For Kim Wood

Emilee La Rue

Abigail Harper

Jenna Wilson

Gloria Jackson

Grand Canyon University: BUS 485

25 June, 2017

Overview

Split & Strike located in Cave Creek, Arizona, is a state of the art bowling alley offering a full-service bar and extensive dining options. Setting our company apart from competitors, Split & Strike also offers touch screen score monitors, large screen TV projectors, stereo-surround sound and glow-in-the-dark bowling just to name a few fine details.  Split & Strike provides creative event planning services and is the perfect solution for family, friend and corporate gatherings. Split & Strike is the sole option for this type of entertainment in the community.

In addition, being in a diversely populated area, Split & Strike offers a place of fun for all individuals to come together to celebrate and appreciate the community. Split & Strike believes that giving back to the community is important; therefore, fulfills the requirement within the Cave Creek’s community. As a matter of fact, community events and fundraisers will find Split & Strike to be the perfect location, offering special packages and pricing at for occurring events.

Split & Strike creates plenty of fun for singles, families, young and old. This facility will appeal to all fun-seekers!

Mission and Vision

           Our vision as Split & Strike is to be the ultimate and extraordinary place for family, friends and individuals to experience state of the art bowling that will have you striking back to play more! Our mission in developing Split & Strike is creating an outstanding bowling alley in order to increase the variety of entertainment within our community. Our main goal is to have individuals in the surrounding area and beyond, of all ages to a place to indulge in our ultimate fun and entertainment.

Split & Strikes strategy is to create an entertainment place that has never been seen before. Due to the upgraded technology we offer additional arcade rooms and deliver outstanding customer service. The key component to our strategy is offering exceptional customer service. Split & Strike has developed a customer service policy that requires all employees to remain positive and obtain a sense of urgency to servicing people and machines throughout the building.

We understand that it is more enjoyable when an employee is willing to help with a positive attitude. Our technology will remain updated to the most current software to ensure our customers are offered the most recent products. Split & Strike will also acquire arcade machines from the old and new, offering fun and entertainment for all ages. These attributes will support our business strategy and help our company achieve the mission we wish to provide to the community.

Business Opportunity

           As an established company, Split & Strike is also looking to expand further in the state of Arizona and if successful farther into the West coast. Split & Strikes demographic is broad because it is a friendly, family and corporate focused organization offering many different options of entertainment. The demand for our products is also stable, as mentioned previously our technology is frequently being updated and offered to our customers. Furthermore, customers are capable of downloading our free application onto their mobile device, which allows individuals to reserve rooms, bowling lanes, order food and communicate with our staff.

Environmental Scan

Five Forces

Threats of New Entrants

Split & Strike is considered an attractive industry. The threat of a new entrant is high, as it requires a small investment to start such business; furthermore, Split & Strike currently is the only entertainment and bowling organization within the Cave Creek community. To reduce Split & Strikes threats, we are looking to gain customer loyalty with membership incentives, group discounts, and daily deals. Additionally our products are advanced in technology offering mobile applications to reserve lanes, tables and assistance in event planning by communicating with our staff. Split & Strike will remain focused on fostering brand identification as well as production, distribution, and little marketing.

Bargaining power of suppliers

    Split & Strikes suppliers do not have an advantage, due to the fact there are substitute materials for our organization. Since the suppliers do not hold the scarce resources they do not have the bargaining power. Additionally there are multiple suppliers for our products and with our company and the surrounding competitors; suppliers would not have the advantage (Staff, 2016). Although still in our beginning phase, Split & Strike will remain researching a supplier that will allow our margins to increase and we will find an international option for substitution and possible lower costs (Porter, 2015).

Bargaining Power of Buyers

Split & Strike is welcoming to our customers because we offer favorable prices and purchase selectively. As previously mentioned, Split & Strike receives generous profits and is able to create a great incentive to lower our purchasing costs; however, we still offer various entertainment options, so we remain competitive (Porter, 2015).

Rivalry and Competitive Firms

    Split & Strikes rivalry competition is high because there are a few similar organizations within the surrounding area. Dave and Busters and AMF are roughly thirty minutes away from Split & Strike and reside in the Northern Phoenix, Arizona area. Dave & Buster’s is known for their food and entertainment atmosphere involving arcades and games; however, Dave & Buster’s does not offer bowling as an option of entertainment. Secondly AMF Bowling is also thirty minutes away and only offers bowling. Split & Strike has combined multiple options for entertainment, offering bowling, arcade, food, drinks, parties and memberships.  

Competitive Advantage

Split and Strike has many different sources of competitive advantages that strive against all others. Firstly, the quality of the machines and technology serves as a huge upgrade compared to competitors. Split & Strike wants to relieve the stress of consumers waiting around for machines to load or malfunctions to occur that can ruin their time, but not at Split & Strike. Split & Strike has top of the line new and improved machines that are constantly being updated to the most recent software to reduce the room of errors. Many competitors don’t have the capability to upgrade their machines due to costs but Split & Strike do.

Secondly, the customer service that is being offered is not comparable to other competitors. Split & Strike has developed a customer service policy that all employees must obey by in order to accept the job. Our employees must always have a positive attitude and a sense of urgency to respond to our consumers in need of help. Due to our employees being on top by being friendly, positive and willing to make the customer the number priority has catch the eye of our consumers to come back for more.

Lastly, Split & Strike is all about giving our consumers a deal no matter what time or day of the week it is. A loyalty program has been set up to where consumer can sign up for free to receive promotions through emails or texts. These promotions act as a way to connect to our consumers by updating them on the latest news and events. Split & Strike gives daily deals and a chance for consumers to obtain discounts/rewards. These discounts/rewards can include a free one game of bowling, a free meal from the restaurant, 50% off of shoes and drinks, etc. Split & Strike definitely has a competitive advantage with their loyalty programs because this is letting our customers know we appreciate their business by giving back to them to enjoy more.

Modes of Entry

In order for Split & Strike to expand the modes of entry that would be utilized to expand our business would be new wholly owned subsidiary.  Being that we would be located in a foreign country, it would be beneficial to the Split & Strike if there “is an entry mode through which a firm invests directly in another country or market by establishing a new wholly subsidiary” (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2014).   Although it may be a little expensive or pricey it would work well for the company in ways that would contribute in the future to help to keep our competitive advantage with the increased growth of technology.  It will also help with executing international strategies when needed.  When it comes to foreign markets there is an advantage to having additional control over operations when proprietary technology is involved.  Due to the fact that parts of Canada has a various amount of places for their residents and visitors to seek entertainment, it would work well for Split & Strike to enter or consider entering with joint ventures to help support our success in the country.  “Joint ventures are used when firms want to establish a strong presence in an international market” (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2014), this is exactly what Split & Strike needs to help with any competition and to gain the attention of customers.

    When exploring parts of Canada, as a location to expand our business, Clifton Hill, Niagara Falls is a great location that has many visitors and tourist from all around.  This area is a high traffic area where locals and visitors seek fun and entertainment.  Although there is another bowling alley located within the vicinity, being that Split & Strike is a state of the art one of a kind we are sure to be a success.  There aren’t any bowling alleys in the immediate area that offer a full-service bar and extensive dining options, touch screen score monitors, large screen TV projectors, stereo-surround sound and glow-in-the-dark bowling just to name a few fine details.  Canada main languages spoken are French and English so there wouldn’t be much of a language barrier that would impact our entry.  

Outlook, Forecast, Trends

Marketing Plan

Target Market and Size

Although Split & Strike is considered a fun, family-friendly, yet corporate oriented organization our main target market is young adults, male and female ages eighteen to thirty. Split & Strike has decided to focus on this targeted group specifically because our marketing tactics and, by extension, our brand will be delivered more efficiently. We are focused on generating potential customers as well as providing business growth. The young adults are available online through social media which allows Split & Strike to offer promotions on platforms such as: Groupon, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. However, as previously mentioned, Split & Strike will appeal to all ages and groups for fun and entertainment by offering bowling leagues and championships for our older customers, “date night” packages for singles and couples, as well as family fun nights.

The Cave Creek areas we have selected for our initial location is widely know for being a tight knit community. Thriving on their local businesses, they are known for championship golf, nightly live entertainment, saloons, poker tournaments, trivia, and casino events. The crowds are diverse, with visitors and residents alike, enjoying all that Cave Creek has to offer. Split & Strike will fill a hole that the area’s entertainment industry has lacked thus far. The area consists of four zip codes: 85087, 85086, 85331 and 85337. Although the area may be considered rural to some, our target market population is more than eighty thousand potential customers, who all would have to drive at least 30 minutes to find a similar entertainment without Split & Strike ("Phoenix Population and Demographics (Phoenix, AZ)," 2000).

Market Size and Market Share Estimate

SWOT (use two by two table)

Product, pricing, place, and promotion are crucial elements or any marketing strategy. Split & Strike will offer a product that will go a long way in ensuring that we outdo any competition. The focus of our products will be state of the art technology and bowling facilities. When it comes to pricing, it is very imperative that we price the shoe rental, games, food and drinks in an affordable but competitive way where customers are happy and profits are being made. The place Split and Strike is located is in a diversely populated area, as previously mentioned, where families and friends come together to celebrate and appreciate the community.  This will be the perfect location for community events and fundraisers. Eye catching facility exteriors, signage and visual ads will be an absolute must.  As a way of promoting Split & Strike, customers will have access to take virtual tours of our facilities and make party reservations via our website. Promotions will also form the better part of our marketing strategy, which will go a long way to creating/increase awareness of the superb entertainment Split & Strike has to offer.

 References