Question

Sales for Outback Steakhouse has significantly decreased due to fierce competition and new healthy well-being lifestyle trends. As the marketing director, you were asked to re-position the brand. How can Outback Steakhouse differentiate itself within the emerging health trends?

1) List your ideas in the following attributes: a) physical attributes, b) service, c) personnel, d) location, e) image (list at least 1 example for each component). (10 points)

2) Indicate what type of new promotion-mix strategies you would implement (list at least 1 example for each promotion tool). (10 points)

3) Finally, re-design the pricing strategy for Outback Steakhouse (list at least 1 example). (5 points)

Answer 1

Answer:

Question 1:

1. Promote "healthier" eating, provide vegan food, or change brand image into cleaner and healthier food for people who like to be fit
2. Provide faster and efficient service, maybe give student discounts or corporate discounts to attract more people. You can even give happy hour offers, to engage more people to come to your restaurant.
3. Improve communication and engagement between your staff and your visitors. To ensure efficient communication, you can open an online portal or website through which people can make their bookings. People can also call the staff at the restaurant to manage bookings efficiently. In addition, you can even open a takeaway service.
4. The location of the restaurant could be near schools, colleges, malls or theme parks. These are usually prime locations to open a restaurant and to attract people to come and eat. Students would be likely to go to a restaurant that is near their school, to celebrate their birthday, end semester or any other events.
5. You could polish your brand image by also introducing a healthy menu. You can even open up brunch services, where you offer healthy food items like acai bowl or smoothies.

Question 2:
:2) The 5 promotion mix strategy tools that you will need to incorporate are:

1. Advertising - Advertise the new image and message of your brand to reach your audience. You can advertise by doing promotional activities, setting up food stalls at college events.
2. Personal Selling - You could also promote your new menu, or potential ideas by directly communicating to your audience. The staff at your restaurant can promote the brunch services or the healthy additions in the menu, to the audience that comes to eat at your restaurant. This increases the chance of then those people going out and informing their friends and family about the changes made in your restaurant.
3. Sales Promotion - Giving discounts, especially to students or to people on their birthdays increases the chance of people coming to your restaurant.
4. Public Relations - You can also put advertisements in the newspaper about the new changes in your menu. You can also hold a charity event or any event to attract people to come and see your new brand image.
5. Direct Marketing - You must have a record of people who have come and eaten at your restaurant in the past, you can directly text them with a promotional code, inviting them to try out the new additions at your restaurant.

Question 3:

3) You can implement a competition-based pricing strategy, given that you have many competitors. Observe how your competitors are pricing their menu, based on that, you can charge lower or charge the same, to attract more people. You can also implement a customer value-based pricing, where you can give promotional discounts to the regular customers on selected menu items, discounts on birthdays, and student discounts that can be availed within a certain time of the day (maybe for 3 hrs after school ends).