Report on Integrated Marketing Communications: Woolworths' Approach

This report provides an overview of the integrated marketing communications (IMC) strategies employed by Woolworths Limited, an Australian retail giant. It begins with a brief overview of the company and then delves into its promotional mix, which includes advertising, sales promotion, public relati...Read More

Running head: INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Integrated Marketing Communications
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Executive Summary:
The report aims at discussing integrated marketing communications of an Australian based
company. The company chosen for this report is Woolworths Limited. The report begins with an
overview of the company in brief. There is also an explanation of the promotional mix along
with a brief elaboration of the various promotional mixes like advertising, sales promotion,
public relation and personal selling. The report also focuses on a particular promotion mix which
in this case is personal selling. There is discussion on the various strategies adopted by the
retailer for enhancing the personal sell.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Brief Overview of the Company:....................................................................................................3
Promotional Mix:.............................................................................................................................3
Advertising:..................................................................................................................................4
Sales Promotion:..........................................................................................................................4
Public Relation:............................................................................................................................4
Personal Selling:..........................................................................................................................5
Focusing on one of the Promotional Mix: Personal Selling............................................................5
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:......................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
The report gives an overview of integrated marketing communications for a company in
Australia. The company chosen here is Woolworths Limited (Woolworths.com.au
/Shop/Discover/about-us 2018). Woolworths Group represents a major Australian company with
extensive interest in the retail. This is the second largest retailer in Australia in terms of revenue.
The report commences with a brief overview of the company. There is also a discussion on the
promotional mix with an insight on advertising, sales promotion, public relation and personal
selling. The report also discusses the strategies adopted by the company to enhance its personal
selling that will give it an edge over its competitors.
Brief Overview of the Company:
Woolworths Limited Companies represents a compilation of the chains, divisions and
brands of the Woolworths Limited, a major Australian company having retail interest throughout
Australia and New Zealand (Woolworths.com.au 2018). It is represented as the largest food
retailer of Australia. Further, Woolworth Limited is not only one of the prominent liquor retailer
of Australia but also the largest gaming poker machine and hotel operator of Australia. Thus, the
primary operations of the Woolworth brand include supermarkets, liquor retailing, management
of the pubs and hotels under the hospitality and leisure group umbrella and discounted
departmental stores.
Promotional Mix:
The promotional mix represents a combination of the promotional methods used for a
single product or the family of the products (Armstrong et al., 2014). The elements of the

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promotional mix to be discussed in this report includes advertising, sales promotion, public
relation and personal selling.
Advertising:
Woolworth represents the major display advertisers in the newspaper that is creative
enough for driving readers into action (Moriarty et al., 2014). The advertisements created by
Woolworth’s scores across number of creative diagnostics thereby scoring above the average
retail scores of advertising. Price as well as product plays a very important role in advertising of
Woolworths. The retailer has implemented a new campaign based on price that runs on the
television, radio, online, and print that emphasizes the value of Woolworth’s supermarket on an
everyday basis instead of one-time discounts.
Sales Promotion:
The retailer puts forward various loyalty schemes for the customers including discounts
for petrol pumps. The retailer also launched a people campaign based on fresh food. In addition,
the retailer used various magazine, newsletters as well as online media for effective promotion
(Teck and Cyril 2013). The availability and accessibility of the retailer made them win loyal
customers. The retailer also gave away various gift cards and carried extensive promotional
activity via the various online mediums.
Public Relation:
Woolworths has announced the appointment of professional public relations for ensuring
support across its business related to its food group. The professional public relations will not

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only support the public relations head but also the community and the sponsorships at the
Woolworths for undertaking national marketing and campaign activity (Russell and Lamme
2013). The professional public relations also ensures community activity and working with the
marketing managers of the local store. The professional public relations would help in
demonstrating the extensive experience in the supermarket sector along with unrivaled capacity
with the help of their exclusive footprint for supporting the delivery of the campaigns undertaken
by the retailer at the local and national level at the most effective and efficient manner.
Personal Selling:
Personal selling refers to the procedure where businesses make use of people for selling
the product after meeting them on a one to one basis (Makhitha, Wies and Van 2014). The
products are promoted by the sellers through not only their appearance and attitude but also
knowledge of the product. The aim of personal selling is to either encourage or inform the
customers for either buying or trialing the product. Woolsworth tries to personalize the shopping
experience in its online shopping by ensuring the presence of pickers who handpicks the items
just as the shoppers would actually do.
Focusing on one of the Promotional Mix: Personal Selling
The Woolworths Limited has put forward a three year strategy for winning the trust of
the customers and enhances its share of personal selling through the implementation of lower
prices along with improving all aspects of the shopping experience (Walsh 2014). Thus, the
strategy implemented by the retailer will not only result in lower prices but greater innovation
and compelling offers. The retailer has 14.6 million normal customers along with 500,000
customers online so it focuses more on the superiority of the freshness and an appealing range.

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The largest food retailer group of Australia tries in gaining customer trust along with a larger
share of the shopping basket. This helps the company in regaining the sustainable momentum for
sales for extending leadership.
The retailer in order to enhance its personal selling focuses on three key principles which
include:
a. Improving the core offers so that it is preferred by the customers.
b. The company also undertakes innovation for meeting the needs of the customers
c. Enhancing its efficiency by creation of further value of the customers.
For enhancing the personal selling experience Woolworths Limited implemented a major
investment program (Pollamarasetty and Potti 2016). The retailer ensured $ 125 million price
reductions for the customers thereby enhancing the value position of Woolworths at the
competitive level. The retailer also ensured matching of the online pricing with the store pricing.
The retailer also ensured a major focus in improving the freshness and range of the vegetables
and fruits
Woolworths also implemented a value and pricing strategy for neutralizing the impact of
the competitor that included better ranging, lower pricing, offers to the targeted customers
through an improved and revised loyalty system and detailed strategy for the improvement of its
own brands (Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/woolworths-rewards 2018). The retailer also
involved in refurbishments that ensured rebalancing of the capital expenditure between the
existing store refurbishments and the new stores. The retailer in order to enhance personal sales
plans to refurbish around 80 stores per annum. The refurbishments undertaken will be according

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to the preferences of the local customers will be prioritized as per the growth of the customers.
Woolworths Limited however would continue development of around 20-30 newer stores in a
year according to the population growth and for addressing the gaps within the networks.
However for ensuring enhanced personal selling the retailer established a new division
known as the Woolworths FoodCo. This section had the responsibility of the development of the
newer categories of the product, improvement of the fresh supply of the meat along with its
processing facilities and development of the relationships between the strategic sourcing and the
primary partners of the industry (Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/pick-woolies 2018).
However, as the part of the commitment for growing into food for now or food for the later
categories, Woolworths announced the partnership with the Western Sydney based quality food
manufacturer Beak & Johnson for delivering the first dedicated facilities of ready to cook items.
Thus, the given facilities will help in ensuring the range of the meals for the retailers.
The existing strength of Woolworth will be harnessed by its food strategy. This is
ensured by increasing the investment in multi channel experiences of the customers (Atapattu
and Sedera 2013). To ensure enhanced personal selling the online pricing is brought at par with
the store pricing available along with a range of the new click and collect locations that will open
along with the drive thru collection of points for increasing the convenience of the customers.
Woolworth also put forward a customer first system for the measurement of the performances of
the teams within the stores with a newer eight metric scorecard thereby replacing the older
twenty metric systems while placing the metrics of the customers at the top of rankings.
However, the three year strategy for growth depends on the newer ‘Lean Retail ‘model
for operation (Noda 2015). This model will help in delivering over $500 million cost reduction

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that would help in enhancing the experience of customers in terms of better convenience,
improved access and service, lower prices and commitment towards the process of innovation.
The entire Woolworths team worked together for improving and maintaining the position of the
retailer. Thus the retailer represented a stronger business with ample potential for growth and
Woolworth is aware of challenges that the retailer faces for realizing the potential.
Thus, the supermarkets of Australia had been streamlined into a single division known as
the Woolworths Food Group headed by Brad Banducci, the managing director.
Conclusion:
The report ends with an elaborate discussion on one of the promotional mixes that
includes personal selling. There is also discussion on the other promotional mix like advertising,
sales promotion, public relation and personal selling. The company chosen for the report is
Woolworths Limited. The report also puts forward a brief overview of the company. It is found
from the report that the retailer has an extremely customer centric processes that focuses
primarily on the satisfaction of the customers. The process aspects of the supermarkets refer to
the speedy billing of the goods bought both in the online and the offline mode. The retailer
however makes sure that the procedure becomes faster through the use of the latest software for
billing along with adequate staff support. The retailer in order to enhance personal selling takes
feedback from the customers for constant innovation of the process and making it easier.

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References:
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson
Australia.
Atapattu, M. and Sedera, D., 2013. Agility of the firm: customer's perspective.
Makhitha, K.M., Wiese, M. and Van Heerden, G., 2014. Informing craft producers in South
Africa: Improving visibility and product availability through market
communication. Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa, 33(2),
pp.1-24.
Moriarty, S., Mitchell, N.D., Wells, W.D., Crawford, R., Brennan, L. and Spence-Stone, R.,
2014. Advertising: Principles and practice. Pearson Australia.
Noda, T., 2015. Integration of lean operation and pricing strategy in retail. Journal of Marketing
Development and Competitiveness, 9(1), p.50.
Pollamarasetty, S. and Potti, R., 2016. Omni-channel retailing: enriching customers’ shopping
experience. Handbook of Research on Strategic Supply Chain Management in the Retail
Industry, 233.
Russell, K.M. and Lamme, M.O., 2013. Public relations and business responses to the civil rights
movement. Public Relations Review, 39(1), pp.63-73.
Teck Weng, J. and Cyril de Run, E., 2013. Consumers' personal values and sales promotion
preferences effect on behavioural intention and purchase satisfaction for consumer product. Asia
Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 25(1), pp.70-101.

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Walsh, B., 2014. Chain store retailing in Ireland: a case study of FW Woolworth & Co. Ltd,
1914-2008. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 6(1), pp.98-115.
Woolworths.com.au 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworths.com.au/ [Accessed 5
Mar. 2018].
Woolworths.com.au/Shop/Discover/about-us2018.[online]Availableat:
https://www.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Discover/about-us [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018]
Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/pick-woolies2018.[online]Availableat:
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/pick-woolies [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018].
Woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/woolworths-rewards2018.[online]Availableat:
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/woolworths-rewards [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018].