Business Planning And Market Strategy: A Case Study Of City Chic

Marketing Objectives

Discuss about the Business Planning and Market Strategy.

The current local and global market has become more competitive in nature that requires implementation of good marketing strategy within the organisation. The project focuses on the company named City Chic, which is a plus size-clothing store in Australia. The company provides its customers with a variety of products such as dresses, occasion wear, tops, denim, and bottoms and outwear. Further, the company provides clothing to the people who have body size larger than that of an average person. The project highlights the marketing strategy of City Chic that includes the product strategy, pricing strategy, promotion strategy and the distribution strategy. Moreover, the implementation of the marketing plan and its evaluation is discussed in details in order to understand the marketing mix strategy used by the company. Recommendation is made to the mangers in order to help the company to develop and further sustain in the competitive market of the retailing sector in Australia.

City Chic implements the SMART objective to define the marketing objectives needed to meet the overall objectives of the company.

Specific: The managers of City Chic implements goals that are specific in nature. The company decides to reduce the operational expenses of the company by 25 percent within duration of 4 months by minimizing the number of staffs (Citychic.com.au. 2016).

Measurable: The aim of the company is to increase the total number of customers visiting the stores of the company. The objective is measurable once the managers of the company states the total amount by which it decides to increase the visits of the customers.

Actionable: The managers of the company introduce technologies that help the employees of City Chic to achieve training that increases their efficiency. Productive labours help to deliver high customer service to the customers thereby increasing the number of customers. 

Reasonable: City Chic intends to achieve the goal of reducing the operational expenses within 3 months time. The objective is realistic as the company is able to analyse the risk factors included in the company and then find solution for the issues within the allotted time to achieve the objectives.  

Timetabled: The managers of City Chic subdivide the task into smaller tasks in order to reach the objectives in an enhanced manner.   

The company implements the best marketing mix strategy that is appropriate for City Chic. According to Slack (2015), the 4 P’s of the marketing mix is evaluated that includes the pricing strategy, product strategy, promotion strategy and the distribution strategy (place).

Product strategy

The company provides various types of products to the women that help to attract more customers towards the brand. The company offers products such as follows:

Core products

• Plus size dresses
• Lingerie denim
• Tops
• Occasional wear

Expected products- The Company launches some new arrivals in the company to increase the sales and revenue of the company.

• Swimwear
• Accessories
• Boots

Augmented products- These are the products that are the non-physical attributes products.

• Warranty
• Services

City Chic generally offers similar products to the customers that are slightly different from the products offered by the competitors of the company such as BeMe and Asos. The company offers plus size products not only in dresses but also in other products such as lingerie and boots.  Thus, there is a product differentiation carried out by City Chic.

Branding

Marketing Mix Strategy

City Chic uses effective advertising strategies that help the company to increase the brand image. High brand image helps the organisation to sustain in the competition, as customers prefer the brand above the other brands and thereby stay loyal.

The product life cycle of City Chic has a consistency as the products offered by the company falls under the category whose demand will not fall adversely in the future. 

Pricing objectives

• City Chic aims to increase the cash flow by increasing the number of sales. The company tries reducing the price level of the company by reducing the operational expenses.
• The company’s objective is to reach a sustainable position in the competitive market to continue business in the long run.
• Gaining the maximum market chair is one of the main pricing strategies of the company. The larger market share allows competitive advantage to the company that increases company’s performance.

City Chic uses the demand-based pricing strategy to set the price level for the products. In the words of Grant (2016), the price level is high when the demand for the products is high, in order to earn a high profit. However, at times of low demand for the products, the prices of the products are kept low in order to attract more customers towards the brand.

As stated by Henisz & Zelner (2012), the competitors of the company set a competitive price level for the goods. Therefore, City Chic is unable to charge high price because high price level will result in losing its potential customers. Moreover, the close substitutes of the products are a major risk factor for City Chic.

Promotion objectives

• Increase the demand of the goods offered by the company
• Provide more information to the customers through effective advertisement that helps the customers in gaining knowledge about the company
• Achieve success in the process of product differentiation

City Chic uses promotional mix such as advertisement and public relation to promote its products in the market. Efficient advertisement helps to create awareness about its products in the market (Friedman, 2012). Promotion through advertisement helps to attract more number of customers towards the brand. On the other hand, strong public relation with the customers helps to build brand loyalty by turning the existing customers into potential customers.

City Chic uses TV, online advertisement and social media to promote its products. In the modern era of technology, these promotional media are the most effective ways for promoting the products.

Being located in Australia, the company greatly focus on the developing an extensive distribution strategy. In addition to distributing good through retail outlets, the enterprise provides goods to targeted customers through a well established channel of wholesalers. Also, with a growth of internet, City Chic provides the clothes through online clothing websites (Kotler et al., 2015). The store also facilitates a system of door-to-door selling and teleshopping.

Moreover City Chic in order to maximise selling capacity position outlets in the most crowed parts on Australia like Sydney and Melbourne. According to Valentin (2014), a development of well-planned geographical location of the store attracts people not only from the domestic region but also from international provinces.

City Chic`s managers study the market structure to facilitate implementation of the marketing plan. To remove excess production cost within 3 months, supervisors process implementation of the marketing plan when there is a noticeable rise in demands. According to Gordon (2012), in terms of profitability, the company greatly focuses to achieve economies of scale.

Based on fluctuations in demand and supply managers estimate an initial cost for implementing the marketing plan to be around AUS$15.34million annually (Citychic.com.au. 2016). Managers of the brand after abiding by the theory of the 4P`s start with piling up of stock and supply them to their clients on demand.

The success of City Chic immensely depends upon its marketing strategies. In relation to Mintz & Currim (2013), stakeholders take deep interest in analysing financial statements in order to check sustainability and bring in necessary changes.

The levels of sales and return on investment are the two primary factors for evaluating the marketing plan. Additionally, profits to shareholders, customer reviews and goodwill of the company in the market are also used as methods to check fluency of the policy (Huang & Sarigöllü, 2014). The Australian market is not only adaptable but also active which enables the company to pursue data aggregation.

Conclusion

The idea of City Chic to deal in line of plus sized clothing attracts the people of the country. The management of the company develops a marketing plan based on the 4P`s theory and aims to maximise revenue generation with the introduction of new products, promotional techniques and distribution channels.

Scrutinizing the current conditions of the business it is recommended that the managers focus on a more effective market study to know about customer needs to attract more customers. Also to exploit opportunities a cost effective strategy is recommend. Furthermore, setting up a price ceiling, minimising wastage and maintaining strong relationships with the consumers is strongly recommended to gain dominance and competitive advantage factors in the market.

References

Citychic.com.au. (2016). City Chic | Plus Size Clothing, Lingerie Denim & Dresses, Sizes 14 – 24. [online] Available at: https://www.citychic.com.au/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].

Friedman, L. (2012). Go To Market Strategy. Routledge.

Gordon, R. (2012). Re-thinking and re-tooling the social marketing mix.Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 20(2), 122-126.

Grant, R. M. (2016). Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Henisz, W. J., & Zelner, B. A. (2012). Strategy and competition in the market and nonmarket arenas. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(3), 40-51.

Huang, R., & Sarigöllü, E. (2014). How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132). Springer New York.

Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G. (2015).Marketing. Pearson Higher Education AU.

Mintz, O., & Currim, I. S. (2013). What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities?. Journal of Marketing, 77(2), 17-40.

Slack, N. (2015). Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Valentin, E. K. (2014). Business planning and market strategy. SAGE Publications.