The Marketing Mix

My service I will be offering is going to be a service which is unique and not offered anywhere local if at all. The service itself will be typing up coursework / Homework for students who struggle to do the task quickly or do not have the time or even can choose not to as teenagers at secondary school can be very lazy at times when they rather be out with there friends or down the local park.

Price

I will set my prices using the pricing technique competition based pricing which is setting a price based on the prices charged by competitors for similar products. I am going to use this technique as the prices have been proven they can make a business successful. I would defiantly not use the technique loss leader as I am starting the business will already start on a relatively big loss as I need a considerable amount of capital. Loss leader is a product which is sold at a loss to attract customers to buy other full price products sold by the business. As I found that a large amount of my customers would only stay for an hour, so I would strongly consider making an offer for £2.00 for an hour and £3 for 2 hours. I hope that this would attract some of the customers to say longer. Another type of pricing I could use would be price discrimination. I could use this to attract different types of the market segment to my café, buy setting different prices for different ages. As I feel most of my customers could be students. I could promote if students bring student cards they get a free 10 minutes after you stay.

Promotion

Promotion is the communication between businesses and customers, making customers aware that the product is for sale, telling or explaining to them what the product is, making customers aware of how the product will service their needs and persuading  them to buy the product for the first time or again. For my business I will use a poster to attract the attention of my market segments. The poster would reach my market segment as I will hand out these poster’s where my segments will be, for example, next to the cinema. I will need to make sure my poster is attractive so people do not just throw it on the floor. I will need a good company name that is memorable. I am thinking about calling myself ‘Clicky’s Café’ With the font of the ‘Clicky’s’ being a mouse lead. This will be quite a memorable logo. I will attract some customers at the beginning by introducing an offer for the first week, When you pay for an hour or more on the computer you are entitled to a free Coffee/ Tea. This would be for a limited time only to initially attract the customers and make them aware of my business’s services. My advertising will be straight to the point and there will be a map on there showing exactly where the shop is and where the local bus stops are. They will be printed on sheets of paper and handed out as leaflets. I would hand them out down busy high streets which are local. In addition to this I would hand these leaflets outside of schools to attract youths. I could also advertise in the local Newspaper or put the business in “The Yellow Pages”. On there website it tells me that to put my business in the yellow pages from as little as £30 a year. I feel the yellow pages could be a waste of money for my business as I feel only people local will visit my business. I doubt many people look in the yellow pages for an internet café. Or I could advertise in the local newspaper - “The guardian”. Here I got the quote saying “This would cost £49.80 plus VAT in lineage or £59.60 plus VAT in a small box”. This is quite expensive for as this is for one week. I believe I should put the advert in the paper for at least the first 6 weeks to make locals aware of my business.

Place

This is where my business would be placed, next to the hair saloon Tokyo on the North Cheam crossroads. This place is a good place for me as there is no local computation. The business is on a main road which on its own would advertise itself. Moreover there are lights just outside of the shop. This would be helpful as many people would stop outside of the shop and peer across to see inside the window. Aswell as this there is a bus stop outside of the business that is very active. I observed this buss stop for 10 minutes. I counted 4 busses stopping there out of 5. I counted 9 passengers getting off the busses as they stopped and 5 waiting for busses. This is a very active bus stop as this was only 10 minutes I was observing the bus stop. On the other hand this Bus stop could block the view of my shop from some angles.