Situation analysis of Grill`d - Essay Example

? SITUATION ANALYSIS OF GRILL’D ……………………… College………………………………. …………………. Executive Summary Discovering a hidden market opportunity is perhaps extremely important to market a product or service successfully. A best marketer is one who anticipates emerging market-opportunities, identifies the customers, realizes their needs and design and develop a product to meet such needs. Grill’d is an illuminating example for how an idea can be converted to a large-scale retail chain. Simon Crowe, the founder of the company, anticipated growing demands for burgers and he started his own business, providing franchising contractual relationship, with a view to provide quality and fresh hamburgers. He was successful, and the company within very few years has grown to open more than 50 branches in different streets of Australia. His ideas such as local marketing, Airstream etc serve as significant marketing strategies to establish better branding position among customers. Introduction To develop a comprehensive marketing plan about the product or service being marketed usually requires formative research that can flesh out details of strengths and opportunities the firm experiences. With a situation analysis, the firm can look inward to understand its strengths and weaknesses and look outward to see what its opportunities and threats are. This paper presents a brief situation analysis of Grill’d company, a chain of grilled burgers in Australia, addressing major components such as market, product, distribution and competitive situations. This paper also identifies main two issues why the company requires to create a strategic marketing plan. Grill’d Company Overview Grill’d is a chain of burger bars designing, making and selling fresh, healthy and quality beef, chicken breast and lamb burgers (Grill’d, 2012). When the first Gril’d restaurant was opened in Melbourne in March 2004, it has truly caused people to think of ‘quality meal-sized burgers’ to be available in parts of Australia and the dream became reality that the company opened as many as more than 45 branches in several regions of Australia such as Brisbane, Coolangatta, Sydney, Newscattle etc (Franchise Business, 2012) The company operates through its won as well as franchised stores with a view to meet an on going and ever increasing demand for quality hamburgers made with fresh and fine ingredients of chicken and beef. As far the basic marketing concept is concerned, it should start with potential customer needs, but not with production process (Perreault, Cannon and McCarthy, p. 6). A successful marketer is one who anticipates needs and determines what specific goods or services to be offered to target the customers. Grill’d is another example for how successfully a marketer can anticipate needs and thus seize marketing opportunities. It has been a major reason why Grill’d is Australia’s one of the fastest growing hamburger retail networks (dcstrategy.com, 2012). It not only anticipated the customer needs for burgers, but also the latent customers’ seeking of quality, fresh and fine ingredients for food or related items available in the market. The Market Situation As noted by the 2007 CEO of Grill’d, Simon Crowe, the company mainly appeals to a wide spectrum of customers, being the primary targeted market as people between the ages of 21 and 28. Quite specifically, this generation highly particular about fast food and are becoming greatly familiar with fast food concept, but are health conscious too. Grill’d is targeting this generation since they want food that is adult-oriented with a concept of ‘fun-food designs’ and they expect it from reliable brand (The Australian, 2007). A target market comprises of set of buyers who share common needs, characteristics or features that the marketer decides to serve them (Armstrong and Kotler, 2005, p. 199). Buyers have unique needs and wants that the company target them with certain product or service can measure the utility and value of these needs and wants in terms of money. ‘Local Matters’ as seen highlighted in the website of Grill’d underpins the marketing concept of ‘local marketing’ which is undoubtedly a growing trend, often termed as grassroots marketing, among strategic marketers. The company gives back to the local people by supporting them from all walks of life and standards. Community donation program is an important segment of that. Over a year, the company is likely to donate around 1000 groups (Local Matters, 2012) and that leaves significant value and reputation of the brand among the local community people. Local Marketing is leading to marketing programs that can be tailored to needs and wants of local customers who find the company in trading areas, neighborhoods etc. Kotler and Keller (2006, p. 244) stressed that local marketing is a highly successful strategy that comprises of programs and marketing activities to concentrate on getting as close and personally attentive to customers as possible. It is typically experiential marketing since it promotes a product or service by connecting it with unique and interesting experiences among local people rather just communicating what the product or service is. Though the primary target customers represent quite a small percentage of total population, the growth of the company from just one store in 2004 to more than 45stores shows that the potential opportunities for the burger products has been greater than it may seem. The Product Situation The product concept of Grill’d was that the company should continually deliver a new, fresh and quality burger which is arguably the most widely appealing food concept around the world. This came in to existence when the company founder, Simon Crowe, found a marketing opportunity for decent and healthy hamburger in Australian Market. As the company consistently communicated its brand messages to the customers, its delicious burgers are ‘made with love’ and are made with fresh and quality ingredients. Its products variants include buns, beef burgers such as Simply grilled, Crispy cheese, Mighty Melbourne, Summer sunset etc, lamb burgers such as Moroccan and Baa-Baa Lamb burgers, Veggies burgers such as Garden goodness, Field of dream etc. It also makes and distributes steak sandwiches such as Front bar and Back bar etc and chicken burgers such as Sweet Chilli chicken, the Zen hen, Simon says, Tuscan Delight, Grill’d bird etc. Targeting little kids, the company offers a grilled mini burger called Mini me pack. All these burgers and grilled meats are moderately priced. The burgers’ prices are between the range of $1.5 to $ 15. There are now more than 50 Grill’d restaurants across various locations of Australia employing more than 500 people. The company generated a net revenue of $67 million in 2011, with a record increase of 68 percent from the revenues of 2010 (Chadwick, 2012). The profit Grill’d generated and the reputation it established among Australian customers are basically due to that people are re-entering the burger market since they are realizing that Grill’d burgers can be fresh and healthy (Hospitality, 2010). The company not only just have given words of quality and fresh ingredients for its burgers, but it always made efforts to ensure that its products meet supreme quality and the burgers are always as fresh as people expect them to be, and this was absolutely the reason why the company could achieve the FCA Emerging Franchisor in 2009 and 2010, Best Australian Retailer in 2010, BRW ANZ Private Business Award, BRW Fast Frachiser 2010 etc The distribution system of Grill’d Distribution is a critically important element to marketing mix. Selecting the most appropriate channel of distribution can help a marketer stay highly competitive and the distribution system itself can serve a strong beam of competitiveness (Rolnicki, 1998). From the very beginning of the starting of Grill’d, the founder has realized the importance of both own stores and franchising for a restaurant business and has given opportunities for others to franchise with the company. Franchising has been one of the major factors behind the success story of Grill’d. As Spinelli, Rosenberg and Birley (2004, p. 95- 96) stressed, franchising can be an effective marketing strategy if it can properly be executed. Company’s website promotes people who may like to be franchised with it. Major importance is placed on branding, teamwork and specific organizational culture that make it quite distinctive from its competitors (opengrilld, 2012). Franchising is a key component of strategic inter-organizational relationship that provide wider marketing opportunities. The franchise system thus provides a contractual relationship for easing the distribution and for aligning the distribution to strategic marketing (Cravens and Piercy, 2002, p. 203). Airstream, probably a very different system for ensuring on-time burger distribution to events, parties etc, has become a means how people keep on thinking about Grill’d and its burger products across Australia. Airstream is a unique distribution system that takes Grill’d burgers to roll out over places of festivals, events, programs, parties and concerts. Though seemingly quite un-fashioned, bringing burgers in a van doesn’t compromise with quality, fresh and fine ingredients or quality perspectives that Grill’d always ensures to its people. The company rather could celebrate the introduction of Airstream Distribution system as Burger Love Tour as its van exhibiting the brand name appeared in several cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Airstream is therefore not only an alternative to distributing burgers, but also a strategic way to keep on communicating and reminding people about its brand messages. Competitive Situation Burger market was not highly significant until recent years, but after many large scale operators such as McDonald, Burger King etc went global and played in many markets including Australia, burger market opportunities have become un-hidden to many. Simon Crowe’s intention to open a burger business in 2004 was to seize these marketing opportunities. But, now the market is highly competitive. For instance, there are many significant market players in Sydney alone in Burger market such as Grill’d, Moo Burger, Burgerlicious, Burger Fuel, the Burger Joint etc. Though Grill’d was known to be ‘almighty’, it was not the winner of best burger, but Burgerman did it, since Grill’d burgers have not much substances as compared to Burgerman (Delaney, 2011). Burger King, in the brand name of Hungry Jack in Australia, and McDonald, two multinational burger companies from UK and USA respectively are among the major competitors of Grill’d. Burger King operates through 11, 925 restaurants in more than 72 countries and McDonald operates through 32, 478 restaurants in more than 70 countries. Both these two companies have already well established in Australia since 1970s and have been playing pivotal roles in Burger Market (Datamonitor, 2010, p. 23- 46). All these competitors have greatly concentrated on quality and fresh concerns that people do have about burger and fast food items. As people are becoming more concerned about quality issues of food and drinks they buy from markets, burger marketers attempting to ensure quality for the products it offers to the customers. SWOT analysis of Grill’d Identifying, analyzing and evaluating factors related to the internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats are very significant key steps to defining strategic marketing arena of an organization. SWOT analysis is therefore a pathway to scrutinize market forces and firm’s stand in its industry in relation to both internal as well as external capabilities of the firm (Kotler and Keller, 2006, p. 52). SWOT analysis of Grill’d is depicted below: Strengths and Opportunities Grill’d, within the last few years’ continuing operation, has built strong brand name, which is gaining more reputation among its customers across Australia. The company has been providing the opportunity for franchising and this in turn has eventually helped the company grow in to more marketplaces. The company has put in efforts to concentrate on local marketing strategy by which it donated a specific amounts to get connected with local people and make them aware of Grill’d. Its airstream van carrying burger products to various event or festivals seem to continually ensure its presence every where so is required and thus to promote its brand name across cities. The new generation students tend to like small-treats rather than big-meals. This will certainly bring more advantages to the company in its future. Weaknesses and Threats Burger King and McDonald, the major two players in burger market in Australia, are providing wider selections of fast food and drink items, but Grill’d confines to burgers. Both Burger King, McDonald and many other competitors provide a wide variety of food and drink items. Customers coming to a restaurant for lunch or dinner often turn their decision to take small-treat of burger. This kind of customers may not be attracted by Grill’d. As a growing company, it needs to give more training in customer servicing and other things to its employees and also to ensure more loyalty programs. Not only that there is rigorous competition, but also that there are wider selection of food alternatives seem to be other major threats faced by Grill’d. Two Issues to be Addressed The main two issues that the company is more likely to address and likely to create strategic plan for are 1) diversification and 2) home-delivery of burger to doorsteps. Since Grill’d is a burger company, it is highly important that its resources such as food ingredients, meats, and human capital who are experts in serving as well as cooking can also be utilized for fast-food making. The company thus requires to diversify its products and services, so that it can further benefit from wide targeted customers. As Armstrong and Kotler (2005, p. 49) stressed, a company may diversify by starting up new businesses or making and marketing new products outside its current products, and this can be very profitable only if the products it wants to diversify are quite familiar to the current items. The Airstream facility of Grill’d ensures delivering of burgers to events and programs. Similarly, if the company can deliver good to houses on demand, it can create a zeal of more-friendliness from its current customers. As it is already providing Airstream, the initial investment for home-delivery will relatively be less. Conclusion This paper has presented a brief situation analysis of Grill’d comprising major components to it; market analysis, product analysis, competition, distribution analysis and SWOT analysis etc. This paper highlighted that Grill’d, though started as a small upstart in 2004, has now emerged to be a big company operating through 51 own and franchised businesses and delivering quality and fresh burgers across major towns of Australia. Local marketing has been a significant marketing strategy, whereas franchising and Airstream by which it sends its van with burgers to various programs and events are other significant distribution strategies. As far as competition is concerned, the company faces quite fierce competition from local as well as multinationals such as McDonald and Burger King. It has more opportunities since it can always ensure its presence whenever there are events or festivals. 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