How can Chester zoo improve its marketing strategy to more successfully target 16-24 year old?

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HOW CAN CHESTER ZOO IMPROVE ITS MARKETING STRATEGY TO MORE SUCCESSFULLY TARGET 16-24 YEAR OLDS?

Introduction

At the moment, Chester Zoo is the leading zoo in the country. It is a non-profit organisation and its mission is to support and promote conservation by breeding threatened animals, providing excellent animal welfare, high quality public service, recreation, education and science.

Currently, the zoo is facing a marketing problem: The 16-24 year old age group is not visiting the zoo as much as expected to.1 

My task is to analyse the situation and come up with a solution.

My main research methods will be by:

     -Going to the zoo and interviewing the staff there. This is for me to judge the level of their service without any bias from other sources.

     -Consulting a range of sources, which have both primary and secondary evidence, including articles of quality from different media. This will help me see any trends over the years, and hopefully, their weaknesses and strengths.

     -I will also conduct a survey in form of a questionnaire2 aimed at 16-24 year olds. This will be to get a better perspective of the situation, to understand the reason behind the low visiting rate by this age group, to understand their needs, and hopefully, as an eye-opener to the solution.

 Chester Zoo marketing strategy (4Ps-Marketing Mix) is fairly good but not efficient enough. The Zoo’s product is what attracts most of the customers. These products are the animals and plants of the zoo. The zoo attracts and maintains customers by breeding new animals and plants and introducing new species of animals (every year it introduces new species like in 2004,it was a bear and has a surprise for 2005), which makes customers curious and go more frequently to the zoo. It uses some of the zoo’s features like the Twilight Zone and Jaguar Zone, which are major sites of the zoo. The Jaguar Zone was sponsored by the Jaguar company (see appendix). When animals give birth, the zoo advertises the baby animals, which make people, come and see the baby animals. It encourages picnics, parties and wedding (See appendix). It has play zones for the kids aged between 1-13year olds who are the main visitors.

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 The entrance price is quite high and not many young people can afford it, most of the visitors are Lower-Middle Class people (see appendix) The price of adopting animals and becoming a member is relatively cheap and many people are looking forward to that because they get benefits like lower entrance prices

 The zoo advertises by local newspaper, Local T.V,leaflets and posters(see appendix ) The local market is saturated. It targets leaning institutions or groups of people by giving low prices, which encourages them. One of the main promotional techniques the zoo uses is the safari walks (See appendix) ...

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