The type of product will be sold at Boots only therefore. The proposal could also be targeted at people who shop at Boots.
About Boots
History of Boots
Boots is a chemist that sells various products for example they have different departments like gifts, beauty, baby, healthcare, mens and offers. Boots also has an opticians department, health and beauty department. This makes it easier for the customer to find what he wants quicker.
In 1849, John and Mary Boot opened the first Boots store in Nottingham. In 1883 Boots employed its first pharmacist. In 1933 100th Boots stores where opened. In 1983 the first optical services departments opened in Boots stores. In 1997 the first Boots health and beauty store was opened in Thailand. In 1997, Boots advantage card was so popular that over 14 million members were signed up for this card. In the year 2000 Boots started to advertise their products on the Internet. In the year 2001, Boots and Sainsbury’s linked up in the health and beauty department. Boots had different types of names of their chemist starting off with Cash Boots Chemist, which was opened in 1849
This is how the logo looked in the 1930’s. It was a bit similar to the signature of Florence Boot, who was the manager in the 1930’s.
This logo was published on the Boots stores from the 1990’s. They have not changed the logo since then. The name of the store was followed by Florence second name Boot.
Boots is the UKs leading health & beauty retailer and are one of the best known names in the UK. Boots employs 68,000 people, own world famous brands and sell our products in 130 countries. Boots commitment is to serve customers means they constantly offer fantastic products, at great value, through expert people.
What's New
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Boots is now available in our media centre.
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You can also view full information on the
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Boots is now available.
- Preliminary Results – you can visit the results page on the Boots website to view our news release and listen to our audiocast presentation.
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Boots-Aims
Boots aims are:
- Market leaders in the health and Beauty in the U.K
- To be as environmentally friendly as possible. In this way more people would shop at Boots.
- Make sure that Boots offers a wide range of products
- Offer products that other companies (like Boots) don’t sell
- Employees should talk to customers and help in what they want
- To survive: Making sure that the business does not fail
- To Grow: They need to be popular in order to make a good income. You need to survive in order to grow
- Make profit
Boots-Objectives
Boots objectives are to:
- Advertise products, in a good and attractive way. In order to obtain this objective they would need to advertise on T.V, magazines, leaflets, radio, etc.
- Reputation is another thing that Boots need in order to survive in their business. If the reputation is good then more customers will come to the store and in that way they will make profit.
- Good customer service. Providing help to customers (helping to find them what they want) is a good way of getting a good reputation.
- Tidiness of store. The store manager for Boots would need employees working on the tidiness of the store because the general public would look at the appearance of the store.
Boots current marketing Mix
In response to the tougher trading conditions expected to result from greater competition from the supermarket retailers, Boots embarked on a programme of price discounting in the third and fourth quarters of 2003-04. A large 'three-for-two' gift promotion over Christmas 2003, helped to boost like-for-like sales by just over 4% during this period.
In 2004, the company intends to continue its price discounting. Named 'Lower Prices You'll Love', the programme currently means that more than 1500 products (12% of counter sales) are at lower prices than a year before. The company aims to continue to invest in this area, planning to spend £5 million on price cuts in the fourth quarter of 2003-04.
Boots's customer loyalty card, named 'Advantage', is strongly associated with their marketing campaigns. The Advantage card is held by nearly 15 million consumers. It is linked with half of all sales in Boots the Chemists.
Boots Marketing Objectives
The marketing objective of Boots is also being the business objectives; marketing should enable the company to achieve its objectives. Any marketing objectives include some of the following:
- To target a market or part of a market, a MARKET SEGMENT
- To maintain or achieve a certain MARKET SHARE
- To develop a range of products
- To improve the image of the products or the company as a whole.
What are Boots main products?
Health: Pharmacy products
This represents about one quarter of the company's sales. Over-the-counter medicines used to be regulated under Resale Price Maintenance (RPM), so that smaller local chemists would survive. The effect of RPM was to keep prices artificially high. Larger firms, such as the major supermarket retailers, could have charged less for these medicines. Eventually, the benefits of protecting small pharmacies were outweighed by the lower prices that could be gained by letting supermarkets compete. So the RPM was abolished.
Beauty and Toiletries
Boots is the leading UK retailer in a number of cosmetic brands, such as No. 7.
Baby, Food and Photography
- Baby-related products are good for increasing 'footfall' (a retail term for the number of people entering the store)
- Sandwiches
- Food items for customers with special dietary requirements
- Digital cameras and in-store technology to produce prints from memory cards
Opticians, Dental care and Wellbeing services
- Opticians and eye care, including LASIK clinics.
- Dental care is a growing part of Boots' services. Private dentistry in the UK is worth £2bn annually.
- Boots' Wellbeing beauty treatment centres were shut down in 2003.
Boots Pricing
On Boots website their were a lot of products that Boots sell online that are Psychological such as the cough and cold medicine which is only 99p. There are many other products that Boots use that are for something 99p.
Boots also provide competitive pricing which means that Boots may sell the same products that other businesses like Boots my sell the same product but on a different price. For example Boots sell are mainly specialised in selling toiletry products such as window cleaning spray, but on the other hand super drug do the same product so therefore there is a pricing competition on what business will sell their product for a more amount.
Role of functional areas in supporting marketing activity
Accounting and Finance: -
Marketing activities require finance research and product development and advertising, in particular, can prove very costly. Therefore the Boots marketing department will need to work closely with the Finance department to ensure that sufficient Finance is available to fulfil marketing objectives.
The Functional areas of Boots and how they support marketing department?
There are many departments in a company like Boots. Each department will play a significant role in supporting the marketing department. The functional areas that I will talk about are:
- Marketing
- Finance
- Customer services
- Operations/ Production
- Research and Development
- Quality assurance
- Human Resources
- Administration/ ICT
Each of these departments has different roles in the business so that they can support the marketing department.
There are many roles that the marketing has to anticipate in so that the Boots is a successful business. There are many roles that marketing has to cover to be a successful department they are sales, promotion, market research and the most important role is to set marketing objectives. The finance department will set marketing a budget to work with. This is because finance need to make sure that marketing are not over spending the money on advertising then they should do. Research and development will also work closely with marketing because marketing need to make sure that their new DVD Camcorder will be a success and that is what customers want and it meets the needs and requirements of the target audience. Operations and production will also work with the marketing department in Boots because marketing need to make sure that the product is right and meets the choice and requirements of the customers are met. Finance will invest money in the marketing department because marketing will need money for their promotional activities and other activities to help the marketing department communicate products and services to its potential customers. The finance department will work closely with marketing to predict how much money they will budget they this may depend on how much revenue the product will generate. After the budget is set the marketing must figure out how much money the marketing department in Boots will dedicate to the marketing activities. Marketing will work closely with customer services because if there is negative feedback from existing customers then marketing will want to act on this so that they don’t make that same mistake again. Customer service also helps provide the marketing objectives for Boots. Boots products marketing department will work closely with research and development so that after research and development have done the market research then marketing can focus on customers if they are too successful. The quality assurance department will have a close link with the marketing department at Boots because the quality assurance has a massive influence on how well the marketing objectives are met. Marketing will ask the quality assurance team to check that the quality of the DVD Camcorder is at the best standard and it meets the needs of the customers. Human resources will work closely with marketing because if marketing need more employees then Human resources can recruit more people. ICT department will produce database charts for the marketing department.
I will be analyzing 10 products that Boots sell, including the new release of the Sony Mini DV Camcorder, which will be in Boots. I will do this by using: -
- The Boston Matrix Method
- The Product Life Cycle
- The Ansoff’s Matrix Method
First I will be writing about the product itself and then placing them on a grid or a chart depending on what kind of product it is.
The products that I will be looking at from Boots are: -
- Sony DCR-HC9OE Mini DV Camcorder
- Diesal Shampoo
- Pearl Soap
- Hair Gel
- Jif
- Cif
- The Sony Mini DV Camcorder will be introduced to Boots in another three weeks time. It has been started to advertise on Boots and on other types of medians such as T.V and radio. Boots will be the first ones to have this product and then gradually other stores such as Argos, Dixons etc. will also have this product. However this product is not making any sales yet but as it is not out in Boots, Queensgate. So it has just been introduced by the marketing department of Boots and it has been advertised so that customers can see the upcoming products and the features of the product. This product would best fit into the Product Life Cycle Method because it best suits their out of the other three methods of the product analysis tables and chart. It would go in the ‘Introduction’ column.
- Boots do sell a variety of products and if a customer comes to buy a product he/she has a very large variety of products to choose from. This applies to most of the products at Boots. In this case it is the shampoo that Boots sell. They sell about 7-10 different shampoos. The shampoo that I have chosen to focus on is the ‘Diesal’ shampoo. This is very popular and has been making a lot of sales. This product is not as popular to the Sony Mini DV Camcorder because there’s a lot more shampoo’s that Boots do, such as head & shoulders, Boots shampoo etc, but the Sony Mini DV Camcorder is the only camcorder that Boots so therefore the Diesal Shampoo has competition with other shampoos in Boots in that makes the most sales. Surprisingly the Diesal Shampoo has the most sales in Boots and it has been 4-5 months since Boots have started selling this product. Boots are confident on leaving this product and still having it in stock as they have seen the recent sales that the product has made and the product does have a big affect in the overall profit that Boots makes. Therefore the best way to analyze this product is by using the product life cycle. It would go under the growth column as the product is still growing. By growing, I mean that each day the sales of the Diesal Shampoo are increasing.
- Again this product is also similar to the Diesal Shampoo as in that it also has competition between other products that are similar to pearl soap. There are other soaps for example Dove Soap, Boots Soap and many other. The manufactures of the soaps had an aim to make their product the best so that the soap that they made succeeds in what the business wanted it for. In this case the Pear Soap didn’t do its job well and therefore did not help Boots in any way. Therefore Boots got rid of this product from the shelves and it did save a lot of space for Boots to put any other product that could benefit them. This product only stayed in Boots for only a month. The product did not succeed and is no longer sold at Boots. The best way to analyze this product is by using the Boston Matrix Method. This product would belong in the ‘Dog’ box because it is no longer sold at Boots but may be sold at other businesses.
- Boots also provides hair Gel such as Dax and they also have many other ones including their own Boots Gel. The hair Gel that I chose to look at from Boots is actually called Hair Gel and is made especially for the company Boots. This is a very good product and is very good in quality wise and the price is also reasonable. Therefore a lot of people had begun to buy this product. It has been approximately 2 years since Boots started to sell this product. It has made a big success for the business Boots. The business has made a lot of sales from this product. The product is in a very old age and did succeed in its aim. This product is doing well and needs to be kept by Boots. However the down side is that, for the last few months the sales have been drop down due to the fact that Dax had been introduce. Most of the people were buying Dax. So therefore it has a had a quite long time on the shelves at Boots and I have a feeling that sales may decline each time as new hair Gels will be introduced Using the Product life Cycle would be one of the excellent ways to analyze this product. This would go under the right side of the Maturity column.
- This product was in Boots about a year back. But now Boots do not sell this product no more as the sales were decreasing. There was a time when Boots used to make a lot of money from Jif but then suddenly as new detergents come out the Jif spray and cream were not making that much sales so therefore the marketing department of Boots done a clever trick and gave the same product a new name called Cif and also advertised this new brand name on T.V, Billboards and other advertising methods too. The manufacturers of the Jif product did not change the stuff inside the Jif container but changed the labels on the container sprays and creams to ‘Cif.’ This plan did work by the marketing department and they did make quiet few more sales than what they made before from when they had the Jif sprays and cream. The product was re branded. Using the Ansoff’s Matrix method of analysis the both ‘Jif’ and ‘Cif’ would belong in the first box annotated ‘Market Penetration.’
The Product life Cycle
The Boston Matrix
The Ansoff’s Matrix
The Ansoff’s Matrix