When Prêt A Manger targets their customers they set goals to achieve for them. In Prêt A Manger’s case they target the middle class market and set targets to achieve, these targets include; creating good natural food fresh every day, to be clean from any additives or artificial sweeteners and to be good to the environment by only packaging their items in recyclable material.
Positioning and branding for Prêt A Manger
Positioning is how a customer feels about a certain product and what they their first thoughts are in the mind. It is how they rate the product amongst other competitor’s products which ties nicely into branding. Branding is the presence and the image of the product that conveys meaning which also determines how much the customer is willing to pay for that brand of product.
Prêt A Manger has used positioning and branding within their logo and their beliefs. They make sure that their customers and the public know that they do not stand for artificial sweeteners and un-eco friendly processes. This is what gives them their branding and their position in the market making them different to other restaurants. Having such a unique reputation increases the demand for their products as it is something new and the public knows that they have respect for the environment.
Relationship marketing for Prêt A Manger
Relationship marketing is marketing to establish, maintain and enhance relationships with customers and other partners at a profit, so that the objectives of both parties involved are met. In this case the retailer and customer both benefit from the transaction making it a win-win situation.
Within Prêt A Manger they have set up the Prêt Card which gives the customer a plastic card which they can top up from £5 to £150. The customer can then just keep the card in their wallet for easy payment within store and deletes the hassle of having to fiddle around with change. This keeps the customer coming back to Prêt A Manger as when they top up their card you cannot refund it, Prêt have now created a relationship with the customer and are then pro active on trying to keep them. This happens by their staff training where they teach all staff to treat customers like friends and really get to know them but more importantly hope that they have had a good time at their restaurant. Prêt A Manger make it a policy that everyone they employ has to have passion about their job and must be happy to work there, this will reflect well on their customers whose experience is then increased positively. Once a relationship between the customer and Prêt has been established it will increase the customers demand for products from Prêt as they know that, not only the food is good, the service that they are receiving is second to none.
Business Mission Statement
Prêt creates hand made food, avoiding the obscure chemicals, additives and preservatives common to so much of the ‘prepared’ and ‘fast’ food on the market today.
Prêt mission statement outlines all of the marketing techniques as they must underpin the main objective/policy.
Marketing Audit
A marketing audit is the systematic collection, analysis and evaluation of information relating to the internal and external environments. When Prêt gathers all of this information of these two environments it enables them to build a profile on who they are aiming for and what their market want. Doing a marketing audit is a good marketing technique as it keeps businesses constantly evaluating their environments.
SWOT Analysis
Another marketing technique is the SWOT analysis; it helps managers overview the internal state of the company and see what the strengths and weaknesses are. This analytical technique only looks at the internal features and is supposed to be used hand in hand with PEST which looks at the external features of a business. Both of these used together make a good marketing technique.
Marketing Objectives
Prêt objectives are what creates their brand makes them unique from any other food retail restaurant. They believe in making good natural food every day from scratch, they make their produce and sell their produce. They donate all unsold food from the previous working day to charities. They also use recyclable packaging and offer an extensive training programme for employees with decent salaries.
Marketing Strategies
Prêt has many marketing strategies these include the following; price promotions, psychological pricing, promoting eco products to create branding and questionnaires to gain primary data. With all of these strategies Pret creates its brand and its perception in people’s minds.
Marketing tactics/ Marketing mix decision
The marketing mix plays a big role in how Prêt goes about its marketing tactics. Within this they have to go over the Price of products, the Place where they are located, the Promotions that they use, what kind of Product they need to create, what kind of People they need to target as customers, what kind of Physical Evidence is necessary and what is the Process of getting the food to the customer.
Implementation Programs
The implementation program for Prêt is vitally important, you could have the best plan with all your 7P’s laid out but it means nothing if you don’t actually put preliminary thinking into action. The implementation programs aren’t just a one off task they require constant monitoring and changing according to the market environment. Staying on top of active programs will help control the physical marketing techniques that happen everyday.
Control/ Monitor and Review
The task of having to monitor and review all marketing techniques is also important as any successful business will need check ups on how the marketing plan is functioning. In Prêt they have inspections on their in store layouts for each season to see that it is up to scratch and that the physical evidence is relevant to the season i.e. Christmas. It doesn’t happen just in store, monitoring of all marketing techniques happens everywhere from the website to the promotions offered.
Conclusion
To conclude; segmentation and targeting, positioning and branding and relationship marketing increase the demand for a selected product within Prêt A Manger significantly and are vital marketing techniques in order for any business to do well.
References
Unit 3: Introduction to marketing P5
by
sc_shivatsal (student)
