Marketing plan is usually related with the solid marketing strategy adopted by the organizations for attaining specific marketing objectives within a time frame (Luther, 2011). In this current study, a marketing plan would be developed for PG Ice Tea of brand PG Tips of Unilever which is a well-known multilateral firm that deals in number of products. In context to developing marketing plan, environment audit, marketing strategy, STP, marketing tactics and 7Ps would be evaluated so that a strong market could be created for PG Tips. Further, in the study, the marketing customer segmentation strategies would be proposed through synthesizing customer data and market insights. In the later part, systems for monitoring and controlling the proposed action plan would be recommended.
The introduction of PG Ice Tea has been suggested for developing marketing plan as there has been decline in the out of home consumptions of PG tea and increase in coffee consumption in the UK. The demand for fruit, herbal and green teas have become more popular in the UK among the people due to their health benefits. Moreover, the consumption of iced tea has increased (approximately 9%) over the past few years which indicates that the demand for iced tea would increase in increase. Therefore, creating a marketing plan of PG Ice Tea would help PG Tips to build its market in this segment and meeting the demand of the consumers seeking healthy and flavored iced tea.
Demand for regular tea drink has significantly gone down over the years in the UK but it falls behind the sales of coffee. It has been found that tea sales in the UK have dropped by 6% over past five years. The ordinary teabags’ sales have dropped to £425 million in 2014 from £491 million in 2012 due to rise in popularity of coffee consumption. However, the attractiveness of alternative teas such as Tetley and PG Tips has gone stronger with the time. In the year between 2012 and 2014, the sales of herbal or fruit teabags have grown from £58 million to £76 million that is almost by 31% whereas, the sales of specialty have also increased to £63 million (by15%) (Smithers, 2015).
Figure 1: Tea Consumption in the UK
Source: (Davidson, 2015)
It can be seen that there has been significant decline in the consumption of tea. It is also found that customers are going for more exciting hot beverages as per market research firm, Mintel. On the other hand, in spite of decline in tea sales by volume, the value of tea market have dropped less steeply, decreased just 6pc in last five years to £654 million due to rising popularity and advanced prices of novelty varieties. Moreover, the sales of green tea have increased to £36 million. However, as per the Mintel report, the tea market would improve by creating premium products and better innovation which would encourage people to spend more.
Figure 2: Value of Tea Market in the UK
Source: (Davidson, 2015)
It is predicted that the tea market would increase which would be effective for PG Tips to target handsomely the health conscious people. It is known that more people of the UK are becoming more concern about their health (Foot et al. 2014). Therefore, PG Tips would be able to gain advantage from their range of products like green tea, herbal tea, fruit tea and black tea and specifically, PG Ice Tea which is high in health quotient.
Segmentation: It is the marketing strategy which divides the broad target into subsets of businesses, consumers or nations that shares common needs, priorities or interests (Doole and Lowe, 2005). Therefore, the firm design and implement strategies to target them. The market of PG Ice Tea would be considering the market of the UK and people of all ages irrespective of gender and family size. Therefore, both geographical and demographic aspects shall be considered for market segmentation. On the other hand, through psychographic segmentation, the consumers for PG Ice Tea would be divided as per the personality, values, lifestyle and social class (Cant, Strydom and Jooste, 2009). Therefore, the segmentation of market would help the company to reach out to the probable customers and create an attractive market for the people to consume PG Ice Tea.
Targeting: The geographic customers for PG Ice Tea would be the UK and then gradually would be other parts of the country. The product would be targeting all age group irrespective of the gender. However, the consumers that fall under middle and high income class would be taken in account for selling the ice tea. On the other hand, the company would not target consumers suffering from tooth sensitivity issues as ice tea is cold in nature which might further affect the teeth of the people. Therefore, both young and adult people that are health conscious would be targeted for pursuing them to consume the product. Furthermore, the company can target restaurants, hotels and bars for serving the PG Ice Tea to their customers. It can help in increasing the sales of the product and also it could support in the promotion of the product at large (Delre et al. 2007).
Positioning: In order to strongly position the PG Ice Tea in the market, the company would be employing different tools and strategies for promoting the product among the targeted people. In context to that, the product would be advertised through television ads, magazines, newspapers and radio stations (Chan and Fang, 2007). Moreover, the company can also employ public relations, publicity measures, internet and personal selling initiatives for positioning the product in the market (Thackeray, Neiger and Hanson, 2007).
