Quails Gate Winery Experience - Essay Example

Essay Quails Gate Winery Experience Submitted by Marketing November, 3 The Quail Gates Winery Experience Marketingis said to have only one goal, that is to reach customers, to describe to them its products and be able to influence their decisions. Several marketing strategies are used to achieve this purpose like sales promotions, advertisements and others. One such method is applied by Quails Gates Winery wherein they allow customers to gather a brand experience and to influence their choice. Describing an experience is providing an insight to the information gathered in the event. In particular, I will describe my trip to the Quail Gates Winery as a brand experience since the place and wine tasting is in itself a brand. Brand experience I think consists of expression, interaction, responsiveness and resilience, Therefore my view on Quails Gate Winery is shaped by my positive, negative, and personal experiences that I have encountered during my short visit to the place. Customers are normally preoccupied with so many things so that a personalizing experience is one way to build brand loyalty. As I figure it out, their brand exists with its interaction with customers. In every instance, brands can create positive impressions if company is able to ensure that moments are beneficial. I observed during my trip that the company tried to make positive impressions through a different approach of a marketing strategy. The marketing strategy of this company is detailed on experience they deliver to their customers on every interaction they make. I think that the winery experience established a compelling experience to build brand loyalty faster, and this knowledge becomes a brand in customers’ mind. My encounter with the Quails Gate Winery in Canada took place few months ago. This experience exposed me to agro-tourism, and gave me some learning about winery. I have learned to appreciate nature, relationships, and learned marketing strategies that could later on be relevant in business. In the process, I came to apply the cognitive, sense, relational experience, and emotions that are related to my brand experience in that trip. So, whenever I think of red wine, I think of the Quails Gate wine, such as I have developed brand loyalty because of experience. I. A little bit of history of Quail Gates Winery. The Quail Gates winery was established in 1989 and was operated as a family winery business. Over the years, the family has developed its vineyard, cultivated, and promoted its plantations, and today it boasts of owning 189 acres of vineyard in Okanagan, Canada. Company is regarded as a leader in viticulture practices in Canada and has produced notable grape varieties. The family is known for its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay blocks. Pinot Noir grapes derived its name from French word meaning pine and black and referring it as a grape variety having clustered fruit in a cone shape (see picture 1). Today, Quail Gates Winery is recognized as one of Canada’s agro-tourism sites. Visitors return again and again to visit the place because of its friendly, sophisticated and educational wine and culinary experience. First, when one visits the place, they are introduced to wine and food and the educational experience of winery as they are able to explore the area. The winery tour takes approximately an hour that costs $10 per person. Tour is available only during the months of May to October perhaps due to weather, and could be conducted with a minimum number of 10 participants. Tour in the place is a money making strategy of the company and an excellent way of promoting its wines. Wine tasting is part of its promotion although an excess of two servings is charged to customers that could be later be discounted if there is a wine purchase. As a culinary attraction, its restaurant is in a vineyard location in the slopes of Boucherie Mountain Bench. Reviews said customers appreciate the views and do not mind the restaurant’s location inside the plantation property. The restaurant opens at 11:00 a.m. for lunch and closes at 9:00 p.m from Monday to Sunday. Brunch is offered earlier on Sundays to accommodate family gatherings. While at the restaurant, one can sight not from afar the straight line rows of vineyards planted in the acres of land and a welcoming view of scenic lake and mountain (Picture 2 ) Culinary experience begins with the food choices described as all season’s destination. Food is prepared from ingredients coming from surrounding fields and pastures, thereby guaranteeing its freshness. Quail Gates Winery produces 15 brands of wine that customers can choose from. According to the company’s information, the company owns the national wine brand produced from its Okanagan valley vines, and each brand express their place of origin as displayed in its label. Company says their wines consistently deliver the elegant, fresh fruit forward style, rich in color and intense in color (see picture 3). Winery tasting starts at 10:a.m. and is available all year round. As the vineyard is the source of its supply, company assures they apply sustainability practices to the farm. According to the company information, it uses “holistic ecosystem management to preserve diversity of its natural surroundings without compromising the quality of the fruit.” To do this, they only allow fewer vehicles in the vineyard, they use drip irrigation to conserve water, and uses only composts and organic fertilizers. They bring this culture of ecosystem approach to their wines wherein bottles are made of recyclable and of light container materials. II. Dealing with my experiences I was a first time traveller, and my friend took me to a tour to the famous Quails Gate Winery. I have read much about this place from its website, and came to find out if what I read from the internet is a fact or a bluff. 1. Sensorial (sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell and how they arouse aesthetic pleasure, excitement, satisfaction and a sense of beauty) I consider sensorial feeling as a behavioural response to the brand stimuli of Quails Gate Winery that is part of its design and environment. This fashioned my ideas on brand evaluation, involvement and delight with the product. Brand evaluation of the wine. My brand evaluation was done by tasting and smelling only as I am not a technical expertise and it was not needed. As a wine lover, I love the experience of wine tasting that cost me $5 for 3 wines tasted. Price is waived when I made a purchase that I brought home with me as a gift to someone. The sweetness of the red wine suits me better than the white wine as it left a sweet taste in my mouth and no after-breath smell. In the end, I was convinced, as a customer, to the goodness of the product. Taste test is done usually by marketers to introduce a new product and to obtain direct perception of customers. Taste test in Quails Winery is done to gauge reaction of customers to the product or to the wine and to promote it as well. Brand evaluation of the restaurant. This evaluation part is done by seeing only. I was aroused by the sight and ambiance of the restaurant. As I weigh up the restaurant, my mind was focused on its location. I swear I was stimulated by the pleasure of seeing the scenic beauty that surrounds the place. It made me focused on the quiet and cool surroundings of the place and not on the food. The scenery makes the brand of the restaurant establish customer’s loyalty, so that it encourages word of the mouth advertisements. Word of the mouth is very important to business as it is an unpaid advertisement voluntarily done by satisfied customers who recommend the business to other people. A remark I over-heard from a group of travellers sitting beside our table, said that they went to the place because it was recommended to them due to its scenic beauty, but they were not satisfied with the service. Service, place, price of food, and satisfaction, I think, are important marketing considerations of customers and are one of the reasons of customers’ coming back. They are the best word-of-mouth advertisements for a business and best gauge of brand loyalty. I was so excited to walk through the vineyard and to the property as it was also one of the attractions. I could not get over with my pleasure in seeing rows and rows of grapes that greeted us, ready to be harvested so that I kept recommending it to others to see. In so, doing, I become an unofficial endorser of the company. (see pictures 4). 2. Emotional ( moods, feelings, and emotional experiences that create an affective relation with the company , its brands and products) I am convinced that choices of products or places to see are affected by moods of an individual. When people is in a positive mood, they tend to choose products that match their moods. So my choice of food at that time depended on the harvest of vegetables during the season and my healthy lifestyle, and my choice of travelling to Quail Gates Winery was inspired by my mood to look for a pleasant and quiet atmosphere and from word of mouth recommendations. Scents, music and surroundings, is an arousal mood that I experienced during my trip to Quails Gate Winery. Why, because the cool breeze coming from the mountain, the quiet river, and the large spans of greenery all affected my mood for pleasure seeking. Moods, I believe are influenced by preferences of products that will make people feel better and that they will pursue product choices pursuant to these moods. My mood at time of travel is for pleasure and arousal. As my group is composed of only 5, we paired with other travellers to make up for the minimum number of 10 participants, whom later on became our friends. The tour took us an hour and it was a chance to build relationships. As the place is created to build moments with friends, the mood was translated into an affection with the place, but not necessarily its brands and products. It is a nice feeling to establish friends from a foreign country and to discuss our experiences common to Quails Gate Winery. Relationship at this instant means relationship or attachment to the brand. My friend, and his fiancé who were both overly romantic , got attached to the place and decided to host their wedding reception in Quail Gate. It is too bad that I was no longer able to share the experience again. This is some kind of a display of brand loyalty, I suppose. 3. Cognitive (experiences related to thinking, and conscious mental processes to get consumers to use their creativity or problem solving so that they revise assumptions about a product) I describe cognitive ability in this aspect of experience as the ability to understand and process information. Quails Gate Winery uses the Cognitive theory in instilling to the minds of its visitors the experiences they gather in its visit. Perfect example is the wine tasting experience. As a new visitor in the place, I think that wine tasting is a nice way to convince consumers towards purchasing its wine. It is one clever way of erasing whatever reservations they have on the wines. My previous assumption that wine is always an intoxicating drink was erased after wine tasting because of the actual experience and information I got. 4. Lifestyle (experiences resulting from the affirmation of values and personal beliefs) I define lifestyle as the way one lives or how a group behaves, the habits, tastes an economic level that constitute the mode of living of a person or group. Lifestyle presented by the place is one for pleasure seekers, someone looking for a quiet place to unwind, but a place confined to the rich. The combination of the appeal of the scenic views, food, and wine present a lifestyle of people who look for relaxation after a hard day’s work, or a place to spend with family and friends. I observed that lifestyles of people I met at Quails are those that belong to medium class of society, peace loving people because of its appreciation to nature. Quails Gates Winery reminds me of a place where problems are set aside and creates a feeling of wanting to come back. The physical attractiveness of the place is itself an endorsement that draws the public. Brand experience on the Quail Gates Winerey created by lifestyle is a comfortable, peaceful and scenic place that one can go to relax. Its wine is a representation of sophistication, class, and privileged. 5. Relational (experiences emerging from social contexts and relationships , that occur during common consumption as part of a real or imagined community or to affirm ones social identity. Brand experience to the place as related to relational experience considers community relations and social status. Relational experience is a result of something we do with others. Because of this, we make decisions in order to get close to them based on our needs or what we will get from them. My relational experience as part of the community that visited the Quails Gates Wine was influenced by the behaviour of those in my company. In my case my decision to visit the place was based on my friend’s recommendation. They were eager to entertain me, and I also wanted to be close to them during my visit to Canada. My need at that time was to seek pleasure in visiting places I have never been before, \ II. Get on their website and contrast your face to face experience with the on line experience. What if any are the gaps that you feel exist between the two ? How can you fill the gaps? Provide some recommendations as to what Quails gate can do to keep their customers coming back to (1) the winery and (2) the winery web. Comparison of the web and actual experience The Quails Gate Winery website at Quail Gates. com. is user friendly and can readily be accessed. It can easily be navigated and can direct the viewer to the site. It has pictures of the site that describes the place although some descriptions were brief, and left me hanging on some more information I wanted to know. So it came to me as no surprise at all to see the promised sites in the websites in reality. But seeing it for the first time is a different experience than when navigating it in the internet. The website provides the viewer with history of the company that fills the viewer an imaginary view of how it came to be a successful winery. When I saw the pictures of the winery in the web, my mind grew with anticipation of seeing real grape vineyards, plucking and tasting its fruit direct from the farm. I was not disappointed when I saw the plantation in reality. I cannot explain the excitement as my eyes grew wild in seeing the luscious vines standing erect because of careful protection. Gaps I noticed that its marketing elements to create brand loyalty are not complete. For example, it lacks brochures for product information that could be given to local travel agents and dining customers to promote tourism to its place. Website information is not very interesting to create attention and interest. I observed lack of online information that appeals to the social nature of customers. The voice of the company’s message is not done in the spirit of experience and with what company knows about its customers. Marketing opportunity Incidentally, I am a grape lover, and the company should play more importance to it as an agro-tourism place. The website did not do much to promote this, and this is one marketing opportunity that company should make the most of aside from selling wines. As grapes is regarded as table fruit, I did not see from the web marketing proposals of selling them in the supermarkets. The company directs its produce to winery although I sensed that winery is its main concern. Marketing of grapes for table consumption is not ordinarily done in this vineyard. Since the company has gathered enough expertise in grape production, they can do research in propagating and marketing a new kind of grape variety for table consumption Recommendations to keep customers in getting back to the winery Promotions To keep customers in getting back to the web site or the vineyard, some promotions are needed, like holiday offers that transforms the place according to the event. Special package of promotion should be arranged for special events like weddings, birthdays and celebrations. They should keep customers abreast of this information thru social media. Promotional strategies are ways to communicate information about the company and its products with the goal of increasing its sales. Some promotional strategies are advertising, public relations, personal selling and sponsorship. Advertising is a form of promotion to create awareness of the product and is done thru advertisements in radio, television, direct mail, and magazines or newspapers. A quick and inexpensive way is to advertise thru internet wherein there are millions of viewers now. Company can also create interest and attention of prospective customers thru direct mails or e-mails. Public relations is a strategy that seeks to communicate to your target market. Examples are press releases, corporate videos presentations, media interviews and interactions in social media. Interaction with media calls for constant publishing of information and asking viewers to comment or like the information. Some media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (popular ones) are examples Sponsorship entails sponsoring events to gain exposure. Example is sponsoring of local festival like October fest, Halloween, and others. Experts on these are available for consultation. Personal selling is hiring of people to manage customer relations and sell your products. Staff should be properly trained for this. Promote tourism Tourism is a money-making activity that adds up to the profitability of the company. As the company is said to be a national pride of Canada, efforts should be done thru promotions to attract both local and foreign tourists to the site. Brand loyalty Brand loyalty brings more customers and more profit. In order to achieve an effective brand experience and attain brand loyalty, company should try a total brand approach. The brand experience I gathered from my trip, developed my loyalty to its wine, because without brand loyalty, it is just another product that I can snob in my choices. I couldn’t say the same for the restaurant since distance is a concern. I can only recommend it to friends who are planning to visit Canada Total marketing approach I define Total marketing approach as the sum total of all your marketing strategies from the business development process and all the way to its development and up to the store execution. Total marketing approach should be handled with care. Even if the restaurant can make the most welcoming website, a good online reviews, and a welcoming door, but if its wait staff and host are not good at their post throughout the whole experience, the overall brand experience is damaged. For an effective brand experience, company should make sure that all elements work together consistently and give customers a complete picture of what company can offer. The remark mentioned by one of its customers for poor service quality certainly damaged its brand reputation and customer’s loyalty. Recommendations to keep customers returning to the winery web The internet is what I call an education vehicle wherein one can access all information you need. Company can engage into conversations with customers wherein the can readily provide information needed. To be a great brand, company must be teachers, listeners, and content writers so that customers will trust brands. Being relational in social media is one way of building foundations and brand loyalty with customers. By building relations with customers in media, you are strengthening your bond with the customer. It would help that in making mails, customers are addressed by their names because they would feel they are valued. This way they will take time to read the message on it. Likewise, people would like to know the name of the people they are dealing with, so sign your name. In a very large company where there are so many employees, it would be difficult for an inquiring customer to look for an answer, and this is one way of losing one. Use of Social media Aside from its website, company should take advantage of the social media to announce events so that customers will be aware of it. There are million users of social media, that once they note announcements in this site, they will be interested to get more information on the company’s own website, thus viewership is assured. Its Wine Club should be also broadly announced in the social media in order to encourage members to stock up special wine, participate in wine celebrating events and get privileged discounts. Other opportunities Market expansion I noticed also the limitations in marketing of wine that is concentrated to wine club members only, and to those going to site, and there is no effort towards expansion or globalization. Globalization is a trend in marketing brought about by fast development of technology and communication. Today, other country is just another neighbour that is only one click away in technology, and there are strategies that could be used to reach these foreign markets. Conclusion Lessons I have gained in my Quail Gates Winery experience and brand experience is a quite simple – that in order for a brand to attract customers, they have to like what it has to offer and should be based on its relevance to customers. There should also be interaction and responsiveness: meaning, the brand does what it says, the brand delivers what it says, and something that responds to the needs of customers. The operation of the company is simple, and has no indications of any expansion whatsoever. Wine is a universal and accepted drink, and should they think expansion, the company can engage in globalization, but this requires many changes of company structure and financing. My brand experience led me to brand loyalty. If my expectations and needs gathered from the internet were not met by brand experience, surely I will not be an endorser, and it will be one loss too many to the company. Words: 3,585 Reference: Quail Gate Winery.com ATTACHMENTS Read More