Marketing Strategy and Plan The Bonfire Cafe

Question: Discuss about theMarketing Strategy and Planfor the Bonfire Cafe. Answer: Identification of the problems The Bonfire caf in Australia is responsible for serving Indian and Pakistani food to its customers. The restaurant serves variety of food that is good in taste. The service of the restaurant is also good as the staff is very polite. The location is also good and is a major attraction to the customers specially the ones that lover Indian food. However, few problems have been identified that the restaurant faces. The problems faced by Bonfire caf in Australia are as follows: The caf only focuses on expansion of the restaurant and does not pay attention in improving the quality of the food that it serves to its customers. The second problem identified is that the restaurant has limited menu and only concentrates on serving Indian and Pakistani food. The restaurant should concentrate on expanding the menu and the variety of food that it serves. The restaurant has very little knowledge of their customers due t which they are unable to target the right customers. This makes them loose their valuable customers, which is an important part of the organization. The fourth problem identified is that there are many restaurants like the Bonfire caf due to which the competition increases. The customers are divided and the profit of the firm falls. It is easy to enter the market and easy to copy (Beijbom et al. 2015). The restaurant only focuses on the affordable meals and lacks in all types of meals. The customer satisfaction is falling due to the quality of the food that it serves to its customers. With the new restaurants coming up the competition is rising that is raising the problems for the organization. It is making difficult for the organization to grow and expand. People now days are becoming more health conscious due to which they avoid consuming junk foods, as it is bad for health. This is a major problem faced by the restaurant (Kotler et al. 2015). Solution to the Problems The problems identified above have solutions as well. The solutions are: The restaurant should not just concentrate on expansion but also quality of food. Improving quality of food will automatically attract customers and increase the profit the level. The restaurant should also expand the variety of food that it serves. Instead of just serving Indian and Pakistani food, it should introduce other foods like Italian or American food. This will help the restaurant increase its customer base. To fight over its competitors analyzing the competitors strategies is essential. An innovation should be introduced in order to achieve competitive advantage. It can be in form of discounts or a change in the ambience. The restaurant can keep theme parties that will be a major attraction for the customers. It is also essential for the restaurant to identify its customers and stay in constant touch with them. This can be done through social media and internet.Since people are becoming health conscious, the restaurant should be involved in delivering organic food to its customers. Healthy food made with healthy herbs and spices should be served to health conscious people (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick 2012). Hence, the senior executives of the organization can solve the problems through proper planning and strategies. Formulation of strategies depends in proper market survey and analysis. Target Market and Market Segmentation Target market is a group of consumers whom the organization targets to sell its products and services. Forming target market is the first step towards the successful marketing strategy. A target market is formed on various factors and characteristics that they share and is similar. This includes age, sex, gender, demography, social status, culture, class, belief, attitude and lifestyle. Segmentation of the customers based on these given factors is known as market segmentation (Aghdaie and Alimardani 2015). Market segmentation includes: Geographical segmentation: the customers segmented based on location, region, climate and address. In this case, the Bonfire caf targets customers of Australia that is Sydney and Melbourne and nearby areas. Demographic segmentation: the customers are segmented based on gender, age, demography, wage and career. In this case, the Bonfire caf targets customers of all demography and age. The restaurant concentrates on Indian and Pakistani consumers who love the Indian food. It also focuses on tourists of India and other countries who search for Indian food (Wedel and Kamakura 2012). Psychographic segmentation: the customers are segmented based on attitudes, values and lifestyles. The restaurant concentrates on customers that are loyal and have good attitude. It concentrates on customers that have high social status and income. Hence, the major concentration of the Bonfire caf is Pakistani and Indian consumers that have craving for Indian food. The customers are not segmented based on age as it includes children, young men, women, and adults as well. The customers of Bonfire caf are mainly from Australia and mainly Indians that reside in Australia. It also includes the Indian tourists that come to visit Australia (Mobin and Dehghanimohammadabadi 2014). Marketing Objectives Marketing objectives are the goals and aims that the caf wants to achieve. The objective of the restaurant is to expand its business to other countries as well. It also aims at increasing the customer base and attracts major tourists. The organization aims at reducing the delivery time and improving its services. The restaurant is only involved in serving the food on the table to the customers and now it aims at introducing take away delivery. It also aims at serving customers by home delivery of food within five kilometer of radius that too free delivery on order bill of above Australian Dollar fifty. This is done to expand the business and achieve competitive advantage over its competitors. The caf aims at serving the food within the given deadline. The marketing objectives can be measured using SMART framework. The marketing objectives of the Bonfire caf is to increase the number of customers visiting the restaurant by twenty five percent and opening two new stores in Melbourne an d Sydney. It also aims at expanding its stores in India as well (Brown 2012). SMART Objective: It is one of the frameworks that are used to measure the marketing objectives of the organization. The marketing objectives so formed should be: Specific: the organization should target in a specific area. In this case Bonfire caf targets at expanding the business to other places and expanding the customer base and hence is specific in its objectives. Measurable: the marketing objectives so formed should be measurable. In this case the Bonfire caf has set marketing objectives in numbers that is it wants to expand its customer base by twenty five percent. Assignable: the objectives formed should be assigned to respective heads. Here in this case the marketing objectives are assigned to the employees and the supervisors of the restaurant. It is also assigned to the marketers (Lee et al. 2015). Realistic: the marketing objectives formed should be attainable and realistic so that the organization is able to achieve them given the amount of resources. Time related: a specific time should be set to achieve the objectives and should not be too long. In this case, the cafe plans to achieve its target within two years of span. References Aghdaie, M.H. and Alimardani, M., 2015. 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Food product target market prioritization using MCDM approaches. InProceedings of the 2014 Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference. Wedel, M. and Kamakura, W.A., 2012.Market segmentation: Conceptual and methodological foundations(Vol. 8). Springer Science Business Media