Factors Affecting Consumer Responsibility -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Factors Affecting Consumer Responsibility? Answer: Introduction Marketing management is the process of developing suitable strategies and planning for the products and services, advertisement, promotional sale to the desired consumer group (Khan, 2014). This study has 8 marketing Ps of Coles Roxburgh Park, which is actually located in the Roxburgh Park. Apart from theoretical description, the study has also applied such 8ps of marketing mix on the product of this organization. On the other hand, the study has also provided suitable recommendation on the 8 marketing Ps of Coles Roxburgh Park towards their improvement. Company For over 100 years, Coles has continued to deliver high quality products and outstanding customer service to millions of customers in Australia. The organization is highly dedicated to provide family products to the Aussie families for their happy and healthy home life. Coles Roxburgh Park is the store located in the Roxburgh Park Area of Australia. The organization always provides products with low cost for lowering the cost of living of the Aussie families (Coles Roxburgh Park, 2018). Among all the product range like food, gift cards, meat, fruit dairy and others, Coles loves to provide quality food products to the customers with lowest cost. Product and Location Coles Roxburgh Park is location is the area of Roxburgh Park of Australia. The area is actually within the Melbourne city of the country. The store is placed at convenient location of Melbourne, which is accessible and convenient enough for the customers. The organization mainly offers household products like bakery, dairy, deli, fresh fruit and vegetable, meat and others (Coles Roxburgh Park, 2018). Apart from that, the organization also delivers baby products, Coles mobile, gift cards, liquor, gluten free product, kosher and others. Moreover, Coles is always intended to meet the household need of the customers through delivering its products offerings to them. Consumer The consumers of Coles are generally from Medium income group family. Moreover, the consumers of the organization are mostly middle income group people of Australia. The organization has mostly targeted household consumer group having average income sources. Moreover, the intension of the organization behind such targeting strategy is to get success of low cost pricing strategy (Kraus et al., 2016). Furthermore, the organization majorly focuses on lower middle age consumer group having positive attitude towards their life. Product is the item in marketing mix, which is produced or built for satisfying the needs of certain group of people. According to Jackson and Ahuja (2016), the success of an organization is highly dependent on it availability of right type of product per the market demand. Coles Roxburgh Park mostly offers bakery, dairy, deli, fresh fruit and vegetable, meat and others for meeting the household product needs of the household consumer group (Coles Roxburgh Park, 2018). Moreover, the organization is highly popular for its high quality Australian food delivery. Apart from that, the organization also offers the products like baby products, Coles mobile, Gift cards, liquor and others. On the other hand, Dadzie et al. (2017) opined that the quality and leveling of products are extremely important for attracting the customers. In case of Coles Roxburgh Park, the organization is highly popular for it high quality food products. However, the organization is often claimed with low quality fre sh fruit and dairy product, which can hamper the selected target group. Furthermore, the organization is mostly limited within the household products. According to Chen et al. (2016) price is the sacrifice or pay, which consumers are prepared to pay for acquiring a specific product. Price shapes the perception of the consumers towards the products of an organization. In case of Coles Roxburgh Park, the organization uses cost leadership strategy, where it offers product at low cost (Schramm-Klein et al., 2015). Moreover, the organization has set price for the products at a range, which is affordable to all types of customers from lower to middle or higher income group. On the other hand, Kumar et al. (2017) opined that lower pricing strategy can increase the organizational profit with increasing sales jump. Likewise, affordable pricing strategy of Coles Roxburgh Park has fostered huge sales volume from increasing purchase from middle income group customers. Place or Distribution is extremely important in marketing mix for getting business success. According to Kozlenkova et al. (2015), organizations should always need to position and distribute its products in a place, which is accessible enough to their target customers as well as potential customers. Being established at Roxburgh Park, the position of Coles Roxburgh Park is accessible enough to the customers. Moreover, the organization provides both online and offline option to deliver products to the customers. On the other hand, Kumar and Pansari (2016) opined that distribution channels act as intermediaries between the organization and consumers, which ease up the process of selling. Likewise, the convenient physical stores and online service delivery channel enhance the interaction of the organization with the customers (Hristov Reynolds, 2015). However, in retail selling, the customers often face issues in finding their required products easily. Promotion romotion is an extremely important component in marketing mix, which can boost up the sales and brand recognition. According to Wang et al. (2015), effective promotional method conveys most important information of an organization to the customers. In this way, it enhances the brand recognition and helps in effective brand positioning of an organization. In case of Coles Roxburgh Park, the organization uses print media, mass media, digital media and social media for promoting its brands to the customers. The organization successfully uses television commercials, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for conveying most important product offerings to the customers (Kacker Perrigot, 2016). Such communication always keeps the customers highly informed about the product offering and these mediums encourage customers towards purchasing the products of this organization. On the other hand, Keller et al. (2016) opined that Coles Roxburgh Park also offers attractive discounts and offering s for increasing sales volume. However, too many discounts and offerings is harming the brand image of Coles Roxburgh Park. Customers often suspect about the quality of the products for huge discounted price. Process According to Gummesson et al. (2014), process of Marketing Mix is the procedures, mechanism and flow of activities through which services are delivered to the customers. In case of Coles Roxburgh Park, the organization has highly skilled and educated employees, who deal with the customers smoothly within the store. However, with lack of effective training, the store staffs are sometimes slightly rude with the customers that make customers disappointed. On the other hand, the organization has speedy billing services with latest billing technology software. Hence, the customers are always happy with such faster billing system at the cash counter. It helps the organization to be ahead of the market competition. However, the organization has lack of customer friendly staffs within the store. Physical Evidence Physical evidence is the presence and establishment of the business organization, which attracts the customers. According to Grimmer et al. (2015), physical evidence is the environment and space of an organization, where customers and organizational personnel interact. The store of Coles Roxburgh Park is clean and attractive to the customers. Moreover, the store is easy and customer friendly to navigate through each category of products. Furthermore, the website design of the organization is highly attractive, but yet to simple and flexible to operate. On the other hand, Chan et al. (2017) opined that effective physical evidence touches on the psychology of the customers with the presentable approach of the store. The store distributes bags with their logo in the store for gaining customer attention. Such factors often act as an added value to the customers, which can huge contribution in the loyalty level of the customers (Grimmer et al., 2015). Moreover, the organization needs to m aintain such physical evidence intact for long term organizational success. People People in marketing mix refer to the employees of an organization, who are directly responsible for the success of an organization. According to Geyskens et al. (2015), employees are highly responsible for representing the value of to the customers. In case of Coles Roxburgh Park, the organization has excellent sales assistants responsible for its success through achieving sales target. The employees are competent enough and contribute equally to the organizational success. On the other hand, Hristov and Reynolds (2015) opined that well trained employees are always effective in providing genuine and superior service to the customers. However, in case of Coles Roxburgh Park, the store staffs are not trained enough to deal with the customers having friendly approach. Such unfriendly approach often disappoints the customers. Partnership Partnership is the association of two or more business together towards offering more improved services to the customers. Coles Roxburgh Park has partnership with several partnership relations with some other organization towards improving and diversifying their product ranges. Moreover, the organization has built partnership with the Taste.com.au for launching new recipes in the cart (Nowak et al., 2015). The customers can directly shop the ingredients from the online shopping option of Coles Roxburgh Park. Apart from that, the organization has also made partnership with the Airtasker job-outsource company, where the customers can contract the workers to shop and deliver for them on their behalf. Moreover, such partnership has enabled the organization towards improving their product and service quality towards enhanced customer satisfaction. Recommendation The existing product portfolio of Coles Roxburgh Park is majorly limited within grocery products and some others. Such products can only meet the household requirements of the customers and not many others. Hence, the organization should enhance its product portfolio and diversify its product range. Enhanced product portfolio will meet several needs of the customers, which will actually enhance customer loyalty level. Furthermore, the organization is often claimed to have low quality for the fresh fruit products. Hence, the organization should be highly concentrated on the quality of the fresh fruit products. However, huge competitive pressure from the market players like Woolworths, ALDI, Costco and IGA can hamper the success level of Coles Roxburgh Park. Such competitor organizations are offering same kinds of the products with even more better quality (Davcik Sharma, 2016). Hence, the organization should immediately focus on the quality of the products. Coles Roxburgh Park always follows cost leadership strategy for being the market leader in the retail market of Australia. As per such strategy, the organization offers its products to the customers at lower price. Moreover, low price of the products helps the organization in gaining enhanced customer loyalty towards gaining high level of competitive advantage over the rivals. Hence, this pricing strategy seems to be perfect for the organization and should maintain such pricing strategy towards gaining long term business success. Moreover, the organization can maintain such low cost pricing strategy through keeping the overall cost of business operation low consistently. However, with increased globalization, various global retailers are offering their products at quite low price in Australia. Moreover, the popular global retailers Walmart and Morrison are quite able to afford to offer lower prices of the products. Such multinational companies often get discounts from the suppliers f or their bulk buying pattern (Homburg et al., 2017). Hence, it becomes quite easy for the multinational companies towards offering lower price of the products. Coles Roxburgh Park has mix of both online and offline channels for delivering their products to the customers. The customers can choose and purchase their required products from the convenient physical store of Coles Roxburgh Park. The customers should maintain such offline store over the time for the convenience of the customers in their product collection. However, the customers sometimes face issues in terms of seeking products in different product category. Hence, the organization can initiate catalogue shopping for the customers, where they will list down their require product names in a catalogue and the store staffs will collect those required product on behalf of the customers. The customers will just have to pay for the products. On the other hand, the online shopping option is highly convenient for the customers, which should be maintained by the organization over the time. Moreover, the organization should maintain the success of such online shopping option through timely delivery of products. Promotion From the analysis of promotional strategy of Coles Roxburgh Park, it can be found that the organization uses print media, television commercial, digital media and social media for promoting their product offerings. It also offers huge discounts and offerings to the customers for gaining high level of customer loyalty. However, huge discounts and offerings seem to be hampering the image of the organization. Moreover, the customers have started to perceive the quality of products as low for excessively huge discounts. Hence, the organizations should make a balance between the discounts and actual price. Furthermore, the contemporary issue of social media interaction can hamper the image of the organization and its social media promotional strategy. Moreover, the negative feedback about the products of posted by the customers on the social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can actually hamper the organizational reputation (Kacker Perrigot, 2016) Process From the process analysis of Coles Roxburgh Park, it can be found that the organization has highly skilled employees for interacting with the customers within the store. However, the store staffs are sometimes rude with the customers having lack of customer handling training. It often makes the customer disappointed with the staffs behavior. Hence, the organization should immediately start to provide adequate customer handling training to store staffs. It will facilitate the store staffs to behave with the customers effectively. Furthermore, it can be quite difficult for the organization to always align with the technological advancement and foster frequent process improvement. In such situation, the improved process of competitor organizations can create competitive pressure on this organization (Jain et al., 2014). Hence, the organization should always be concerned and updated about the advanced technologies in the market. Physical Evidence From the analysis of physical evidence of Coles Roxburgh Park, it can be seen that the retail store has clear and attractive store arrangement. Apart from that, the website of the organization is attractively deigned, but it is yet too simple to operate. Furthermore, the organization provides bags its logo deigned on it to the customer for carrying the product. Such bags often add to the added value for the customers. However, such strategy can be impacted with the issue of corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the plastic bags distributed by Coles Roxburgh Park can be an extremely important environment concern. Moreover, this strategy of physical evidence can be highly influenced by corporate social responsibility and environment concern issue of the society (Jones et al., 2015). Hence, the organization should take active initiatives towards stopping such plastic bags and promote more numbers of environment friendly bags. It would help the organization towards dealing with envi ronmental concern. From the analysis of people of Coles Roxburgh Park, it can be found that the employees of the organization are highly skilled and dedicated towards organizational success. However, the employees are always not efficient in dealing with the customers properly. They are sometimes rude at their behavior with the customers within the store, which makes the customers disappointed. Moreover, such rude behavior of the store staffs can create ethical concern for the organization (Hristov Reynolds, 2015). Hence, the organization should immediately work on the behavioral aspect of the employees through effective training. Such training would make the employees efficient enough towards dealing with customers in friendly manner. Partnership From analysis of partnership of Coles Roxburgh Park, it can be seen that the organization has several partnership relationship with other companies for providing diversified products and services to the customers. However, the organization is still incapable of bringing completely diversified products through their partnership strategy (David et al., 2017). Hence, the organization should immediately seek for a partnership relation, which will help it in fostering innovation through completely diversified product range. In this way, the organization will be able to make it unique and competitive in the market for beating with fierce market competition. Conclusion While concluding the stud, it can be said that Coles Roxburgh Park majorly provides household products like bakery, dairy, deli, fresh fruit and vegetable, meat and others. Furthermore, it also offers baby products, Coles mobile, gift cards, liquor, gluten free product, kosher and others. However, the organization should improve the quality of it fresh fruit product for gaining high level of customer satisfaction. On the other hand, the issue of social media interaction and negative feedback of the customers in social media sites can hamper the organizational reputation. Furthermore, huge discounts and offerings are actually hampering the corporate image of the organization with the misperception of the customers about its product quality. Hence, the organization should perfectly match a balance between the actual price and discounted price of the products. Recommendation Improvement of Product Quality Coles Roxburgh Park should immediately improve the quality of the products for gaining competitive edge over the rivals in the market. More specifically, the organization should improve the freshness and quality of the fresh fruits for enhancing the satisfaction level of the customers. Training to Employees The organization should arrange proper training facility for the employees towards enhancing their customer handling skills. In this way, the well-trained employees and store staffs will be able to interact with the customers in friendly manner. Such friendly approach of the store staffs will make the customers happy within the store. Improvement in Physical Evidence The physical evidence of the organization can get hampered with the issue of environmental concern. Moreover, the distribution of plastic bags for carrying the purchased product can be an issue of environmental concern. Hence, the organization should immediately replace the plastic bags with the environmentally sustainable bags for resolving the environmental concern. Improved Promotional Activities Negative feedback over the social media sites can hamper the corporate image of the organization. Hence, the organization should properly handle and reply the negative feedbacks of the customers for protecting the corporate image. Table 1: Recommendation for Coles Roxburgh Park (Source: Created by Author) References Chan, T. Y., Narasimhan, C., Yoon, Y. (2017). Advertising and price competition in a manufacturer-retailer channel.International Journal of Research in Marketing,34(3), 694-716. Chen, Y., Yang, S., Wang, Z. (2016). Service cooperation and marketing strategies of infomediary and online retailer with eWOM effect.Information Technology and Management,17(2), 109-118. 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