Marketing Caselet Essay

Chapter 1: Marketing an Introduction Inquirer is the leading broadsheet in the Philippines. In 2001, it launched Libre, a free tabloid distributed in the MRT-LRT area. It was an unprecedented move of a major daily giving away their newspaper on weekdays and recovering cost solely from advertising revenue. Visit the MRT-LRT site and discuss and explain your answers to the following: a. What was the underserved and unserved market Inquirer was trying to tap? b. How strategic is the underserved and unserved market to them? c. What are the other key activity changes of the Libre system vs. the traditional Inquirer system? Chapter 2: Market Segmentation Victoria Court Drive-in Hotel and Restaurant is a chain of full-service motels catering mostly to the upper income market segment. The traditional market for drive-in-hotels and motels are lovers who avail of one out of the many specially designed â€Å"theme† rooms (Japanese room, jungle room, oval office room, game room etc.) for three hours (now called wash-up time). In the early 1990’s, Victoria Court embarked on an aggressive campaign to attract two additional segments of the market: the husband and wife market and the party market. Their mission was to slowly transform their image by communicating to the public that their drive-in-hotels could be used predominantly for legitimate purposes such as for resting, or for group social occasions. They have also acquired Hotel La Corona affiliated with the Best Western international hotel group. a. Identify the needs and wants of each of the three market segments targeted by Victoria Court? b. Who are their main competitors for each market segment? c. Given the traditional image of motel, do you agree with the segmentation strategy utilized by the Victoria Court group? Why or why not? Chapter 3: Marketing Mix: The 4Ps of Marketing gohotels.ph, a property of Robinson’s Land, began test marketing its value hotel in May 2010 at its building along Edsa beside Robinson’s Pioneer  Street. It has about 200 rooms in the Edsa site but has chosen to have 60 to 100 rooms in each of their subsequent sites in the provincial areas. Its pricing is unique because it utilizes the revenue management model of the airline industry where prices would vary depending on demand, in this case, occupancy numbers. Thus, a 16 to 22 square meter room can command a price as low as P388 plus value added tax (VAT), or as high as P3000 plus VAT, averaging about P1,550 plus Vat per room boasts of a comfortable bed with two types of pillows (hypoallergenic and chiropractic), a clean private bathroom with rain shower, free wifi, LCD TV, convenient location with safe surroundings secured by CCTV and safety cabinet. On its first month of its test market and despite using mostly viral marketing and press write ups to create awarenes s, it experienced an occupancy rate higher than most hotels – 60 to 80% on most days with two of those days fully booked, thus creating an innovative business model in the hotel industry with new basis of competition. a. Who would be the target market attracted to the offer of gohotels.ph? b. Identify the marketing mix of gohotels.ph and compare it with other value hotels. What are their strengths and weaknesses? c. How could gohotels.ph offer an amazingly low price as low as P388 plus VAT per room night? Chapter 4: Product Strategy: Product In the fast food industry, one growth opportunity in the past was the introduction of the breakfast category. Fast food companies like Jollibee and McDonald’s would have a different menu for breakfast and lunch to â€Å"customize† its meal solution, during these two different meal times. However, lunch and dinner menu remains the same. a. Do consumers have the same or different dine-in behavior during lunch and dinner? b. If not the same, identify the difference. c. What would you recommend to the fast food companies in order to improve their dinner sales and seat capacity usage? Chapter 4: Product Strategy: Branding Starbucks is a popular hangout for Gen X and Yuppies. Despite selling coffee  and other baked products at higher prices than regular food stores, they were able to generate awareness and patronage thru word of mouth and publicity instead of relying on media advertising. In 2010, Starbucks in the USA tested then â€Å"Roy’s Street Coffee and Tea by Starbucks Corporation†, an innovative neighborhood coffee house that sells coffee, wine and beer, together with organic pastries, gourmet cheese and meat plates. This was an attempt to recapture the upscale market which they lost when it went mainstream with cheaper lattes and frappuccinos that are now by Starbucks is the 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. Both stores are located in Seattle which is the headquarters of Starbucks. a. Where do you think Starbucks Corporation got the insight to offer these products under two newly branded stores and not in their regular Starbucks? b. If the â€Å"Roy’s Street† and â€Å"15th Avenue† coffee shops succeed, what is the implication to the Starbucks brand and its over 16,000 stores worldwide, including the Philippines? Chapter 4: Product Strategy: Managing Product Lines During the 2010 annual stockholders meeting of San Miguel Brewery, it was reported that while the per capital consumption of beer in Luzon is 40 liters per year, it is only liters annually in the Visayas and Mindanao region. San Miguel Brewery, already with about 96% market shares of the total beer industry as of 2010, wanted to expand annual sales from 1.5 billion liters to 2 billion liters by encouraging higher consumption in the Visayas and Mindanao are its various beer brands. a. Investigate why Visayas and Mindanao consumption of beer is lagging far behind its Luzon counterpart. b. How can San Miguel Brewery use its various beer products to encourage higher consumption among underserved and unserved market in the Visayas and Mindanao area? c. How can San Miguel Brewery use its potential synergy with all its sister companies to increase beer demand in the Visayas and Mindanao area? Chapter 4: Product Strategy: Green Marketing Although having no nutritional value, Shark’s fin soup is a popular and much  sought-after dish served in many Chinese restaurants. Shark’s fin dumplings are an equally popular dimsum item. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are the top three countries that trade shark fins and are the suppliers for Philippine Chinese restaurants. Each fin weighs about 100kg. coming from sharks that are about 50 to 60 meters long. Some fishermen would capture sharks, slice their fins off and toss them back to sea to die so they can save space on their boat. More countries are banning the fishing and trading of shark’s fin. However, unless the trade of shark fin is totally stopped, sharks may become extinct, thus creating an imbalance in the ecosystem. To preserve sharks, one way is to encourage government to ban its trade. Another is to encourage restaurants not to serve them, and lastly, to campaign for customers not to consume them. All three options while challenging to do is not impossible if the readers of this book can do something individually or collectively about it. The essence of learning is not in knowing but in doing what needs to be done based on what we know. Devise and implement a campaign that will ensure the slow down if not absolutely stop shark’s fin trade and consumption in the Philippines.