Free Custom «Promotional Assessment» Essay Paper

Bull Ring Birmingham is a middle age female market with two shopping centers based in the U.K. It has a history of successful running since the year 1154 to 2003 when the management styled it as one word to call it Bullring. Due to the several political events that took place in the city of Birmingham, the market gained its publicity and popularity hence making the sales to go higher by 30%. Its location on the sandstone city ridge makes it a major tourist attraction agent for the city.

Target Market Profile

This way, all who come to tour can visit the market and purchase goods in it. Several department stores make it efficient in customer satisfaction in terms of purchase times and meeting objectives set for the sales targets. In addition to this, the church located at the entrance of the market makes it a target location of visit for families. Residential neighborhoods build up to 80% of middle class families who find the market products affordable. For this reason, the center is a huge success, which attracts customers from neighboring cities and worldwide. The successful management of the center is a motivation element for a customer that maintains its market position. Due to publicity and market position, Bullring consumes many media services because it has to keep customers updated on the new offers and products (Ohly, 2000, p. 419-524).

Product Differential

The market is efficient because it caters for customers from all categories such as families, women, children and religious leaders, making it relevant to consumer needs and market demands. Bullring holding the largest share in the market is an attributed fact to consumer’s identification with the product. It gives an impression of something strong, efficient and huge. The market is associated with middle-aged individuals, which makes a massive percentage of residents. To most consumers, a unique and brilliant product is an icon with an outlaw appeal. The consumer-brand relationship is relevant because of the lasting heritage of the market, which contributes to customer loyalty and trust over the years (Ohly, 2000, p. 419-524).

‘Above the line’ Advertising Media

Bullring is a public target area for consumers, investors, meaning it consume many media services to ensure investors, and consumers stay updated with the market value and new ideas. Several media services are efficient in advertising Bullring. For example, the management could use comparative advertising and celebrities to advertise their products. Comparative advertising is a form of advertising where products or services mention specific competitors and convince consumers and investors why the competitor should be inferior to it. In comparative advertising, direct reference to the competitor’s brand name is in the adverts. It encourages more competitions in the markets, which many companies do not dominate. For example, in Bullring’s comparison to other market venues or products, it would state a clear difference between the two products in terms of performance and productivity (Ohly, 2000, p. 419-524).

In this comparison, it will state clearly that using Bullring is far much better and convenient than using other products because it has many beneficial offers and features that upgrade the shopping experience of consumers. The elements of the comparative advertising such as dialogue, music and tone are crucial to the success of the campaign. This is because consumers and investors have different preferences in choosing which products and services to settle for. While Comparative advertising has advantages that give products a better position in the market, it also has limitations that may hinder product growth in the market and diminish its importance. For example, a product using comparative advertising needs to ensure that it reaches a wider market and that it has unique and new offers. This way, consumers are attracted to it. Once it owns the heart of consumers, it has a promising market position (Shuibhne, 2006, p. 112-127).

On the other hand, if a product or service is limiting consumers yet it uses comparative advertising, it could lose its market reputation and value. This is because once it chooses a competitor, it should ensure it works extremely hard to stay on top or it loses its position. In addition to this, comparative advertising is extremely expensive and so any company has to ensure it makes good sales that make returns. Secondly, using celebrities to advertise products and services is an effective means of marketing. Consumers at times are in a habit of assigning personality qualities to products. Consumer- brand relationship depends on the experiences that a consumer has lived through. Some consumers do not purchase products just because they like them, or their efficiency in working but simply due to the relationship and meanings, the brands add to their lives. These could be utilitarian, emotional, psychological or functional meaning (Shuibhne, 2006, p. 112-127).

Product or service personality can work well, and last longer durations to develop connections between consumers, investors and products or services. Choosing a celebrity or model with strong links and public personality that rhyme with products or service specifications is essential. Advertisements are repetitive, meaning Consumers need to identify a common connection between the celebrity and the brand. This is because people have better identity with a product when a certain celebrity identifies with it. Some people use or do not use products depending on whom the brand is associated. Person associations evoke an important and critical opinion in the consumers’ minds. While celebrity advertising is very effective, it has limitations such as a poor choice of celebrity could lead to poor sales and loss of consumer trust and loyalty. People will prefer celebrities with recommendable reputation and influence, when the celebrity chosen does not measure up to the consumer set standards, then the product will not either. In addition to this, some celebrities have expensive demands that if not met could destroy the product reputation (Fournier, 1998, p. 343-72).

‘Below the line’ Promotional media

While advertising may draw customers to certain products, it is not enough for successful customer service. Bullring still needs to use promotional media to win over its customers. This way their loyalty does not change whenever other companies offer new products. Promotional media could also be similar to advertising media such as music, tone or dialogue, but it uses different methods. For example, occasionally Bullring could give free samples of their products for new investors and consumers. It could also develop new products that vary with an age difference such that the elderly will also have a reason to visit the venue. In view of raising Bullring sales and popularity, there has to be an appealing offer that draws buyers from outsides the city and U.K. Bullring need to identify products that appeal to a wider range of consumers, not only to the middle aged (Fournier, 1998, p. 343-72).

At the same time, it should be careful not to lose its image. Middle aged individuals account for 40% while children account for 30%. For this reason, extending a product to this group could boost the company’s total sales and help in raising its dominance in the business industry. In addition to this, Bullring can give free samples to consumers to help promote their products such that consumers have the chance to gain confidence in the products before purchasing them. It may be costly but fruitful because consumers will prefer these products on their own. This move on one hand will create a deeper emotional connection between consumers and the company’s products, services and experiences. It would represent an aspect of milestones made in the business history of creating products that satisfy customers. Bullring has a huge success in middle-aged products, a thing that might affect the introduction of new products for the elderly. However, Bullring will not only focus on the new range of products but also new ideas for the middle aged. This way, older customers will not feel neglected in their needs for change. Apart from targeting the elderly population, the company also aims at developing products to expand its customer base of the enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic middle-aged.  In this way, the company will cater for needs of all niches and demographic cohorts (Fournier, 1998, p. 343-72).

Public Relations Promotional Techniques

The practice of managing a good and effective flow of information between organizations/individuals and the public is public relation.  Public relation gives individuals/organizations a massive exposure to their audiences using interesting topics and news items that require no direct payment. The main aim of public relations in any given company is to persuade the employees, public, partners, stakeholders and investors to insist a specific point of view about that company, its product, leadership or political decisions. On the case of advertisement, the public relation person has to interact with the media such as television owners, newspapers, and radio or magazine companies. This is to help them reach most of their customers or investors. Public relations play a major role in promoting products and services because it is the voice of the company. It also develops management, marketing and sales strategies that determine the future of products. Public relations promotional techniques include strategic marketing and performance assessment in employees and customer care. This is to ensure maximum performance towards the success of the company. Based on the performance of Bullring, it is necessary to introduce a performance management system that will monitor the efforts of employees (Gower, 2007, p. 18).

This way, employees can implement new ideas of improvement to ensure excellent performance that will attract not only investors and consumers but also competitors. This may instil mixed feelings on the products based on consumers’ and employees’ personal judgment or perception of the public relations that may not agree well with the company and its products. It may further bring about the notion of exclusion of the company and its products from classes outside that of the public relations, in turn limiting the market base. Nevertheless, it is vital that the techniques work towards improving product and service quality in terms of consumer perspective. With the public relations techniques, financial improvement is achievable because individuals have different tasks to accomplish. Delegation of challenging tasks with targets is one way of monitoring performance. For example, when an employee has 100 target sales to make, the public relation sector has to offer a motivational element that will drive the employee to make 100 sales (Jacques, 2004, p. 53).

Public relations can set motivational points for employees to meet targets. In other words, public relations way of promotion focuses on employees’ performance and not company performance. A management control system ensures best efforts of employees in bringing in sales. Management in performance creates a difference between being occupied and giving results and focuses every employee on the strategic objectives of the organization to achieve desired results. It also touches every aspect of an organization including internal and external services, products and programs and focuses all the activities carried out on overall results, constantly measuring and feedback given about the results in relation to the strategic goals. Through a management control system, public relations can reach a wider market by assigning several employees to different areas. They can then evaluate performance to help identify other managerial positions for best performers. This way, other employees with poor performance records can get the motivation to work harder. Motivation elements include higher salaries, higher positions and other generous offers the company makes exclusively for employees only (Epstein, 2010, p. 87-99).

Excellent management training should teach management candidate to have strong expectations and desires. Often, business crisis arise when managers are not quite prepared. Either they do not have all the right required resources or their timing is wrong. While performance management is set to raise sales of products, it is also essential that it focus the employees on solving arising problems on the fly, always going with the flow and never falling into a state helplessness. With this, they are able to uncover effective solutions to problems with the tools obtainable. In addition to this, employees obtain leadership skills and concepts that cause them to be responsible and accountable for the company and product reputation. The employees’ ability to apply instructions, techniques and frameworks involving the procedure, realization and proposed measurement of performance determines the achievement of management concepts. The extent to which public relations align principles will tell the value of overall performance in employees in terms of promoting products. In addition, it is extremely beneficial to the company when during such projects; public relations incorporate many other principles to suggest better performance for new members. This way, products will maintain their value with every new inventions and market competition (Garland, 2010, p. 45-56).

Design Analysis

The design should be unique and of various materials that will cater for consumer preferences. Many consumers will buy products not because they like it or prefer it to another product, but because of the emotional attachment, they have with the product. Consumer-product attachment may be of the essence in identifying what kind of products and services would best suit consumers and the potential market. The company can implement this by encouraging customer feedback regarding the outcome of the product use. Investors and consumers prefer to use new inventions or ideas to communicate in an effective way to other competitors, and a massive number of people at the same time yet consume fewer resources and time. Various options for consumer preferences offer them the freedom and flexibility to access products and services whenever they want. Implementation of new products and ideas give the design the uniqueness it deserves and consumers want (Stratton, 2005, p. 23-45).

This way, it will be easier for investors and consumers to put their investments in growing companies who have potential to grow and produce new unique and high quality products. The future of investors remains secured with promising results because every investor needs to see returns on the worth of their money. Consumers on the other hand need to spend their money on quality products that are durable. Bullring design elements are strong because they have the potential to attract consumers and investors from all over the world. The designs also attract business people who desire to gain the skills and knowledge of making similar products. Through various ideas from investors and consumers, people have the knowledge of Bullring products, which makes it popular. In addition to this, Consumers all over the world managed to identify new skills and ideas that promoted growth for small-scale business people. The overall design of Bullring products is not just effective because of the high sales but also because of the positive influence, it has on investors, consumers and business people from other countries.  The appraisal system compensation to employees and consumers determines the success of Bullring. The employees regard the importance of their development and empowerment, new job techniques through training, and equity of compensation where as consumers regard the importance of their satisfaction in terms of service and product providing (Weygandt, Kieso, 2007, p. 14-21).

For this reason, Bullring stands out as one of the best producing markets with a recommendable market and financial reputation in the world. It also has a preferred system of marketing that causes many other companies to consult with its management for crucial business decisions regarding sales and investments. It’s productivity remains a special feature that sets its high standards in the face of business challenges. For example, competition in the market, poor quality products, which cause poor sales records and loss of consumer trust. Through unique and different offers, Bullring is able to reach the demands of the market as well as satisfy customers. The good reputation of Bullring also contributed to a high note threshold that increased online purchasing of products and services (Theodore, 2003, p. 133-138)

In conclusion, Bullring is a huge successful business with a notable market value. In order to maintain its position in the market, it has to develop effective and acceptable marketing strategies. Comparative advertising among many others may help improve the financial position and market value but if not properly implemented, it may lead Bullring to lose its market value, position and chances of growth. Through unique and different offers, Bullring is able to reach the demands of the market as well as satisfy customers. Bullring is a promising opportunity for business owners, which is growing at a high rate. For it to continue accelerating, people in developing countries that are not, aware of it should get information so that they consider trying something similar. This will keep the threshold on a high note, and this will not only increase online exchange but also bring competition and knowledge to many investors and consumers.