Investigating Marketing

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Unit 3 – Investigating Marketing

Task A – Aims & Objectives of Marketing:

For this unit I will be investigating the marketing strategies of a local business in Hong Kong. The business is a well known, established company; Ocean Park.

Marketing is essential for a business to survive. Marketing covers the four main areas; Product, Price, Promotion and Placement. The aims and objectives of marketing are firstly to attract customers to the chosen product; this is followed by selling the product to the customers. Marketing can be separated into two categories; Attracting & Selling or Finding gaps in the market.

Market segmentation is the division of customers with similar needs or wants. This will allow a business to match the needs of potential customers of the selected market segments. It would also be easier to define a marketing strategy that covers a selected group of customers rather than the whole marketplace. If a marketing strategy and campaign are done properly, it will help to maximize return on marketing expenditures. Some businesses will want to make their target market as broad as possible, so that one product can serve a very large base of customers; this is known as mass marketing. The products are usually available in most high street shops, and can be found by shopping around to get the best price as there will be many shops selling the specific product. Mass marketing is also a relatively cheaper way to tackle the market compared with segmentation, but mass marketing is not always practical because there are too many people with different tastes and preferences. Generally a business that targets specific markets will promote its products more effectively than a business aiming at the whole market. Another extreme in segmentation is niche marketing. It highly focuses on the needs of a small population; these kinds of products are usually very expensive and are not easy to get hold of as there won’t be many companies producing it. Those who want to buy the niche products are usually willing to pay a little bit more as the products will match most of their needs.

Whether a product is for mass market or niche segment, it is important to create meaningful segments that will maximize the return on your investment. A business must first identify the characteristics of customers likely to be interested in that particular product or service, and to establish how many customers there are, as well as study how these people behave and respond to particular marketing campaign. This process will give an indication of the size of market and how potential the market will be, and help to estimate the necessary resources and investment to tackle the selected market. This information can then be used to determine whether or not it is worth going after the market.

The market segments can be separated demographically, geographically or psychologically. Commonly the market can be segmented by culture, income, age, gender or social status. This is known as demographic segmentation, customers can be divided by income/social status. For example, a mobile phone manufacturer understands that there are always a portion of customers who are always after those latest gadget phones despite the high price. This sector of customers range from middle to upper class people, business executive and fanatic gadget admirer. These groups of people usually have a high income. The same segment can also be further divided by gender so that with slight modification to the products, such as making it a smaller size, changeable phone casing with different colours to suit different individuals. This would then serve both female and male customers and is called gender segmentation. If you go to a phone shop today, there are many phones you can choose from, because many phone manufacturers see the different needs of customers. A same phone brand will have many different phones costing from a few hundred to few thousand dollars, besides income and gender group, they even make phones for the older and younger age groups. However you can usually find a range of phones from only a well known brand name, such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, because the segmentation in such a wide range would imply great resources and big investment, small phone manufacturers will not be able to compete in all ranges, but they would only select one to two segments to compete, some might want to compete in the low end side where price is the main driving factor, and this would attract customers in the lower income group.

Another way the market can be segmented is by location, region, weather (climate) or country. This can be defined as geographical segmentation and tailors to the customers needs from where they are located. This would include selling clothes to people who have extremely cold or hot weather. Also people who live in different parts of the world would live and behave differently; we can segment the market by cultural difference. For example the majority of Chinese worship Idols as their tradition whereas western people are usually Christians or Catholics, from this cultural difference you will expect to find more temples in China or other Asian countries and more churches in the western countries, but not the other way round. Hence you can sell different products to these two distinct cultures of people such as idol statues for Chinese and bibles or crosses for the people in western countries. A different approach would be to use psychological segmentation and group potential customers with similar interests/opinions and values which are more subjective.

Market segmentation is very valuable in order to find out which direction a business will go for. It is important because it will show that the business is able to understand customers’ needs and sell a product that customers will want or need. If businesses adopt this strategy then this will eventually lead to enhanced profit for the business because if the market is segmented the average prices can be raised and profits are increased. The raised profits can help with the growth of a business and introduce newer products. If a business segments a market this will help retain customers, because they see that this business is appealing to their needs and might not want switch to the competed companies. A risk if a business does not segment its market is that if a business wants to deliver a message to the whole market, it may be missed by the key customers that it originally aimed for. Also by communicating to the whole market customers costs a lot more than only communicating to a segmented market.

Ocean Park is a local business which is well known, well established and has been running for around 30 years now. It offers a wide range of products/services for all different age ranges. This enables me to research its history, products and marketing strategies.

Ocean Park is an educational and entertaining amusement park, aimed for all ages. It is located in the southern district of Hong Kong, Wong Chuk Hang in Aberdeen. It originally was funded by the government for the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Built in 1977 the Hong Kong Jockey club decided that Ocean Park did not reflect on its business and gave it back to the government. Ocean Park is built on an 870,000 square metre piece of land; it has six main areas: Lowlands Garden, Kids’ World, Marine Land, Headland Rides, Adventure Land and Bird Paradise. The Lowlands Garden is one of the main entrances of Ocean Park that rooms the Panda House, Whiskers Wild Ride, Amazing Amazon (Bird show), Rainforest with 3D illusions of jungle animals, a Cable Car that connects the lowland to the headland and go-karts. The Kids’ World includes Dolphin University to learn about Ocean Park’s breeding centre and information about Dolphins, Whiskers Theatre, Town Games and Rides for kids. Marine Land contains the jellyfish exhibition, pacific pier to get a personal experience with sea lions and seals, Atoll Reef to look at all the different fishes, shark aquarium, Ocean Theatre hosts a show with dolphins and sea lions, Ocean Park tower (observation tower). Headland Rides has some of the more memorable rides such as The Abyss Turbo Drop and The Dragon. Adventure land also includes some of the bigger rides such as the Mine Train, Raging River and Space Wheel, it also has the second longest escalators (in the world?). Bird Paradise includes thousands of birds such as the Flamingo Pond.  It has a number of restaurants, shops and first-aids posts around the park. In addition it also has special-designed facilities and equipment to help welcome the physically disabled, visually and hearing impaired person enjoy most of the amenities in the park.  

The marketing aims and objectives of Ocean Park are to ensure profits within the business bring in as many customers as possible, create successful promotion. Ocean Park wants to attract and sell its products / services to its customers. Its vision and mission statements are as follows:

VISION:

“Ocean Park aspires to be the world leader in providing excellent guest experiences in a theme park environment connecting people with nature.”

MISSION:

“Ocean Park provides all guests with memorable experience that combine entertainment and education, while inspiring life long learning and conservation involvement. Our aim is to maintain a healthy financial status, while offering the guests a diverse range of activities at competitive prices. Ocean Park exists for the public’s benefit and strives to deliver the highest standards of safety, animal car, products and guest service”

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Ocean Park segments its markets by several methods; this includes visitor classification, culture, social and age. According to an interview with Mr. Pei, the marketing director of Ocean Park, their visitors are split 50% local and 50% tourists, 80% of which are mainlanders and the rest come from elsewhere overseas. Since most of locals are also Hong Kong Chinese, this means a very high percentage of visitors are Chinese ethnics, hence Ocean Park must tailor their products, services and facilitates for Chinese ethnics, examples of which are the language, their staff must be able to speak Cantonese and Mandarin, but English is also needed since there are more than 10% of non-Chinese visitors. Other examples are, the food served and the information provided in the Park must be in Chinese and English. Within the 50% local visitors, Ocean Park also sees the market can be segmented socially, most visitors come in groups, such as friends, families, school outings, business (social team building) and functions (kid parties, weddings). For each segmented group mentioned above, each can be further divided into different age groups, for examples, family groups will contains people from baby age to grandparents ages, business groups will mainly include adults, aged between 20 and 60. Student groups will be aged between 3 and 18. The way to promote to each of social, cultural and age groups will vary and also the products served to these markets have to be comprehensive in order to attract a wide range of customers.    

From Mr. Pei, Ocen Park’s major target markets are family groups, local or tourists. Within these market groups, Ocean Park segments its products by age and offers something for everyone from small children to grandparents; many of the visitors would come as families or with a group of friends. The products offered in the park are also tailor-made for visitors of all ages. For example small children can go to the Kids World which has shows and rides suitable for the younger age group. The more exciting rides such as the rollercoaster’s and turbo drop in Headlands Rides and Adventure Land are more targeted for teenagers and young adults. Other facilities and attractions such as Bird Paradise, Lowland Garden, Marine Land featuring shows, live performances, animals and aquariums display, and cable car rides can cover visitors of various ages. Souvenirs shops are mainly targeted for tourists, but local visitors are also welcomed. Various fast food stores and restaurants are facilitated to provide snacks and in-park dining for both international and Chinese food.

The marketing objective of Ocean Park is to get as many local visitors as well as tourists to visit the Park as possible as well as increase the awareness of Ocean Park across different countries, in particular China since it accounts for 80% of the tourists which visit the Park. Also Ocean Park wants to provide a fun and educational day at the park, this is also one of its marketing objectives. This is done by incorporating some attractions with facts or statistics, to increase the visitors’ knowledge. The fun side includes: games, rides and shows. On the educational side there facts about the aquariums, pandas, plants and even some of the rides: Skyfair balloon.

To encourage visitors to come in groups, Ocean Park offers discounted tickets pricing for group packages such as: travel, business and welfare groups. Student groups ranging from kindergarten to secondary school are given discounted prices for a fun and educational visit. To encourage repeated customers, Ocean Park also offers gold and silver annual passes which allow both adults and kids to visit unlimited times a year. This allows families with small children who would like to return again to take advantage of this offer. Ocean Park offers children under 3 years old and people over the age of 65 free admissions to encourage families to visit. Events are also held yearly to attract this social group such as: Halloween, Christmas, and Chinese New Year.  Ocean Park continues to introduce new events and new rides to attract more customers. Ocean Park promotes these events through, local newspaper, radio, TV, posters, billboards at busy locations, public transportation and tourist’s boards to attract overseas travelers.


The target customers are not only the general public of Hong Kong, but the Park has attracted many visitors from all over the world. The graph below shows the number of visitors to Hong Kong and Ocean Park. It is evident that there is a steady increase of visitors to Ocean Park and Hong Kong from 2001 to 2006, but the rate of increase in Ocean Park visitors has slowed down in recent years. In 2003 there was an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Hong Kong, it was advised by Hong Kong Government for local people to stay indoors and the World Health Organization (WHO) also advised visitors not to travel to Hong Kong for a short period of time. This led to a downfall in all businesses in Hong Kong, Ocean Park was greatly affected by SARS. Ocean Park’s visitors were decreased by 13%, and Hong Kong visitor decreased by 7%. In 2004 there was a big increase in Hong Kong visitors which was partially due to the introduction of the Individual Travel Scheme (ITS) that brought more mainlanders to Hong Kong. In 2005 and 2006 Ocean Park saw a slower increase of visitors even though the number of visitors was still strong, this was due to the opening of Disneyland.


Population by age group, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 []

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There are a number of factors which could affect local visitors’ attendance to Ocean Park, for example social and demographical changes. From the table above, it is clear that the trend of the age groups from 0 to 34 has been decreasing from year to year. This is because unlike in the past 10 to 20 years, most couples would have more children in a family, today most families only have one or two children, part of the reason was because in the 1990’s the Hong Kong Government promoted the idea of “Only two children in a family” in an attempt to slow down the fast growing population. Secondly people are paying more attention to building up their personal assets and wealth rather than having a family at younger age, as a result most people would get married and have children when they are older. Due to these social behavior changes the younger population has been decreasing in recent years, and this could reduce the number of visitors to Ocean Park in the future. The Hong Kong Government realized that the issue of low birth rates has raised concerns and started to promote the “three children in a family” scheme with an increase on child allowance as an incentive. Hopefully this could improve the situation for younger population. On the contrary the older age group of Hong Kong population has been increasing fast, as of today 58% of population are ages over 34. According to Ocean Park’s 2006 annual report, 50% of Ocean Park’s total visitors are local, this equates to around 300 million dollars in admission revenue. Therefore it is important that Ocean Park puts more focus on the older age people in order to sustain future business growth.

Across Hong Kong there has been an apparent change to where people live since the last decade. The figures in below table show that the population for both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon has been decreasing over the years while the New Territories has become more popular. This is mainly due to the growing number of residential housing that has been built in the New Territories and the fact that the land and residential property is cheaper. As a result many people are moving away from the city.  This implies that most existing customers of Ocean Park are staying further away from the park, and it would take longer to travel and more costly to get there. Today 50% of Ocean Park’s customers are local people; from this 70% come from the New Territories and Kowloon. Ocean Park would need to think about how to promote to areas like New Territories and enable easier access to their park for customers living far away.


Population by District Council District, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006
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In Hong Kong there are many tourist attractions such as: Disneyland, Hong Kong’s Wetland Park, Ngong Ping 360, Temples, The Peak and a few museums. In particular Disneyland, the Wetland Park and Ngong Ping 360 are some of Ocean Park’s main competition. Both Wetland Park and Ngong Ping are located in the New Territories which is mostly where Ocean Park gets its customers, where an increasing number of people are living.

The table above shows all the key competition to Ocean Park. Most of the opening hours are the same, because parks usually don’t ...

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