Bunnings Warehouse Communication Strategy Analysis

This assignment analyzes the communication strategy of Bunnings Warehouse, a home improvement retailer. It identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the strategy, particularly in influencing customers' evaluation of alternatives and purchase decisions. The analysis also recommends alternative promotional tools, such as digital media, to enhance the company's marketing efforts. Furthermore, it suggests that the company should focus on communicating product quality and highlighting post-purchase services to ensure repeat business.

Running head: CONSUMER BEHAVIOURS
Consumer Behaviours: Bunnings Warehouse
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Part 1
Background of the company
Established in 1887, Perth, Australia, Bunnings Warehouse is an organisation that sells
domestic hardware items. The company operates under the parent organisation Wesfarmers since
1994 (Bunnings.com.au, 2018). The company has its operations in Australia and New Zealand.
The product range of the company starts with home improvement and outdoor living items to
being a significant supplier of project builders as well as housing industry (Bunnings.com.au,
2018). The company is a consumer and an employee centric organisation and has explained that
the team members form the “heart and soul” of the organisation. Bunnings warehouse have a
range of store format in which it 253 warehouses, 77 smaller format stores, 33 trade centres and
three frame and truss centres operating across Australia and New Zealand. This helps the
company to cater to a wide range of customers who are form the B2B as well as B2C sectors.
The company earned revenue of around $11.5 billion in 2017. The company also has 40,000
employees as recorded on 30th June 2017 (Bunnings.com.au, 2018).
Target market
Demographic: The company targets people from the age group of 18-55 as they have products
that will cater to the DIY projects as well as industrial construction items. The price of the
products is kept low as the income group of the market is low to medium.
Geographic: Location that is targeted by the organisation is Australia, New Zealand, UK and
Ireland. This is one of the major aspects of the target market as the company is focused on
reaching out to most people who require the service. Though the company has a website where

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there are products listed and the customers can easily buy form but as far as hardware items are
considered most consumers would like to see the item physically and then purchase.
Behavioural: The products are targeted to people who want to construct and create items for
domestic purposes
The segment of the target market that is going to be catered in the assignment is
geographic as it is observed from the company overview that the strategic management plans
apply with the expansion of the business so that the people in various parts of the countries in
which the organisation has its operations can be reached. In order to further expand the
operations of the business in UK and Ireland with the help of merger and acquisition strategies,
Bunnings Warehouse acquired Homebase which is a popular domestic hardware and
improvement organization of United Kingdom and Ireland. The first Bunnings Warehouse store
was established in February 2017 in St Albans. The company also has nine other projects in the
pipeline. By the end of 2017 there were 15 Bunnings Warehouses and 234 Homebase stores
working throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company has around 12,000
employees in this area (Bunnings.com.au, 2018).
Communication strategy overview
Advertising: Out of home advertising is used with the help of billboards and digital billboard, the
company also uses print medium to communicate with the people in the form of newspaper
advertising, brochures, etc. Apart from this the company has its own catalogue which has the
items listed which are found in the shops. The company also used the social media platform in
order to reach out to the people, who have been targeted.

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Strength of the approach is that most of the target market can be communicated with advertising
in the traditional channels.
Weakness: the company should explore new medium like digital in order to reach out and
explore new market opportunities.

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Communications Strategy Analysis
Figure: Process of MAO
(Source: MacInnis et al., 1991)
Consumer motivation: The idea here is to get the customers motivated to buy or be interested in
a product or service, the lowest price strategy that the company incorporates in the

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communication process is one of the ways in which the people can be motivated. Claiming to be
providing an item at the lowest cost challenge can get people excited. Then the people will be
making a decision for purchasing the item this will be motivated reasoning as they will
contemplate on the need of the item. In the case of Bunnings the “goal” factor of motivation is
relevant, the goal of creating something or repairing some household things (Turner &
Pennington, 2015).
Ability: This message also fits with the financial ability as well as the ability to get the item of
the target market that has been chosen.
Opportunity: there is no complication or any kind of distraction in the process of buying and the
advertising tools effectively works for the company (Turner & Pennington, 2015).

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Part 2
Communications Strategy Analysis continued Awareness, attention, and perception
The above figure states the process by which a marketing plan has to travel in order to get
the attention of the consumers.
Awareness of a brand is created by the communication that is strategically planned by the
marketing team. Exposure to the correct information or stimulus is important in order to motivate
the people and the time factors in this case are also important. Awareness is the most important
impact of exposure, it is said that continuous exposure to information can evolve liking for a
product or service, this has been discussed by (Bornstein & Craver-Lemley, 2016). Furthermore,
consistent exposure also gives rise to perceived truthfulness of the claims. For example: The
organisation is planning to launch a new brand and has planned to give discounted price for a
day. If the customers are not exposed to this piece of information at the right time then the plan
of promotion will be a waste. In order to improve the knowledge exposure the company has to
invest in the correct medium for releasing the information, this is based on the consumers’ use of
Exposure Attention Perception

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medium. The values of the company are based on three aspects that the company undertakes in
order to operate in the business environment:
 Lowest price
 Range of products
 Premium service (Bunnings.com.au, 2018)
The communication strategy of the company focuses on these values as it exposes the
customers in their advertisement with the price and the range of products which are available in
the stores. The image of the company is based on these two values as the customers know that
they will find any kind of hardware items in the store at the low price. This has not only been the
impact of communication but is also because the company has been in the industry for long and
in this tenure of operation they have garnered reputation for having these values. Furthermore,
the communication strategy is helping the organization build the image (Huang & Hsieh, 2013).
Attention is the next step that is followed by the communication strategy, now that the
information is out there. The customers have to be engaged so that they pay attention to the
information so that they can understand and perceive it. The amount of information that is out
there for the customers are applauding every organisation that is trying to communicate with the
customers, hence attention becomes crucial. Attention is selective, limited and can be divided. In
order to establish attention, business organisations use audio as well as visual elements in the
advertisements. With the help of marketing stimulus consumer attention can be enhanced. Some
of the aspects that are usually used are personal relevance like need, want and self-concept;
attractiveness with elements in the form of audio or visual; creativity and elements of shock. In

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the case of Bunnings the website of the company has the following image at the top of the home
page.
Figure: Advertisement on the website
Source: (Bunnings.com.au, 2018)
There is a lot of information in this single frame but what stands out and immediately
catches the attention of the people is the “ Price Guarantee” and “10 % “. This helps in making
the customers interested in rest of the message. The message uses the elements that has been
discussed above in order to gather the attention of the people especially elements of personal
relevance and visual aspects are used in this case.

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Perception is the process of understanding and reasoning with the features of stimulus in
this case the advertisement and the marketing strategy of a company. Vision, hearing, taste,
smell, or touch is the six senses in human beings which are used to perceive information. In
advertising the company targets the vision of the customer to help them perceive the information
that they have been exposed to. With the help of color, size and lettering the company focuses on
the customer’s attention and helps them perceive the information. So that they can understand
what the company is trying to communicate. Following is another OOH (out of home)
advertisement of the company which uses the same elements of awareness, attention and
perception that has been used in the previous advertisement but is very different from the
previous one (Mullen & Johnson, 2013).
Figure: OOH of Bunnings Warehouse
Source: (Bunnings.com.au, 2018)

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The colour of the advertisement, the lettering as well as the message is intriguing and
adds to the brand image as well as helps in creating motivation among the target market as
discussed in Part 1. Strength of the approach is simplicity of the text; weakness is the load of
information that is provided in the advertisement the company uses texts instead of graphics of
pictures which takes away from the attention span (Mullen & Johnson, 2013).

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 Brand knowledge
When a product, service or an idea is clearly distinguished from the others in the market
with the help of elements like design, colour, symbol, language etc it is said to be a brand.
Branding is done by the company so that the communication process is easy and the customers
easily recognise the company (Solomon et al., 2014). It creates recall value as well as loyal
customers who also advocates for the brand. Branding of a product or a service ensures that the
consumers have a certain perception regarding the product or service. The brand schema or the
association that is build with the help of the communication strategy of the company are:
availability, low price, good range of products, stability, durability etc. This is a positive brand
schema that is built with the help of the advertising tool which is used in several medium by the
organisation. The company ensures that in the process of communication they focus on their
USP and the values that run the operations of the business (Solomon et al., 2014).In order to
ensure the recall value of the brand the company has a very distinctive logo, the colour and the
font that is used in the design helps in recalling the brand. Following image is the logo of the
company.
Figure: Bunnings Warehouse logo
Source: (Bunnings.com.au, 2018)

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The colours are striking as the red is common yet the second shade is contemporary the
logo is also strategically designed to give an idea of the products that the company sell. This
helps in creating brand identity which is the way consumers or the target market helps in
recognising the brand. With the help of logo and tag line in this case” lowest price is just the
beginning” the organisation helps in creating an identity. It creates the image of the company as
it, which goes with the values that the organisation reinforces with the branding as well as the
communication strategies (Albert & Merunka, 2013).
With the help of the communication process the company has successfully placed itself
as an organisation that is focused towards providing the customers with value products from a
wide range of items to choose from. The company uses a lot of OOH advertising to facilitate the
learning and the memory of the brand with repeated visual aspects in the advertising medium.
The personality aspect that is associated with the brand is in the form of sincerity as it has the
image of being honest, down-to-earth, wholesome and cheerful. The customers are always
greeted in the stores by cheerful and helpful executives who are in the uniform which is colour
co-ordinated with the logo of the company (Albert & Merunka, 2013). The strength of this
strategy is that the communication strategy is aligned with the values of the company and hence
it reinforces the idea of being affordable at the same time good quality in the minds of the
customer. The weakness of this approach is that there are other competitions in the market who
are also trying to establish the same message though the company is back up with a goodwill and
reputation in the Australian and New Zealand market, it is new in UK and Ireland, where the
brand has competition (Albert & Merunka, 2013).

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 Forming and changing attitudes
Attitudes are an appearance of an individual which reflects the general values in terms of
the standard of living and perspective. With the knowledge regarding the attitudes of the target
market organisations can anticipate the aforementioned aspects and use these in the process of
communication to make sure that the customers are paying attention engaging interest growing a
desire, as well as end up taking some positive action. This theory is explained in the AIDA
theory of communication (Wijaya, 2015). As an established brand it can be said that the
company has been successful in positive attitude towards its contribution to the customers and
this has been persistent in the process of communication. The company has maintained a
consistent feature of the communication by approaching the process of being simple yet
impactful. The marketing stimulus of the company has always been focusing on the price that is
offered by the company. The organisation is aware of the fact that the products they offer are
also available elsewhere, hence their communication strategy ensures that they attract the
attention of the customers. The organisation uses the frugal nature of the target market in order to
place the communication strategy. As the organisation talks about the price extensively they try
to capture this economic attitude of the target market (Solomon et al., 2014).
The strength of this aspect is that usually people are looking to save some money in the
factors which do not require to have a luxury aspect and hardware items usually carter to the
luxury market. The weakness of the strategy is that the focus is mostly drawn on the price which
may make the people seem that the products are not up to the mark or is of a bad stock etc,. This
will have a negative impact on the people (Solomon et al., 2014).

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 Influencing customers’ decision making process
There are five steps in the process of consumer decision making: need recognition, search
of information, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and lastly post-purchase decision.
The communication strategy of the Bunnings warehouse ensures that there is influence in the
evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision stages in the decision making process. As the
strategy of the communication talks about the price of the products this is effective when the
customer is looking for an alternative. The message says that if the customer can find the product
at a cheaper price than what is offered by the store then they will get further discounts. On the
other hand, this also impacts on the purchase decision of the customer (Shepherd & Rudd, 2014).
The weakness of this strategy is that the company should also focus on post purchase
elements as it ensures loyal and repeat customers, on the other hand the company the strength is
that the focus in concentrated on the aspect that they want to target and the company is clear with
the message (Shepherd & Rudd, 2014).
Recommendation
 The company can focus on some other promotional tool like digital media
 The company should use more graphical and pictorial representation of the image
and information to break the monotone of the communication
 The company should also focus on communicating regarding the quality of the
product rather than just focusing on the price aspect.
 Post-purchase services should also be highlighted in the advertisement as that
ensures repeat and loyal customers

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Reference list:
Albert, N., & Merunka, D. (2013). The role of brand love in consumer-brand
relationships. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 30(3), 258-266.
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Bunnings.com.au. (2018). Price Policy. .bunnings.com.au. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from
https://www.bunnings.com.au/price-policy
Bunnings.com.au. (2018). About us. bunnings.com.au. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from
https://www.bunnings.com.au/about-us
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