Question

Basket of Goodies is positioning itself as an upscale manufacturer of gourmet gift baskets through the introduction of several production baskets as well as custom options. BOG will achieve this positioning by leveraging their competitive advantages. The competitive advantage is based on two factors, low overhead which supports reasonable prices, and an unrelenting desire for the highest quality product and service. 1. Overhead- BOG's overhead is particularly low because it is a home based business. Most of BOG's competition is based in retail shopping areas. While they receive more walk by traffic and therefore higher sales numbers, their rent is a very large monthly expense. BOG avoids this large expense by having the business run out of owner Susan Presento's home. Additionally, Susan will be using a modified version of JIT (just in time) inventory and assembling. Susan's husband passes by 90% of Susan's vendors on his way home from work so Susan is able to order inventory when she needs it and have her husband pick it up on the way home from work. This significantly lowers shipping costs and carrying costs for The Basket of Goodies Page 8 inventory. BOG will have some of the standard baskets in stock for walk by orders, but will try not to have large amounts in overhead. 2. Unrelenting desire for the highest quality product and service- Let's face it, this market space is already crowded and a mediocre gift basket service is not going to fly, so Basket of Goodies must have some sort of differentiating feature that lets it stand out. Susan only uses the finest quality ingredients and can afford to because of her low overhead. Additionally, she always follows the maxim that the customer must be 100% satisfied. That means she is willing to loose money on an occassional order, if necessary, to please a customer, confident that in the long run this is a wise business decision. 3.6 Strategies The single objective is to position Basket of Goodies as a manufacturer of unique, attractive, gourmet gift baskets for individuals as well as corporate customers. The marketing strategy will seek to create customer awareness regarding the product offerings, develop the customer base, and work toward building customer loyalty and referrals that will significantly decrease customer acquisition costs. BOG will seek to communicate the message that they offer a higher quality, gourmet alternative for gift baskets relative to the baskets currently available. This message will be communicated through various methods, tailored to each target market. The first method will be the use of a Website. The Website will have product information, company information, as well as ordering information and order taking. The site will be useful to both targeted groups, individuals as well as corporate customers. The second method will be brochures, primarily marketing to individuals. These brochures will be dispersed through many different sources. The last method of communication is networking and it is primarily for the corporate customer. Before founding Basket of Goodies Susan worked within the Human Resource Department of several larger corporations and has developed a large list of contacts. Susan will leverage these personal/professional relationships to generate business for BOG. Since she has worked within the HR departments before, she is quite familiar with the buying habits and decision making processes; key knowledge for generating corporate sales.

Question How do they communicate the position of their product?

Answer 1

At first they BOG understood to specifically capture the target audience and serve them as per their needs. Its target group are both individual and corporates. Communication is very important in order to enlighten its existance to the customers. Hence the following are the ways in which BOG looks forward to channelise its communication about the company and its products-

1. Website - by the way of websites, it will target both the individuals and corporate. It will have information on the company and its products. Also it will have clearly mentioned ways on how to order a product. It is a good initiative to launch a website as a huge population is spending their time on internet hence it can help to attract all those unknown people who are not at all famalier with the company.

2. Brochure- with the help of brochure it will establish its communication with the individual customers. Brochure is a type of paper document which can be used to spread information specially to the local people where the BOG is running from.

3. Networking- it is basically undertaken to let corporates know about the company's existance. With the help of networking, it will help BOG to market its products wherein networking will help to build rapport.