Integrated Marketing Communications for Woolworths- myassignmenthelp

Questin: Discuss about theIntegrated Marketing Communications for Woolworths Limited. Answer: Introduction: The report gives an overview of integrated marketing communications for a company in Australia. The company chosen here is Woolworths Limited (Woolworths.com.au /Shop/Discover/about-us 2018). Woolworths Group represents a major Australian company with extensive interest in the retail. This is the second largest retailer in Australia in terms of revenue. The report commences with a brief overview of the company. There is also a discussion on the promotional mix with an insight on advertising, sales promotion, public relation and personal selling. The report also discusses the strategies adopted by the company to enhance its personal selling that will give it an edge over its competitors. Brief Overview of the Company: Woolworths Limited Companies represents a compilation of the chains, divisions and brands of the Woolworths Limited, a major Australian company having retail interest throughout Australia and New Zealand (Woolworths.com.au 2018). It is represented as the largest food retailer of Australia. Further, Woolworth Limited is not only one of the prominent liquor retailer of Australia but also the largest gaming poker machine and hotel operator of Australia. Thus, the primary operations of the Woolworth brand include supermarkets, liquor retailing, management of the pubs and hotels under the hospitality and leisure group umbrella and discounted departmental stores. Promotional Mix: The promotional mix represents a combination of the promotional methods used for a single product or the family of the products (Armstrong et al., 2014). The elements of the promotional mix to be discussed in this report includes advertising, sales promotion, public relation and personal selling. Advertising: Woolworth represents the major display advertisers in the newspaper that is creative enough for driving readers into action (Moriarty et al., 2014). The advertisements created by Woolworths scores across number of creative diagnostics thereby scoring above the average retail scores of advertising. Price as well as product plays a very important role in advertising of Woolworths. The retailer has implemented a new campaign based on price that runs on the television, radio, online, and print that emphasizes the value of Woolworths supermarket on an everyday basis instead of one-time discounts. Sales Promotion: The retailer puts forward various loyalty schemes for the customers including discounts for petrol pumps. The retailer also launched a people campaign based on fresh food. In addition, the retailer used various magazine, newsletters as well as online media for effective promotion (Teck and Cyril 2013). The availability and accessibility of the retailer made them win loyal customers. The retailer also gave away various gift cards and carried extensive promotional activity via the various online mediums. Public Relation: Woolworths has announced the appointment of professional public relations for ensuring support across its business related to its food group. The professional public relations will not only support the public relations head but also the community and the sponsorships at the Woolworths for undertaking national marketing and campaign activity (Russell and Lamme 2013). The professional public relations also ensures community activity and working with the marketing managers of the local store. The professional public relations would help in demonstrating the extensive experience in the supermarket sector along with unrivaled capacity with the help of their exclusive footprint for supporting the delivery of the campaigns undertaken by the retailer at the local and national level at the most effective and efficient manner. Personal Selling: Personal selling refers to the procedure where businesses make use of people for selling the product after meeting them on a one to one basis (Makhitha, Wies and Van 2014). The products are promoted by the sellers through not only their appearance and attitude but also knowledge of the product. The aim of personal selling is to either encourage or inform the customers for either buying or trialing the product. Woolsworth tries to personalize the shopping experience in its online shopping by ensuring the presence of pickers who handpicks the items just as the shoppers would actually do. Focusing on one of the Promotional Mix: Personal Selling The Woolworths Limited has put forward a three year strategy for winning the trust of the customers and enhances its share of personal selling through the implementation of lower prices along with improving all aspects of the shopping experience (Walsh 2014). Thus, the strategy implemented by the retailer will not only result in lower prices but greater innovation and compelling offers. The retailer has 14.6 million normal customers along with 500,000 customers online so it focuses more on the superiority of the freshness and an appealing range. The largest food retailer group of Australia tries in gaining customer trust along with a larger share of the shopping basket. This helps the company in regaining the sustainable momentum for sales for extending leadership. The retailer in order to enhance its personal selling focuses on three key principles which include: Improving the core offers so that it is preferred by the customers. The company also undertakes innovation for meeting the needs of the customers Enhancing its efficiency by creation of further value of the customers. For enhancing the personal selling experience Woolworths Limited implemented a major investment program (Pollamarasetty and Potti 2016). The retailer ensured $ 125 million price reductions for the customers thereby enhancing the value position of Woolworths at the competitive level. The retailer also ensured matching of the online pricing with the store pricing. The retailer also ensured a major focus in improving the freshness and range of the vegetables and fruits Woolworths also implemented a value and pricing strategy for neutralizing the impact of the competitor that included better ranging, lower pricing, offers to the targeted customers through an improved and revised loyalty system and detailed strategy for the improvement of its own brands (Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/woolworths-rewards 2018). The retailer also involved in refurbishments that ensured rebalancing of the capital expenditure between the existing store refurbishments and the new stores. The retailer in order to enhance personal sales plans to refurbish around 80 stores per annum. The refurbishments undertaken will be according to the preferences of the local customers will be prioritized as per the growth of the customers. Woolworths Limited however would continue development of around 20-30 newer stores in a year according to the population growth and for addressing the gaps within the networks. However for ensuring enhanced personal selling the retailer established a new division known as the Woolworths FoodCo. This section had the responsibility of the development of the newer categories of the product, improvement of the fresh supply of the meat along with its processing facilities and development of the relationships between the strategic sourcing and the primary partners of the industry (Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/pick-woolies 2018). However, as the part of the commitment for growing into food for now or food for the later categories, Woolworths announced the partnership with the Western Sydney based quality food manufacturer Beak Johnson for delivering the first dedicated facilities of ready to cook items. Thus, the given facilities will help in ensuring the range of the meals for the retailers. The existing strength of Woolworth will be harnessed by its food strategy. This is ensured by increasing the investment in multi channel experiences of the customers (Atapattu and Sedera 2013). To ensure enhanced personal selling the online pricing is brought at par with the store pricing available along with a range of the new click and collect locations that will open along with the drive thru collection of points for increasing the convenience of the customers. Woolworth also put forward a customer first system for the measurement of the performances of the teams within the stores with a newer eight metric scorecard thereby replacing the older twenty metric systems while placing the metrics of the customers at the top of rankings. However, the three year strategy for growth depends on the newer Lean Retail model for operation (Noda 2015). This model will help in delivering over $500 million cost reduction that would help in enhancing the experience of customers in terms of better convenience, improved access and service, lower prices and commitment towards the process of innovation. The entire Woolworths team worked together for improving and maintaining the position of the retailer. Thus the retailer represented a stronger business with ample potential for growth and Woolworth is aware of challenges that the retailer faces for realizing the potential. Thus, the supermarkets of Australia had been streamlined into a single division known as the Woolworths Food Group headed by Brad Banducci, the managing director. Conclusion: The report ends with an elaborate discussion on one of the promotional mixes that includes personal selling. There is also discussion on the other promotional mix like advertising, sales promotion, public relation and personal selling. The company chosen for the report is Woolworths Limited. The report also puts forward a brief overview of the company. It is found from the report that the retailer has an extremely customer centric processes that focuses primarily on the satisfaction of the customers. The process aspects of the supermarkets refer to the speedy billing of the goods bought both in the online and the offline mode. The retailer however makes sure that the procedure becomes faster through the use of the latest software for billing along with adequate staff support. The retailer in order to enhance personal selling takes feedback from the customers for constant innovation of the process and making it easier. References: Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014.Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia. Atapattu, M. and Sedera, D., 2013. Agility of the firm: customer's perspective. Makhitha, K.M., Wiese, M. and Van Heerden, G., 2014. 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Consumers' personal values and sales promotion preferences effect on behavioural intention and purchase satisfaction for consumer product.Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics,25(1), pp.70-101. Walsh, B., 2014. Chain store retailing in Ireland: a case study of FW Woolworth Co. Ltd, 1914-2008.Journal of Historical Research in Marketing,6(1), pp.98-115. Woolworths.com.au 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworths.com.au/ [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018]. Woolworths.com.au/Shop/Discover/about-us2018.[online]Availableat: https://www.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Discover/about-us [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/pick-woolies2018.[online]Availableat: https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/pick-woolies [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018]. Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/woolworths-rewards2018.[online]Availableat: https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/woolworths-rewards [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018].