Assignment 3

Topic: ASSIGNMENT 2: MARKETING PLAN

Name

Institution

Course

Tutor

Date

Company Introduction

Dentech Company has majored in the production and supply of dog products. The company was established two decades ago and since then, Dentech Company has achieved a notable growth in the pet products industry. Some of the company's main products include Yorkshire terror adult dog food, wire crates, Kong bed, dog sweater, wood coat and treats. Currently, Dentech Company is serving a customer base of around 80,000 customers, and it aims to grow its market share further. It has employed 20 employees who are responsible for all production, distribution and sales activities. Apart from the products as mentioned earlier, Dentech Company also provides other products and services. For example, the company is now offering cleaning and shaving services to pet owners in the surrounding community at a pocket-friendly fee. With increasing competition in the market, Dentech Company is in dire need to restructure its marketing strategy to remain competitive in a market that has witnessed an influx of new entrants in the recent past.

New Marketing Strategy

Branding

Branding is one of the essential elements of effective marketing. An effective branding determines how customers perceive the company, its products and services and everything else it does. Effective branding promotes recognition, sets the company apart from the competition, provides motivation to the business staff and helps the company client's to know what to expect (Perreault Jr, Cannon & McCarthy, 2013). As such, Dentech Company needs to develop an effective branding strategy as part of its marketing strategy.

Good packaging is of paramount importance in the marketing of a product. With the increased competition and wide variety of pet products on the shelves today, Dentech Company needs to restructure to adopt unique packaging that can stand out of the competition. It needs to make use of the new packaging styles, changings the containers, color, and the other decorative aspects. By offering new brands in new packaging styles and decoration, it will easy to customize the message that distinguishes its brands on the shelves from those of competitors.

Dentech Company needs to develop new packaging styles that appeal to emotion. For example, it needs to design unique packaging using colors and imagery that convey marketing ideas to pet product customers. Having images of happy looking dogs and puppies helps to build an emotional connection between the product and the customer. Such unique packaging will cue the company's products while driving shelf and merchandising appeal. Additionally, the company needs to focus on improving convenience and user-friendliness of its products. For, it needs to introduce a trump card on the pet food packaging as a way of improving the user-friendliness of its products. Other than the trump card, it needs to pack its products in the resealable bag. This will greatly differentiate the company's brands in the market.

Promotion

As Dentech Company seeks to introduce new brands of animal products into the market while strengthening the position of its current brands, it needs to do an overhaul of its old marketing strategy. The company will now engage in more promotions activities. It needs to embrace a new program that will help to create stronger relationships with its products. This program will be called PetFisrt Program, and it will focus primarily on enhancing the lives of both pets and their owners. PetFirst will be program meant to help pet owners improve the well-being of their pets. For a pet owner to be engaged in this program, he or she must offer names, birthdays, color, weight, breed of their pet (s). Dentech Company will develop a veterinarian based research charting that is customized by the pet's age, breed, weight and other aspects. Each of the registered pet owners will be provided with a "Life Stage Guide" which contains information about the changing nutritional needs of each pet breed.

Implementation of the program will be done at a personal level. For example, the company will be keeping a database of each registered pets' birthday each of the pet owners will be sent a celebratory email every time their pets have birthdays. This new marketing strategy will provide a way for Dentech Company both the mind, emotions, and trust of its clients. This marketing strategy will involve a pairing of emotions and data, and it will help to create a winning strategy as the company seeks to differentiate itself in the market (Row & Nam, 2014). The emotional intelligence applied in PetFisrt program will help Dentech Company to establish a deeper understanding of its customers' emotions which is an essential element in winning their loyalty.

Position Statement

As noted earlier, Dentech Company is operating in a highly competitive industry. The guiding principles at Dentech Company, quality, safety. Mutuality and responsibility. The company has developed a comprehensive positioning statement;

" Dentech Company delivers very quality pet products and services at a high value than any other manufacturer in the market. We do this by using natural ingredients, eliminating overhead and development of product lines."

Perpetual Map-Pet Foods

High Quality

Dentech Company

Responsibility Safety

Value

Analysis of industry consumers

It is important to note that the end-users of pet products are the pets and not their owners. Loosely translated, it can be said the ultimate decision makers are the pet owners who are not necessarily the consumers of the products. However, in today's world, pet owners are more quality –conscious than ever before hence the cliché "if it is not good enough for me, to eat, why would I feed it to my favorite four-legged friend?" This indicates the extent to which pet owners are conscious and in need of quality.

Moreover, the recent influx of many producers in of pet products in the market has provided clients with many options to choose from. This has increased their price sensitivity. Many pet owners apply the same philosophy they have about when buying their food as they purchase for their pets (Nogueira Pinto, 2015).Those who don't buy cheap foods for themselves would, in most instances, use the same philosophy when purchasing food for their pets.

Pet food clients are very conscious about quality and price. This requires Dentech Company to strike a balance between these two critical aspects of its customers. The company's value proposition is operational excellence. As such, competitive pricing is an important aspect. Given that there are many players in the industry, the company will need to be careful in setting its price. However, Dentech Company aims to provide services that are slightly better that alternatives. Therefore, the company's promotion activities will focus on its service value with as secondary focus on its pricing. As it conducts its promotions, it will do a regular review of its price quality-sensitive market and adjust its prices so as to remain in a competitive position.

Logo

Mission

“To be the best manufacturer of pet products in the world”

Slogan

"Every pet has the right to get the best."

At Dentech Company, we believe every pet, regardless of breed or age deserves the best nutrition. It is also part of our core belief that each pet owner is worthy of great value. Whenever you buy from Dentech Company, always be sure you are getting the best quality without a premium price.

Brand Extension

Other than Yorkshire terror adult dog food, wire crates, Kong bed, dog sweater, wood coat and treats, the company will introduce two new brands namely; PetYummy for adult dogs and PuppyLit for puppies.

Conclusion

As discussed in this discussing Dentech Company faces a daunting task to maintain and increase its market share. However, if the various marketing and brand building strategies addressed in this paper are well implemented, the company will go a long way in raising its competitive position in the increasingly competitive market.

References

Microbial Safety and Quality of Pet Treats. Journal of Food Processing and

Nogueira Pinto, J. P. D. A. (2015). Quality and Safety of Pet Treats: Assessment of the

Perreault Jr, W., Cannon, J., & McCarthy, E. J. (2013). Basic marketing. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.ubicomp products. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 63-74). ACM.

Preservation, 39(6), 1201-1205.

Row, Y. K., & Nam, T. J. (2014, September). CAMY: applying a pet dog analogy to everyday