Marketing

The Making of a marketing professional

interview with Daneng Wu: business proprietor of Boba Plus in Arcadia, CA

Team Number: 2

Jie Wang

Zhan Yang

Yanxing Wu

Amy Lai

Date: 4/19/2020

Part 1. Business/company & industry background (Yanxing Wu)

Part 2. Interviewee’s professional and education background (Yanxing Wu)

Part 3. Interview content summary through marketing lenses (Zhan Yang)

(summarize and present the key findings through the interview using marketing concepts/frameworks)

Part 4. Discussions (Jie Wang)

(discuss the marketing insights, career tips you as marketing students personally take away throughout the project)

*Part 5. Interview Transcript (Amy Lai)

(typed up verbatim transcript of the interview, including both questions and answers, date and location, participants, etc.)“Interview Transcript” should be no less than 3 pages, 12 font size, single space .

*This part is NOT counted as the body text of the report. *The body text includes Parts 1-4 only.

Part 3. Interview content summary through marketing lenses (Zhan Yang)

Modern companies have to put users first, and build not only a good product or service, but also a good experience around it. I learned a lot from the successful Boba Plus store entrepreneur, I am going to summarize and present the key findings through our interview using five marketing concepts. The first marketing concept is the production concept, businesses were concerned primarily with production because a production oriented business dominated the market. The Boba Plus store that uses the production concept has the belief that customers primarily want products that are affordable and accessible. The person who started the business with the owner Daneng has their own way to increase supply as it decreases its costs. They found a resource from the Chinese wholesales market that delivers the food and beverage at lower cost with good quality, because of their friendship network and mass production. Therefore, the Boba Plus can maximize the profit. The second marketing concept is product concept, my interviewee knows customers prefer products of greater quality and price and availability do influence their purchase decision. From one review by a Boba Plus customer, she said, “Boba Plus not only offers a variety of unique drinks that are pretty unique, but they make their own boba in-house. They offer mango, strawberry, and taro (all made in-house) along with the caramel and honey. I've tried other places that offer in-house boba and Boba Plus's quality is one of the best. You can taste the flavor of the boba, and the pearls are super chewy as well. I also appreciate their "boba of the day" option where you can choose your own flavors. Since boba is more pricey than other places - $0.75 - I highly recommend choosing a variety so that you can experience more flavors.” We can know that Boba Plus does a great job on their drinks in different flavors, especially the signature boba. As I looked at Boba Plus’ menu, I was surprised that their price was low but with the quality. That is a good way to attract more students and focus on this target market, because high school students and middle school students are low on their pucket. The third concept I will summarize is the selling concept. The interviewee believes the selling concept focuses on making an actual sale of the product and focuses on making every possible sale of the product. The interviewee said they sell tactics while they open to attract people visiting, and their grand opening promotion for a little longer than a week. Each drink costs $5.50, but 3 drinks cost $5.50 while their grand opening promotion was on. The profit they came out of that promotion from one drink is about $0.50. This marketing strategy turned out good and busy because many people were in line, it costed 20 to 30 minutes to get one purchase. That makes people have an idea how famous the store is. Also, Boba Plus keeps a record on a stamp card to give out free drinks every eight times visit. The fourth concept I summarize is the marketing concept. My interviewee believes that the marketing concept is placing the consumer at the center of the organization. All activities are geared towards the consumer, and aim to understand the needs and wants of a customer. It executes the marketing strategy according to market research beginning from product conception to sales. The interviewee knows people want a variety of drinks with nice features and incredible taste. So he offers different flavors and colors, allowing customers to mix and match any of them. All the Boba is made in-house. All these ingredients are high quality. He makes the drinks with organic tea and powder with a higher grade than the ones at a general teashop. He provides options for organic milk or vegan and he also only uses real fruits on the fruit drinks. I agree with the way he provides more value than his competitor; a brand is so strong that customers would always prefer your brand to others. The last one concept to summarize is the societal marketing concept. My interviewee emphasizes the importance of the well-being of customers and society as a whole to build social and ethical considerations into their marketing practices. Also he told me that a Boba shop with public interest wins. Boba Plus has 5 tables and 12 chairs and 2 couches inside for people to study, chat or table entertainment. From the customers review, they have good wifi, outlets and comfortable seating, the shop was cute, clean, and spacious. Overall, I believe these five marketing concepts Boba Plus has are well determined that they will attract many customers and get decent profit. These great properties cannot happen if he does not perform with hard work and sincerity.

Part 4. Discussions (Jie Wang)

After interviewing Daneng Wu, the head of Boba Plus, we learned a lot of plans and suggestions on how to run a company in modern society. In a modern society where the Internet is so popular, it takes only a few seconds for information to travel from one end of the earth to the other. Therefore, companies like Boba Plus, which rely more on the number of customers, must analyze their customers opinions and preferences. A customer's evaluation of the store is very important because many people who have not been to this store will use this as a reference and then decide whether to consume. Daneng Wu pointed out that many softwares now have a rating system, and the rating represents the average satisfaction of customers who have been to this store. A high rating will make people willing to learn about this store and carefully read other people's comments on this store to bring potential customers. Based on this core concept, we understand why Boba Plus products are more attractive to customers' attention and love compared to other same stores.

In order to attract more consumers and obtain more profits, the company needs to investigate the information near the location in detail. Boba Plus is built in a relatively affluent town with good security and beautiful surroundings. There is a junior high school within a mile. As a food and beverage store, it is quite good to be in this position. There is a bookshelf in the Boba Plus store, most of which are comic books. In the process of investigation in the store, we found that some customers would choose comic books to watch while waiting. I think this will allow customers to inadvertently spend the waiting time so there will be a feeling that the store is very efficient. In addition, most of the customers are students, and comic books are the interests of most people of their age. This detail also proves that Boba Plus has investigated the preferences of students. Since the tables, chairs and sofas in the shop are very neat and clean, we felt very comfortable when we first came in for a visit, like the feeling of home. In response to this, we asked Daneng Wu. She said, “ Maintaining a clean environment is very important. For food shops, it can give people a psychological hint that their food is safe and clean. The conscious maintenance of customers is important, but we also hire a person to be responsible for the hygiene in the store.” From my personal point of view, I agree with this company's marketing strategy that takes customer experience as the core. It gives customers a feeling that I am the owner of this place and attracts them to come here. Although buying comic books, potted plants and various cute ornaments cost a lot. But if it can bring more customer, I think this cost can be invested. Due to land rent issues, the goods here are also more expensive than most of their counterparts. But we found that there are not fewer customers here than elsewhere. Daneng Wu solved our doubts. She gave us a tour of the commodity raw material production room. She explained that these teas are unique. Most of the peers cooperate with local tea companies to reduce freight costs. But their company's tea comes from a tea house in Thailand. Although the cost of freight transportation is high, they can obtain tea at a price lower than the market price in the United States because of the low economic level of the tea house and the currency difference. The most important thing is that the tea from another country brings some different flavors, and the quality of the tea is good. Today, all parts of the world are more closely connected with each other through developed technology and networks. Obtaining unique products through world trade, this unique marketing method has opened up my thinking.

Daneng Wu also provided us with strategies for the company's early operations. The company needs profit to operate, but if there is no customer source, there will be no stable profit. If the company needs to open its popularity, it can use promotional methods. To put it another way, it is to make the lowest profit in exchange for the largest number of customers. Reducing the price of a product at a specific time is relatively common and there are no additional costs. In addition, the company gave each customer a stamp card, and each drink would have a stamp on it. You will get a free drink when the stamp is full. The core of this sales strategy is to let customers see this stamp card at any time, so that the company can deepen the customer's impression.