Addison Lee Marketing Strategy Analysis

This assignment delves into the marketing strategies employed by Addison Lee. It meticulously examines their approach to market segmentation, targeting specific customer segments like corporate individuals, families, and students, who contribute significantly to their revenue. The analysis highlights how Addison Lee's marketing efforts are primarily directed towards retaining these key segments or attracting new customers from similar demographics.

Running Head: Marketing & Communication
Addison Lee
Marketing & Communication

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Table of Content:
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Task 1: Evolution of Marketing..............................................................................................................4
Production.........................................................................................................................................4
Product..............................................................................................................................................4
Selling:...............................................................................................................................................4
Marketing Orientation.......................................................................................................................4
Task 2: Marketing Environment.............................................................................................................5
Marketing environment & its importance to business......................................................................5
Factors affecting marketing decisions of Addison Lee.......................................................................5
Economic factors...........................................................................................................................5
Sociocultural factors......................................................................................................................5
Strength.............................................................................................................................................6
Weakness..........................................................................................................................................7
Task 3: Marketing Strategies.................................................................................................................7
Objective...........................................................................................................................................7
Segmentation approaches for Addison Lee.......................................................................................7
 Demographic & Socio economic............................................................................................7
 Consumer response approach...............................................................................................8
Task 4: Marketing Mix...........................................................................................................................8
Using Marketing Mix or 7P’s for Addison Lee....................................................................................8
Recommendation..............................................................................................................................9
Product..........................................................................................................................................9
Price:..............................................................................................................................................9
Promotion....................................................................................................................................10
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................10
References:..........................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Addison Lee is one of the largest private hire services company operating in the UK since 1975, the
company has been doing well since the time it started its operations. The company has gone leaps
and bounds sever since. The company is now looking forward to work and rebrand its entire
marketing strategy.
For the purpose of the report, the entire assignment is divided into 4 sections, illustrating the
evolution of marketing (describing the product, selling production and marketing orientation
concept), it further moves to analysing both the macro and micro environmental factors for Addison
lee (Porter, Pestle, SWOT are used as framework). The management wants to increase the market
share of Addison lee and for the purpose it has to increase its audience targeting and come up with
new innovative ways to market its services, the marketing mix will be studied to understand the 7P’s
of marketing for the company followed by recommendation in its marketing strategy to gain a
considerable size of market share and diffuse its new innovative strategies.

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Task 1: Evolution of Marketing
A.
Production: Production for Addison lee can be its newly designed GPS system to track the
vehicle, its newly launched App, which was launched with the thought of getting the business model
move to B2C in lieu of its earlier B2B model. This has seen a surge in rides for Addison lee, and with
Umber’s license getting cancelled in London, creating a situation of win-win for the company.
Product: The product in case of Addison Lee is the hire services they provide to the commuters.
They provide cabs, taxi bikes, jets, coaches etc. to the people in London.
Selling: Selling in Addison Lee happens through website (25%) &the mobile application (50%)
which was launched in the year 2009. The company is getting good traffic both on its website and
the application, the download on the play store has increased manifolds, which hints that the
business is doing well.
Marketing Orientation: It is a company philosophy focussed on discovering and meeting the
needs and desires of its customers through its product mix. The company has gotten into ETA model
for it, launched App, starting with sending personalized email to the clients offering value deals and
has also changed its logo giving it a feeling of tinge and premium look.
B.
The orientation adopted by Addison lee is towards revamping the entire marketing and branding
strategy. The company is on a mission to gain traffic from its new target audience. They have
developed a new logo for the company, bold & with a premium look, in order to gain the market
attention. The company at the same time is investing on enhancing the customer experience, in
order to achieve that, the company has been working on data sciences and have started give ETA to
customers, GPS services, etc. Also, another example of its marketing orientation is, providing
customized deals to its customers, sending them deals in their mails, so that they can get the
personnel touch from Addison Lee. The company is also focussing on peak off weekend fares, tipping
the cabbies and also coming up with new fleets to accommodate the increasing demand.

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Task 2: Marketing Environment
A.
Marketing environment & its importance to business
Marketing environment can be understood as the external forces and factors that affect the
company’s ability to develop and maintain successful transactions and relationships with its
customers. It comprises of both internal and external elements which can affect the performance of
the organization (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015) it is extremely important for Addison
lee to do a PESTLE & SWOT analysis, and work on the finding of both the macro environment and
micro environment forces before developing its marketing strategy. Without knowing what is
present in the business environment and not having a thorough understanding of the market, the
chances of business strategy to fail are increased exponentially (Dawson, 2014). PESTLE provides an
overview of Political, economic, social, technological, legal & environmental factors affecting the
business environment, it will help Addison lee understand these forces and hence can have a backup
strategy of fill some gaps in its already formulated one. SWOT, on the other hands, helps the
company understating its strength and weaknesses, something which is internal to the organization,
at the same time, helps in identifying the external opportunities and threats to its existing business.
Therefore, thought leaders and management experts have stressed over and over again, to do a
market environment analysis before formulating a marketing strategy (Qureshi, 2016)
B.
Factors affecting marketing decisions of Addison Lee
Economic factors: These factors can be understood as the financial indicators in GDP, inflation
rate, purchasing power etc. These factors can have a great impact on the marketing decisions of any
business entity. The business is operated out of London, and London is one of the richest cities of the
UK, with greater purchasing power, better adoption of technologies and almost 80 % population
being urban. Overall a good market for taxi hiring companies (Blanco & Cohen, 2017)
Sociocultural factors: This aspect focuses on the forces within the society. Family, friends,
colleagues, neighbours and the media are the social factors. These factors affect attitude, opinion
and interest of the users. London, having massive urban population, people is akin to the growing
usage of technology and reduction in traffic and pollution; it makes them a great customer for taxi
hiring services. With the advent of digital marketing, more and more people are getting used to the

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benefits of carpooling services, and with the kind of deals being offered to the user, everyone has a
positive word of mouth to spread. Hence, a perfect scenario for Addison Lee (Edwards & Seda, 2016)
Both the economic and social factors create marketing opportunity for Addison Lee.
C.
London is a very big market for taxi hire services, but if major competitors to Addison Lee are to be
considered, one can easily pick Hail and Umber. Both the companies have web and app based
business models and both of them are doing fairly well in the market.
Hail is touted as the nearest competitor to Addison lee, due to its great discount and free rides it
offers to its customers, it can be a threat to Addison lee, and force the company to up its game of
providing discount and free coupons.
Uber: Addison lee has been operating on the same business model as Uber. Uber did a terrific job in
London and other states. Uber was easily a buzzword for taxi hiring in London, and people have been
using it interchangeably. In the present scenario, Uber’s licensed have been cancelled, which is a sigh
of relief for Addison lee.Uber was the major threat to the company because of its better penetration
strategy and its popularity among the masses and the classes.
D.
SWOT, as explained in the earlier part of the report, provides an analysis of internal strength and
weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. In the light of the same (Dan, 2014) Strength
and weaknesses of Addison lee can be:
Strength
Diversifying the customer base from B2B to Business to customers: This is a huge strategically
change the company made, this has helped the company in gaining millions of customers and thus,
has become hugely popular amongst the population. The company realized quickly that B2B model
can only yield some part of revenue for it, and in order to have a higher business it has to move to
B2C as well (Hollensen, 2015)
Mobile application: The entire world is going mobile; everyone has access to their smart phones at
all the time. The company in 2009 came up with its mobile application to book ride, this was a big
step and also contemporary to what some of its competitors were doing.

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Weakness
Not been able to make a big name in carpooling services: The Company has made a name for it in
hiring services, but is still behind its competitors in carpooling services. This can be one of the
weaknesses of the company seeing the increase in car pooling services (Yuan, 2013)
Customer feedback: The Company has maintained its reputation in delivering excellent service
quality. But in some parameters like taking customer feedback, and social listening and social
mention on the social media platforms is missing
Task 3: Marketing Strategies
A.
Objective: Grow Addison Lee car service business by 3%, by targeting younger demographic of 16-
25 year old
Market segmentation can be understood as dividing the entire market set up into smaller subsets
comprising of consumers with similar taste, demand, choices and preferences. It can be understood
as a unit of likeminded individuals. Each market segment is entire different from other market
segment. The individuals in a market segment respond in a similar manner to changing market
conditions, fluctuations and scenarios. Planning a marketing strategy on basis of market
segmentation is important in order to set the right targeting and understand the customer base.
Without understanding the customer base, all the marketing effects will be wasted (Wilkinson, 2013)
B.
Segmentation approaches for Addison Lee
 Demographic & Socio economic: This is by far the most common segmentation
approaches used by the company. Demographic segmentation is study of human population
in terms of its size, density and distribution. Demographic and socio economic characteristic
include age group, sex, family size, income, occupation, level of education, religion, ethnic
status, social class. In Addison lee this segmentation would make the perfect sense as they
have already decided the age group to target, and people falling in these age group will fall
under certain income level, thereby giving a clear cut segmentation bracket to the
company.Socio economic factors at the same time gives a clearer segment on the basis of

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income, sex, family size etc., which helps the company to target people falling under this
segment (Kiel, 2014)
 Consumer response approach: This response is very creative in nature; it focuses on why
a consumer buys a particular product, rather than asking who the customer is. These
responses are based on benefit, usage and loyalty. Benefit response are the aspects of
efficiency, prestige, durability, economy or the resale value. Segmentation based on benefit
approach is most practical to the marketers because of its close connection, product
planning and publicity. Loyalty responses are the latest base of segmentation. It works
around the fact that the consumers differentiate between the brands, they create a product
preference scale in their head and start using product based on the brand loyalty. Usage
response classifies users on the basis of heavy, medium and light users and then targets
them accordingly (Oh & Oh, 2017)
Therefore, given the objective of Addison lee, segmentation approaches mentioned above
will help the company in achieving them.
Task 4: Marketing Mix
A.
Using Marketing Mix or 7P’s for Addison Lee
Product: This involves design, technology, usefulness, value, quality, packaging etc. of the product
offering of the company (Hamzah & Sutanto, 2016)
Price: Different pricing strategies like skimming, penetration, and cost based, and value based the
company adopts while selling its products or services (Mintz & Currim, 2013)
Place: The place where the company sells its products or the channel it adopts to sell.
Promotion: This has to do with the marketing efforts in advertisement, special offers, free gifts
coupons etc. the company gives away to promote its services (Qiu, 2014)
People: It consist of the employees, management, culture and the customer service (Khan, 2014)
Process: The process adopted by the companies to execute its services or products.
Physical environment: Relates to the tangibility offered by product or services (Baker & Saren, 2016)

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Product Provides a mix of taxi hiring and courier services
in London.
Price Price skimming – Penetrating the market by
keeping its prices low and thus skimming the
market. Premium options are also available.
Place The company is present in almost 350 cities since
its inception in the year 1975.
Promotion The company is offering huge discounts by
customized deals to its customers, offering
loyalty rides to its most loyal customers, offering
huge discount on the rides and free coupon on
the social media.
Physical evidence The company has revealed a new logo for itself,
bold new premium look. It has Toyota cars, jets
etc. for its customers, which bring class to the
brand.
Process The company uses its website and mobile
application for its business. ETA is calculated
through GPS services.
People The management has good experience, the
drivers are taught about the values of the
company and also made accustom to the new
technology getting used in the cabs. People are
one of the strong facets of Addison lee.
B.
Recommendation
Product: The Company should focus on pushing its application to every smart phone user present in
the cities it is operating. The application has to be pushed in order to get it installed and put to use.
The company should go completely on app based model and stop spending money on the website. It
should also venture into carpooling services to expand its customer base. In order to make people
install the app, the company should lure them into free rides and once they install the app, the
company can retain them by providing quality services.
Price: One of the most important aspect of marketing mix, Addison lee should focus on cost based
pricing, infused with occasional discount and coupons to its new customers and reward points for its
loyal customers. The company has to work on a retention strategy and treat all three of its customer
base: Loyal, new & existing differently and adopt a completely different customized strategy for each
of them.

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Promotion: The Company is promoting its service on social media heavily, unveiled a new logo
recently to match up to its new target audience. The only point the company has to do more in order
to be more effective in promotion is, post the reviews and ratings on the social media and also push
newsletters of its service quality feedback given by customers to its mass audience. This will create
euphoria among the people and they would see Addison lee as the brand they can trust and rely
upon.
Conclusion
The majority of business coming to Addison lee is from its newly designed Mobile application, since
then the traffic coming from the website has reduced which is extremely good for the business. It is
highly advised to the firm to focus on extracting revenue from the mobile application. It is highly
recommended to start with promotional offers, loyalty rewards and bonus coupons for its loyal
customers and also to acquire a new customer base.
Addison lee has laid emphasis on its 7P’s of marketing, this is the reason the marketing strategies of
the firm are in sync with the goals of the organization and the reason of development of positive
synergies in the efforts of the firms and the defined objectives.
The Segmentation, targeting and positioning of Addison Lee is well defined, with its audience ranging
from corporate individuals to family members and students. This is the segment which is generating
maximum revenue for the company and hence all the marketing efforts have to be diverted on
retaining the above said segments or to gain audience from these segments.

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