Marketing Analytics for Carman's Kitchen: A Case Study

MARKETING ANALYTICS 1
MARKETING ANALYTICS
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MARKETING ANALYTICS 2
Introduction
Marketing analytics involves measuring, analysing and managing the performance of a
company’s market as a way of optimizing the return on investments. A company which is able to
understand its market is in a better position to operate efficiently and optimize the resource
utilization. In addition to giving the sales managers an insight of the market structure, marketing
analytics also allows the management to have a glimpse of the customer preferences and trends.
This are very valuable information that can be used by the firm to develop a more attractive
product brand (Nair, 2014). For any business enterprise to succeed in its operations there is
need for the managers to understand the power that marketing does play on the firm’s success.
The marketing manager should be able to measure the success rates. Analytics makes it possible
to discover the optimal strategies that should be put in place by the organization.
The increased business competition has made it almost mandatory for firms to engage in
adaptive marketing strategies so as to gain a competitive advantage in their various sectors of
operation. Quantifying the influence of marketing efforts on the revenue growth has continued to
be an elusive goal. Being that marketing increases brand awareness, enhance public perception
and give information of the business prospects the question that need to be answered is ‘how
many?” or “by how much?” or “how much more does the business need?”. This questions cannot
be answered in a straight forward manner but applying analytics will isolate the key drivers and
inform the decision makers so as to keep the managers ahead of the curve (Hartmut, et al.,
2012).
The purpose of this report is to assist the management of Carman’s kitchen to come up
with the best possible price promotion strategy that can help the firm improve its market share in
the long term. Carman’s kitchen is a cereal bar manufacturer that offers premium cereal bars in
five diverse flavours. The company is a small organisation that has been able to compete with
big firms such as Kellogg and Uncle Toby to gain a market share of around 20%. Currently the
firm has put in place mechanisms to pursue aggressive growth strategies which involve price
promotion as a way of improving the popularity of their brand across Australia.
Methodology

MARKETING ANALYTICS 3
In this research the case study design was applied. The term case refers to an instance and
its central characteristic is the study of one or more instances of something that make up the case
of the research. A case is a relative term that can refer to an organization or a more abstract thing
like an event or programme (Thomas, 2011). Case study are mostly associated with qualitative
research or qualitative data but in some situations quantitative data can readily be incorporated in
a case study. In academics case studies do serve a unique purpose. For instance, they highlight
particular issues which are meant to stimulate debate in classes. In this report a descriptive
research case study was selected which was evaluated deeply to assist the firm generalize the
scenario to its management marketing decisions (Mills, et al., 2010). The ability of case studies
to investigate cases in depth and employ several sources of evidence make them a vital tool when
carrying out a descriptive research which is meant to fit a specific context. Case study design is
also effective for the study as it facilitates holistic perspectives by treating each case as a specific
whole. This way it is possible to investigate causal complexity in scenarios where there are
several relevant factors supported but very few observations (Starman, 2013).
In the market study the company did select 4 distinct strategies and conducted a field
experiment in four stores spread across main Australian supermarket chains. Each strategy was
applied to a single supermarket and the results used to generalize for the entire market. The study
was conducted for period of 26 weeks. In the first 10 weeks, the company’s brand share was
observed on a weekly basis and recorded. This was followed by four weeks promotional period
where each of the four price promotion strategies was applied to different stores and the sales
category and brand market share observed. When the promotion was stopped a two weeks
observation period was done to evaluate the post promotion dip, this was followed by a 10 weeks
post promotion observation that was meant to check the long-term impact of the product
promotion strategy. The findings of the study were then recorded for analysis. The data analysis
was done using Microsoft excel software.
Results and analysis
The table below displays a summary of the research findings