Question

What's Tim Horton's branding direction?

Answer 1

The quick-service restaurant is a highly competitive market, in which Tim Hortons leads the market in Canada. Tim Hortons has maintained a leadership position in the breakfas daypart and late night snacking market, but has been experiencing less than desirable sales in regards to their lunch time daypart menu, falling second to their key competitor, McDonalds. Tim Hortons has developed a new lunch time product, pre-packaged salads, which is meant to meet the demands of the health conscious psychographics and gain a competitive advantage in the lunchtime market. By doing this, Tim Hortons will lead in each of the four dayparts. In order for Tim Hortons to achieve this goal, small and large pre-packaged salads will be available at all locations across Canada.Tim Hortons has several organizational challenges they are faced with, including maintaining their dominant presence in the Canadian market, competition in the QSR market, and the challenges associated with expansion into the US. Tim Hortons will focus on growing their lunchtime daypart share, expand into new markets, and provide new products for potential, and current customers. With the combination of the growing trends, Tim Hortons can effectively maintain their dominant presence, and brand recognition in Canada, while continuing to use their strong brand name to become a leading competitor in the American market.

Tim Hortons overall mission and vision is to be a leader in everything they do.This includes providing superior quality, products, and services to all of their stakeholders, including consumers, communities, partners, and employees. Tim Hortons corporate goals moving in the near future include attacking the daypart segment, investing to grow the brand in new and existing markets, and leveraging core business strengths. They currently use a growth objective in that they are always looking to be leaders in the market, and thus are always looking to grow their market share. Tim Hortons mass markets across all demographics, psychographics, and geographic locations across Canada. They do this because of the low price, convenient products they offer. To be more specific, however, their demographics can be broken down per percentage of sales. This includes 18% ages 25-34, 20% ages 35-44 and 18% 45-54. Further, studies have found that Generation Y and Generation X demographics tend to spend more money per meal at quick-serve restaurants. The target psychographic are from a smaller household and empty nesters, as When an individual they will typically spend more money per visit than those from a larger household. Tim Hortons is faced with several key risk and success factors, which can have a lasting effect on their overall success. The most dictating risk factor in regards to Tim Hortons is their dependence on the Canadian QSR market performance. Because they are not fully integrated into other markets internationally, and rely on Canadian profit, if the Canadian economy went into a recession, Tim Hortons would face extreme difficulties to regain their market presence. The QSR market is highly competitive and thus if a promotion does not go as planned, it can result in the loss of customer’s. Another major risk factor is the unpredictability of the food market in terms of safety. If a Tim Hortons supplier provides a product, which has, per se, E.Coli, the consequences can be extremely severe, and can provide a large backlash on Tim Hortons operations. The target market to be used for the implementation of this marketing plan, and the end consumer of the new product being implemented is:15-65 year old male and females. Specifically baby boomers because as age increases metabolism slows down making weight control harder.Currently living a healthy lifestyle or interested in living a healthy lifestyle Students or employed workers who are stretched for time and need a quick solution to their meal.