A Comparative Market Analysis of 2 Milkshake Products

Executive Summary

Our advertising product of choice is the cinnamon roll hot chocolate, and the alternative is the cinnamon roll hot chocolate milkshake. The hot version contains- vanilla, cocoa powder, milk, homemade whipped cream, a sample of a homemade cinnamon bun. The cold/ milkshake version contains the same ingredients but with the choice of a scoop of chocolate, or vanilla ice cream to blend. The size offerings include 12oz and 16oz cups.

The Situation Analysis

Strengths:

Our product compliments convenience by offering the nostalgic taste of hot chocolate all year round. Also, the cinnamon roll hot chocolate is beneficial for non- coffee drinkers to enjoy a tasty and less caffeinated beverage. Another strength is the wide alternatives to consider for warm and cold seasons. Another strength our product is food allergy and digestive sensitive, including gluten free, sugar substitutes, dairy free milk, which makes the product vegan friendly.

Weaknesses:

Our product include the challenge to maintain sales out of hot chocolates customary season. Another is to reach the people in our target market but sometimes can be out of reach. For example, kids and young adults are usually not independently buying a product on their own, or just may not have the money to spend. The industry and competition plays a vital role on how well and strong our marketing plan can stand. The way we can maintain control of this is through patrolling the opportunities and threats of our product.

Opportunities:

This is offered through our products unique style. For example, we offer a hot chocolate basket, which can be a clever gift option for the holidays. The homemade ingredients can influence higher potential in customer sales. Another is the milkshake option can maintain sales even off-season times. Lastly, we will appeal to our audience with more options compared to the basic hot chocolate.

Threats:

The downside is the threats that all businesses unfortunately face. One is the competing food service stores that sell specialty drinks, which may include, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and Wawa. These are all booming businesses that offer similar options, but will not remain a threat if our product embraces uniqueness. Allergies to various ingredients, is one the main threats a company can face. One way to avoid this is to have a sign featuring the ingredients in our product. This will inform the customers and in return they will need to confirm if they have any allergies in the recipe. Without knowing the customers needs we will not fully satisfy our product.

Target Markets

The target market of our product will pull specific groups of people including college students, parents and children, work commuters. The product can be sold in colleges and appeal to college students who normally don’t have hot chocolate in their school cafés. Another is parents and children sometimes children go with their parents to run errands, which increases the chance of stopping at a local café. Then there’s the bribery appeal of course. All it takes is the copy art of the hot chocolate advertisement to urge children to ask their parents for the sugary flavorful looking beverage. Parents will even sometimes want one individually; after all aren’t we all allowed to give in to our cravings every now and then. Lastly, work commuters on their way to work looking for a pick me upper to start the day. One thing to keep into consideration is not all people chose coffee as their mood booster. Therefore, hot chocolate can be the perfect way to start the day off right for this particular group of people.

4.)Objectives

The objectives of the marketing plan will be informing customers to persuade, and remind. Our cinnamon roll hot chocolate has a creamy vanilla chocolate base with a cinnamon rush flavor topped off with homemade whipped cream sprinkled with cinnamon candy for garnish, and a cinnamon roll sample. The alternative is the cinnamon roll hot chocolate milkshake, which has your choice of ice cream vanilla, or chocolate with our homemade chocolate mix, and cinnamon roll sample. Most importantly, our persuasion method of our hot chocolate recipe will cater to anyone lactose intolerance, or allergy of some sort. Also we will serve gluten free cinnamon rolls but limited for budgeting reasons and lack of popularity in sales. Another persuasion method we will use is to offer an additive powder of vitamin C, D, zinc, and iron to the mix. This leaves a healthier alternative for children who want to convince their parents that the sugary drink is not so bad after all. Also, adults looking for healthier alternatives will benefit.

Marketing Mix

The Marketing Mix of our product specializes in Cinnamon roll hot chocolate for non- coffee drinkers. The price we came up with is by comparing other food service competitor stores comes to a comfortable medium of a total of …for these sizes. Next we will promote our hot chocolate by having customer appreciation week, one week out of the months of (April- July). This will include a happy hour half off the original price from 4- 6pm.This will raise our sales during off-season for hot chocolate. Another way to promote is through the holidays by having a hot chocolate gift basket raffle. The place we choose to market our product has everything to do with location. Therefore, our product will be found in Corner cafés/ in major cities, college cafes, and high school lunch stores.

Intended Role of advertising in the communications mix

The intended role in the communications mix is to do advertising through digital and social media. We will send out emails to local areas about the new product, make a web page on facebook to advertise, post a video for a more visual ad. Give out samples in local café, school cafes/ stores. Give out coupons to attract our target market to start off beginning sales; sponsor at seasonal festivals- rent a stand/vendor to give out samples.

Our advertising creative strategy will start off with the positioning of our product which will provide service identification through the promise of a gourmet tasting beverage, made the way the customer wants it every time. The main message we will advertise is customer satisfaction. If the drink does not satisfy the customer we are more than happy to remake it. A jingle we came up with that can portray our product well is “We're not just cinnamon hot chocolate were on a roll all season long!” The differentiation of our product is the appeal of using all homemade ingredients and offering healthier alternatives. The wide variety of options will make the cinnamon roll hot chocolate stand out as unique against other hot chocolate competitor cafés. We will take pride in our product by always making our hot chocolate with fresh ingredients. Also, one founder of our product will have culinary/ baking education background. Not to mention, both of us have food service experience. The copy thrust of our product will be communicated through a festive seasonal visual advertisement, color correlated and descriptive to draw the target market in through nostalgic appeal. For example, we will use a heartfelt message, and use real people to advertise our beverage in the copy art. We will be sure to portray and design the message upon whichever season we are in this way the emotional appeal will reach the customer.

Our Communication Media will be located through these sources, the Internet- by having a product website. The product website will make our product official and give the ingredients credibility before it can be spin doctored through social media, although social media is still an efficient communication tool, with popular sites like facebook, and instagram. Our generation is continuing to innovate ways for business to advertise products through social media communication. We will also use the radio during lunch and breakfast hours, that way we can lure in the hungry folks. We will keep budgeting into consideration for our product, since advertising is costly.

We will be advertising our message by luring in the customers with messages reminding to the weather temperature, and proper weather attire. This will draw the customer’s attention to the product because it will suit the season, which is relatable to everyone living in the same climate area. For, example, we gave an interview on our product at south street Philly bagels, which is one of us are currently employed there. Through this opportunity we got personal feedback, the results were mainly positive, the only concern was how we're going to advertise the image of the product to make the beverage look more appealing. Otherwise, the taste of the cinnamon roll hot chocolate results were said to be delicious and considered a hit in the flavoring aspect.

In order to consider, the financial data we compared prices to food service stores that specialize in similar products. We decided on Wawa and Montgomery county community college café. The total we hope to collect in sales is determined through placing our pricing decisions in the middle of the two food service stores. The prices we came up with for our budget is compared to this table chart pricing. Our allocation will have the portion size of 12 oz small costing $2.00 and 16 oz, medium costing $2.75 and $3.00 20oz large. Also the price for the cinnamon roll is $2.25. One way to maintain sales rapidly is through pricing and sizes being reasonably close in price differences. This will most likely improve the chances for customers to order larger sizes and have a lower price, but decent quality in product to compare too.

Evaluation and Control will be determined through interviewing co-workers, in the food service places we work in now, sampling our product to customers, running coupons to advertise the control of the marketing plan goal. Our goal will be to reach a certain amount of sales and measure the customer satisfaction.

Overall the evaluation of our marketing plan will be looked over to see if we obtained the data, and examine whether or not our product achieved its strategy objectives. Therefore, we can determine if our plan is running sufficiently, and if not we can alter the objectives for a more efficient future plan.

The contingency plan will be to continue to display awareness of the risks and vulnerabilities in marketing programs, which is not in our control. For example, changes in economic conditions, season change, and recession. We will keep track of risks to monitor them closely and get new ideas from other competitive food service stores. Try to top competitor’s special offers by giving customers a better alternative. We will maintain the volume of sales through methods such as, coupons, liability, and consistency in product. The coupons will be for loyal customers, after a total of 12 sales we will give a coupon for half off beverage the beverage. This method of couponing will stabilize the sales without a dramatic decrease.