Advertising And Other Forms Of Promotion Marketing Essay

Advertising and other forms of promotion are an integral part of the marketing process in most businesses. Over the past decade, the amount of money spent on advertising, sales promotions, direct marketing, and other forms of marketing communication have increased tremendously over the world.

Promotion is best viewed as the communication function of marketing. It is accomplished through a promotional mix that includes advertising, personal selling, publicity, sales promotion, communication, coordinating the various marketing and promotional elements to achieve more efficient and effective communication programs. It is essential to cope with the rapidly changing environment with respect to consumers, technology, and media.

Marketing program decisions regarding product, price, distribution, and promotions must be made and coordinated to contribute to the overall image of the product or brand. (Belch 2009)

According to Belch and Belch (2009), “marketers use the various promotional mix elements such as advertising to inform consumers about their products, their prices and places where the products are available. Besides, it also helps marketers to achieve their promotional objectives, and all variables must work together to achieve an integrated marketing communication program.

In this proposal, we focused on researching the level of awareness and competitiveness of Papa John’s Pizza against the other pizza chain stores in Malaysia; and how advertising and promotional campaigns affect and help in building up the branding image of Papa John’s Pizza. We will only focus on the stores that are located in Klang Valley. Based on our survey previously, we were able to observe and determine the above-mentioned phenomena, and then propose effective solutions to increase the awareness, thus the sales revenue and market share of Papa John’s Pizza in Malaysia.

Therefore, Papa John’s Pizza, having to compete with other pizza restaurants in the industry, must have something special that give an edge over competitors. Their competitive advantages can be achieved through advertising and promotion that creates and maintains product differentiation and brand equity.

1.2 Literature Review

1.2.1 Various Definitions of Advertising and Promotion

Armstrong and Kotler (2009) define advertising as any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. On the other hand, Belch and Belch (2009) defined advertising as any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor. “Advertising is the activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.”(Answer.com n.d) Advertising is a “description or presentation of a product, idea, organization in order to induce individuals to buy, support, and approve it. (Invertorsword.com n.d) William Pattis (1996), on the other hand, defines “advertising is an essential force in today’s marketplace, it serves marketers by convincing people to buy their products or services and serves consumers by providing information on what’s available in the marketplace.”(Jarlath Jack Graham, Former editor). Whereas promotion is define as the way of communicating with the public to influence them to buy the company’s product. (About.com. n.d) “Promotion consists of marketing communication that informs potential consumers about a firm or its products or service and try to persuade them to buy it.” (p.421 Managing Small Business By Carlos W. Moore)

1.2.2 The brand awareness

Rossiter and Percy (1987) states that brand awareness as being essential for the communications process to occur as it precedes all other steps in the process. With no brand awareness, there will be no other communication effects can occur. In order for a consumer to buy a product they must first be made aware of the brand. Brand attitude cannot be formed, and intention to buy cannot occur unless brand awareness has occurred. (Rossiter & Percy 1987; Rossiter et al. 1991) It is crucial for a firm to create awareness, it is more likely for a consumer to consider or choose the brand if the level of awareness is higher than the other alternatives brands. Added on, Dickson and Sawyer (1986) found out that consumer took an average of 12 seconds from the time of first looking at the shelf to the time they placed the item in their trolley in purchasing products such as coffee, toothpaste and margarine. Thus, if the brand is not being aware by the consumers, the consumers will tend to buy only the brands that they are familiar and well established in the market that is less time consuming in making decision while purchasing. Hoyer and Brown (1990) had conducted a consumer choice study, among 3 choices of brand, over 70% of consumers selected a known brand of peanut butter even though another brand was ‘objectively’ better quality (as determined by blind taste tests) and even though they had never tried or bought the brand before. This shows that, the well-known brand may affect the consumer’s judgement and opinion towards the other brands. Hence, advertising is profitable and is a must to do to create awareness among the consumers in the market place in order to convince the consumers.

1.2.3 Does Advertising Affect Sales?

Marketers continue to spend huge amounts of money on advertising, which is one of the most important marketing tools. Advertising is basically thought to have a current-period influence on sales, called the current effect, and a long-term influence beyond the current period, called the long-term or carryover. Typically, more is spent to advertise new brands with small market shares rather than advertise on the older brands.

“Brands with large market share use advertising mainly to maintain their share of the market” (The Essential of Marketing, 2009, Lamb et al., pg. 435 n.d.)

When the advertising of a firm is say to be attractive and appealing, it will eventually affect the consumer’s purchase and daily live as well. Thus, the sales of the firm will increase and the advertisement may help to position their self in the market place. Wise versa, if the advertising is said to be not attractive and appealing, the number of sales will eventually decrease.

1.2.4 How Advertising Can Affect a Firm Negatively?

Advertisement plays an important role in a firm. As when the firm advertises wrongly, it may bring several negative effects towards the firm. Advertising may bring some benefits to the firm, but however there are some negative aspects too. In order to increase the sales and make the advertisement attractive, the firm will have to create trends that consumers will follow.

“Advertisers have found out that if they make a product, and make customers believe that their product will make them happy, sky will skyrocket.” (realcool.biz 2008)

In order to increase the sales, the advertiser will have to create false images and false claim for hours every day patiently, until people believe in certain things. Besides that, consumer often tend to be offended by advertisement as consumers mistaken the message or information that the company of the advertisement is trying to send to them, situation like this will change the mindset of consumer of the company, because the consumer will think that they had been cheated by the company. This showed another negative effect of the advertisement made.

1.2.5 Sales Promotion

In relation to advertising programs, sales promotions is one of the tools used by advertising manager to attract consumers and communicate with other elements of advertising.

Sales promotions are divided into two major categories, they are the consumer-oriented and trade oriented activities. A consumer-oriented sales promotion is targeted to the ultimate user of a product or service, which encourages the consumers to make an immediate response or purchase, and thus can stimulate short terms sales. Whereas for trade-oriented activities, it is targeted towards marketing intermediaries, which encourages the trade to stock and promote the company’s product. (Belch & Belch 2009, pg23). A sales promotion may help a firm to increase in their sales and profits. Firstly, sales promotion may encourage trials among new consumers. As the consumers notice the sales promotion given by the firm, they might change their mind on changing their brand that they normally use to the brand that is giving sales promotion. This allows the firm to increase in sales. Besides, if the products suit the consumer, the consumers might turn from a new customer to loyal customer after using the product produce by the firm. In this case, a sales promotion may help in increasing of profits.

1.2.6 Advertising Tools

Internet marketing is one of the advertising tools. Internet is being widely used nowadays. Internet advertising is one of the most efficient advertising tools to build branding. Advertising tools are part of a company campaign to bring a direct response. These tools can impact persuasively.

Advertising tools can help a company website improve its rankings on the search engine results page. A traffic generating tool helps attract the targeted audience to the website. The potential to establish new sales off-line can generate a better return on investment.

On-line tools allow the advertiser access to easy monitoring and ad campaign analysis. On-line tools can help create ads, target the right audience, and define and measure traffic. Advertising form can take different forms: for example, running paid commercial during a Podcast. Blogging is another Internet advertising tool that allows consumers to communicate at their convenience. This world of mouth advertising that was effective as a traditional means can reach across the globe via the Internet. Off-line advertising can lead to an on-line presence. For example, a television ad that encourages the viewer to order through the web site employs two kinds of media. One media drives traffic to the web site.

Directories provide another Internet advertising tool. Certain online directories can increase reciprocal links. Especially if the linking partner from the other site provides a high-quality link, then the chances of securing a higher ranking on the search engine results page may increase. An advertising tool works well if the web-site content is rich with relevant information. Great quality attracts both directories and search engines. Sites with a short loading time can retain more visitors who want to click on your page and visit for a longer time. Improving keyword density is another on-line advertising tool.

A web page Meta tag offers a coded description of the page features. The HTML coding statement that appears at the top of the page is what the search engine crawler can spot to index the web page. This tool helps the viewer to search for the page. Another tool involves telephoning after viewing a web page. The search engine results can include listings with a telephone icon. When the serious viewer clicks on the icon, he can then speak to the merchant.

Advertising tools can be a vital part of a company branding solution.

(1-Hit, n.d.)

1.2.7 Market segmentation

The market segmentation concept is crucial to market assessment and market strategy. Divide the market into workable market segments — age, income, product type, geography, buying patterns, customer needs, or other classifications. Define your terms, and define your market.

Segmentation can make a huge difference in understanding your market. For example, when a local computer store business defines its customer segments as “high-end home office” and “high-technology small business,” its segmentation says a lot about its customers. The segmentation helps the company plan focus on the different types of potential customers. (Berry 1999)

Market segmentation allows businesses to gear their marketing efforts toward consumers who would most benefit from their products and services. As a result, they won’t waste time and precious marketing dollars on those who would have no interest. For example, if a company’s product appeals to teenagers, it could advertise on a radio station that plays contemporary music.

An effective way to determine a target market segment is to perform marketing research. Marketing research uses methods such as surveys and interviews of potential users of a product to see if it meets their needs. Marketing research considers factors such as demographics, which includes categories such as age, gender and income level and psychographics, which examines social and cultural factors that influence consumer purchasing.

Target market segmentation allows a company to differentiate itself from its competitors and carve out a niche. For example, if research indicates that a product appeals to those between the ages of 25 and 34 and no one else has targeted that market with a similar product, the company can capture this segment of the market.

When determining your target market, you may have to make adjustments along the way. For example, if your target market is too small, you may have to expand your marketing efforts to reach more potential customers. Likewise, if your target market is outside of your geographic area, you’ll have to decide if the cost of expansion is feasible.

Their level of importance can break down target markets. A primary market contains the most likely or frequent users of a product, so most of the marketing efforts should be targeted to it. A secondary market contains individuals who have some use for a product, and a tertiary market could be defined as those who make use of a product occasionally. (Joseph 2010)

1.2.8 Targeting Success

Truly successful targeting of offers and services addresses the needs of the prospective customer and delivers an offer that speaks from the organization’s strength. The key to achieving success in targeting offers and services is also dependent on its application as part of a cohesive market strategy, thorough segment-by segment plans, marketing activity of sufficient scale, and a measurement process.

Once the firm has chosen its target market segments it must choose a competitive strategy and examine it across target segments. In some cases it might become apparent that a counter segmentation or umbrella strategy is applicable. In most cases, however, the development of distinct mixes for each segment is necessary. According to marketing author Philip Kotler the only sustainable generic strategy in a segmented market is differentiation. He explains that the only other generic competitive strategy alternative (low cost) is not sustainable in a segmented market. This is even more the case in the association and content delivery arena where free resources are abundant. In addition, a successful differentiation strategy must generate customer value, provide perceived value, and be difficult to copy. (Restrepo 2006)

Having clear marketing objectives for each segment is critical to success. The articulation of the specific offers along with their timing, sequence, and packaging needs to be developed through an integrated marketing approach. When developing the mix it is common to find that segmented approaches are not pursued with sufficient effort, as building adequate resources for each targeted segment and doing so across channels and media is necessary. The key steps are:

Articulate your marketing objectives for each segment.

Define your communications and positioning objectives.

Develop a marketing mix specific to the segment.

Develop a tactical plan that is integrated with overall efforts and is scaled to make an impact in the market segment.2 The Research Problem and Scope of Study

2 The Research Problem and Scope of Study

2.1 Company’s Profile

Papa John’s Pizza is a well-established international franchise restaurant chain from USA and it is the third largest pizza company in the world.

Berjaya Pizza Company Sdn. Bhd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Berjaya Corporation, has signed a franchise agreement with Papa John’s International Inc, to develop and operate Papa John’s restaurants in Malaysia. Berjaya Pizza Company was also granted the first right of refusal for the potential expansion of franchise business to Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. (Papa John’s Pizza 2009)

According to Berjaya Corporation Berhad, currently, there are more than 3,200 Papa John’s restaurants worldwide including 171 restaurants in Asia and other 29 International Countries. Such countries include China, Korea, India, and the Middle East. The very first outlet was opened in Indiana United States back in 1985. A more detailed Papa John’s achievement milestones are available in Appendix A.

Papa John’s success is built on the commitment to ‘Better Ingredients, Better Pizza’. They keep the focus on ‘The Main Thing’ and will consistently deliver a traditional Papa John’s superior-quality pizza. Papa John’s also bring customer satisfaction into one main body – to be consistent, quantifiable, and demonstrable. At Papa John’s, they expect excellence in everything they do.

According to Papa John’s website, P.A.P.A. means People Are Priority Always. Papa John’s Pizza depends upon their ability, as a team, to work together to achieve their goals and expectations.

Their brand personality is friendliness, international branding, Award winning, quality, trustworthy, and casual. With such personalities, Papa John’s Pizza has favoured food, job centre that encourages employees who are seeking for career advancement plan as well as those who are searching for job opportunities. They also offer delivery services, coupons, and other promotional codes.

2.2 Research Problem

Papa John’s Pizza creates a unique, high quality position within the pizza category. However, in Malaysia market where there are strong market leaders; Papa John’s faces challenges to carve out an elevated position, which differentiates themselves with the high quality products and fresh ingredient story.

The target market of Papa John’s Pizza consists mainly of families – parents with kids; children to teenagers, young to working adults, for example college students and executive; or those with middle upper class income between the age of twenty-two and thirty-three.

Despite the better tasting pizza with fresh ingredients, for examples, dough that are imported and not frozen, 100 per cent mozzarella cheese, etc, however there are only six outlets in Malaysia at the moment. They are located in Berjaya Times Square, Puchong IOI Mall, Klang AEON Bukit Tinggi, Sunway Pyramid Oasis Boulevard, AEON Bandaraya Melaka, and Aeon Mahkota Cheras.

Therefore, there is a low or weak awareness of its existence especially to consumers who are not within the trade zone which then lead to low economies of scale. It is understood that location is very crucial for every business. Throughout the shopping malls in Malaysia, Papa John’s Pizza is found only in two of the more popular shopping malls – Sunway Pyramid and Berjaya Times Square. Hence, less awareness among the public, also perceived as hazy image by the public.

The other main problem or difficulty faced by Papa John’s Pizza is competition. Thekey competitors of Papa John’s Pizza are Pizza Hut and Domino’s. Pizza Hut offers localized taste with many variants throughout the year and promises hot and fresh pizza upon delivery whereas Domino’s are experts in delivery service where delivery is guaranteed to arrive within thirty minutes; they are also very strong in terms of promotional pricing.

As mentioned earlier, promotion plays an important role to market businesses’ product, service, or ideas to consumers. In comparison with these key competitors, Papa John’s Pizza has low advertising support and there has been a lack of promotions. In addition, delivery services are available at limited trade areas only. Therefore, Papa John’s Pizza tends to lose out to competitors.

Papa John’s Pizza suffers from weak store branding. Although Papa John’s Pizza outlets own desired image that are warm, family, and wholesome, however they are rather unspectacular and retro vis-à-vis Pizza Hut’s.

3 Research Questions

What is the general perception towards Papa John’s?

What are the factors that caused Papa John’s to lose out to competitors?

Which advertising methods would be appropriate for Papa John’s current situation?

What is the awareness level of Papa John in Malaysia market?

How does awareness affect Papa John?

4 Research Objectives

Our objective to have this research firstly was to investigate the brand image of Papa John’s brought towards Malaysia consumers. We wanted to know what consumers think about Papa John’s and the preferences between Papa John’s and their competitors.

Secondly, we wanted to find out the factors that caused Papa John’s to lose out to competitors. We wanted to know consumers’ satisfaction towards Papa John’s food and environment. We also wanted to determine whether locations of Papa John’s are a factor.

Thirdly, we wanted to determine the appropriate advertising methods for Papa John’s current situation. We wanted to know which advertising methods can increase Papa John’s awareness and boost up their sales.

Fourth, we wanted to study the advertising & promotional campaign of Papa John’s in Malaysia. We needed to know their current campaign and its effectiveness then improve and increase the advertising & promotional campaign to increase sales.

Last but not least, we wanted to determine the effect of awareness to Papa John’s. We will compare Papa John’s and their competitors about awareness then study the importance of awareness and how to increase awareness effectively.

5 Significance of Study

The proposal therefore, was to determine the awareness level of Papa John’s in Malaysia. Awareness can be created by advertising & promotional campaign. The scope of study will be limited to teenagers between the ages of 18 to 28 years old in Klang Valley. This group of teenagers is potential customers of Papa John’s. They are also the future consumers who Papa John’s should focus on creating awareness. The reason why we chose Klang Valley for this research was because Papa John’s have only 6 outlets, in which 5 of them are located in Klang Valley.

The significance of this research study was to observe the advertising & promotional campaign and to study the effect it brings to Papa John, and to find out the level of awareness of Papa John in Malaysia. Then, investigate the reasons (factors), in cases where should there be more advertising & promotional campaign and what would be the appropriate advertising methods for Papa John’s current situation for building a stronger brand image of Papa John’s. Most importantly to find out the specialty of Papa John’s and differentiate them from their competitors. Last but not least, we were to determine the factors Papa John’s lose out to competitors such as Pizza Hut, Domino, etc, in term of location, food, awareness or environment.

6 Methodology

6.1 Location and Unit Analysis of the Research Problem

The location of study was conducted in the Klang Valley region only. The reason to our focused decision solely on Klang Valley was because of the majority of Papa John’s outlets being in this area. Specifically, the survey was conducted in Brickfields Asia College in Kuala Lumpur. According to Papa John’s website (2009), there are 6 outlets in Malaysia, 5 being in the region of Klang Valley and 2 more outlets opening soon. Since there is only 1 outlet located outside of Klang Valley, analyzing the awareness may lead to an inappropriate result. Hence, focusing specifically in the area where this franchising firm has ventured.

The unit analysis consisted of the objects that had been studied and analyzed for a justification of the subject matter. (Research Methods 2006) In this case, the unit analyses were students as well as young working adults; particularly between the age of 18 – 28 years old and about 40 respondents to the primary research. These would be the prospective respondents to the questionnaires.

6.2 Sampling Frames and Techniques Applied

Basic methods of sampling are such as:

Random sampling;

Systematic sampling;

Stratified sampling; and

Cluster sampling.

Since Papa John’s focused mainly in Klang Valley, all the respondents were from that area itself as the form of the cluster sampling method. However, among the students as well as young working adults, non-random sampling was chosen and executed as a form of sampling method for this research study. Cluster sampling method was chosen because we would be focusing directly in a specific area with fixed age. (Bluman 2009) Lastly, cluster sampling would be executed among anyone of the unit analysis, in this case, 40 respondents of students and young working adults from the age of 18 -28 years old, half of which is under employment and half non-working.

6.3 Research Instrument Structure and Pre-testing

According to Designing and Integrating Original Research (2010), before deciding how should your research instrument be or be structured, we must know which mode of research instrument is to be used for effectively receiving information from the respondents. A few basic modes are: print and web questionnaire and personal questioning or interview.

Since this is a short research regards to awareness of Papa John’s in a specified area, the research instrument that was used is a combination of a print questionnaire dominating along with a few interview questions to receive respondent’s opinion.

The questionnaire was structured:

Section A – the demographics of the respondent (eg. Race, gender, income group). This section identifies the basic factors that may distinguish the difference of conclusion among unit analysis. 7 demographic questions asked.

Section B – this section focuses directly on the research problem, which is the poor awareness of Papa John’s along with its causes and effects associated with. About 20 questions asked.

Section C – 3 interview questions to receive opinions regard to solutions and effective advertising that may enhance its awareness in the society.

Section A and B were close-ended question where fixed responses were provided for respondents to choose from. Whereas for Section C, open-ended questions were given to obtain the respondents’ suggestions regarding the research issue.

Before practically doing these surveys, pre-testing was carried out once to ensure the justification and clarification of questions and feedbacks of the questionnaire. The pre-testing was carried out among colleagues and course mates as well as lecturers. This enabled feedback to be constructive since pre-testing would be done with those who have had experience with research works.

6.4 Research Data Collection Approach

Data was collected though the questionnaires as well as a few interview questions, as mentioned above. It took roughly 14 days after the approval of the proposal to execute the research work. The objective was to have 40 respondents to this questionnaire.

The approach was to personally hand in the hardcopy of the questionnaire to the unit analysis and asked them the few interview questions at Section C of the questionnaire. This approach as means that it was a combination of two methods: drop and pick-up as well as interview. As mentioned, interviewing technique covered Section C, the drop and pick-up covered the rest of the data collection approach.

6.5 Analyzing Finalized Data to make Conclusion on Research Problem

At last, data of the study were analyzed to make a conclusion regarding the issues facing. Data obtained were used to perform certain statistical formulas to achieve results such as, in this case: differences between unit analyses of awareness exposure, location factor, the frequency of distribution and percentages of advertising respondents that have consumed Papa John’s, etc.

These results would be formed into a graph, bar, pie chart or any other form of chart that would be relevant and useful to present this information during the formal presentation after the approval of proposal. Hence, after these data were presented in an organized and critical view, a conclusion can be made on the subject matter of Papa John’s as well as recommended opinions by researches and unit analysis. Thus as Bluman (2009) mentioned, by using data, you can conduct and conclude a study by collecting, organizing, summarizing, analyzing and drawing a conclusion on.