy would be conducted based on its ability to attract new customers in the selected target market.

3. Investment in design

3.1. Strategy introduction

Another important weakness of the Searabol restaurant, as revealed in Part A, is represented by the degrading aspect of the location, both internal as well as external. This decreases the interest of prospective customers in the restaurant. It is as such required for the facility to invest more in its internal and external design.

3.2. Aim of the strategy

The currently proposed strategy aims to improve the aspect of the Searabol restaurant, with a final objective of raising more customer interest. Specifically, it is hoped for the strategy to increase the satisfaction of current customers, but also to help attract and retain new clients. In other words, it would address the weakness of lack of investment in interior and exterior design and would also strive to seize the opportunity of an increased number of potential customers.

3.3. The target market

The current strategy is more generic, striving to appeal to customers in all segments. Still, in order to ensure consistency, it would be aligned with the first strategy proposition. In this line of thoughts then, the primary target market considered is that formed from young adults.

3.4. Positioning

Through a combination of the two strategic approaches, the positioning strategy at this level would be one in which the Searabol restaurant is promoted as a fresh and intriguing alternative to traditional dinning. It would provide customers with the chance to enjoy unique food products, in a pleasant, open and friendly ambiance. At the level of the ambiance, this is expected to integrate a combination of modernism and simplism, alongside with elements from the Korean culture and cuisine.

3.5. The product

The products served at this stage of the organizational change would not suffer major modifications, due to the fact that the offer of the restaurant is popular among the customers. Support would nevertheless be granted to the creation of more cost effective meals which are more financially accessible to the younger population on restricted budgets.

3.6. Recommendations

At this stage of marketing strategy proposition, the recommendations to be made fall into two categories. The first of these sets of recommendations is represented by financial concerns associated with the additional investments, which include the following:

The implementation of more cost and operationally effective tools and mechanisms within the restaurant

The search for alternative sources of funding, such as bank loans or additional investors. New investors would share in the risks and profits, but would also impact the control and decision making process (Bossert, 2008). Bank loans would be more financially restrictive, but would not intervene in decision making at the restaurant (Bragg, 2011).

The second set of recommendations is pegged to the actual means in which the investments would be made towards the renovation of the internal and external aspect of the building. At this level, it is first necessary to define the elements which would appeal to the selected customer base, but also the elements which would represent the mission of the restaurant. Once this step is completed, it is recommended for a specialized team of designers to be hired and put in change of the project. The restaurant management would continually collaborate with the team and would capitalize on their expertise (Martin and Knoohuizen, 1995).