IMC Report: Analysis of Organic Food Market in Saudi Arabia

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the organic food market, with a specific focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It begins with an executive summary highlighting the growing popularity of organic foods due to health-conscious consumers. The report then delves into a detailed discussion of the current market situation, emphasizing the rapid growth of the global organic food sector and the nascent stage of the industry in Saudi Arabia. It identifies key market drivers, including environmental concerns and health consciousness, and highlights the potential for growth in the Saudi Arabian market. The report proceeds to define the objectives of an integrated marketing communication (IMC) plan, focusing on understanding consumer behavior, creating product awareness, projecting a positive brand image, stimulating consumer desire, and increasing sales. A promotional budget is established and allocated across various marketing tools, with a strong emphasis on digital marketing and social media. Finally, the report outlines the development of an IMC program, including the use of digital marketing and advertising, and provides examples of campaign materials. This report provides a solid foundation for understanding the organic food market and developing effective marketing strategies.

Running head: INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Integrated Marketing Communication
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The organic food industry has lucrative future as it is growing popular among the health
conscious consumers of the world. The people are opting towards healthy food alternatives and
hence they have started positive affinity towards organic food products. This report would
explore the analysis of the current market situation in global basis and particularly in Saudi
Arabia. The organic food industry in Saudi Arabia is in preliminary level and hence it is
important to perform extensive promotional campaigns. The integrated marketing
communication would be determined. The promotional budget would be allocated which would
help the campaign run in a successful manner. The use of digital marketing and advertisement
would be used to create the integrated marketing communication campaign.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................4
Analysis of the current market situation......................................................................................4
Determination of the integrated marketing communications objectives.....................................5
Establishment and allocation of the promotional budget............................................................7
Development of an Integrated Marketing Communication program..........................................9
Monitoring and evaluation.........................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
Marketing has evolved over the years in order to accommodate the changing preferences
of the customers. The marketers are focusing on the creation of long-term relationships with the
customers, members of the community, channel members and employees(Pearson 2016). There
has been the development of holistic marketing initiatives in which the interdependencies of the
marketing environment of today are incorporated. There are four important dimensions of the
new form of marketing which includes the internal marketing, performance marketing,
relationship marketing and integrated marketing (Pearson 2016). The integrated marketing
communication plan should have relevant details about the marketing plan such as single voice,
unique message, goal and consistent product features. The communication tools need to be
strategically consistent with the aim of redefining the common brand associations.
The selected product for this assignment is organic foods. The selected country for
promoting the products is Saudi Arabia. The analysis of the current market situation would be
analyzed. The determination of the objectives for integrated marketing communications is being
done. A suitable promotional budget would be made with special focus on the budgeting
approach as well as budget allocation. One integrated marketing communication program would
be prepared.
The organic foods are gaining worldwide popularity due to its huge benefits. The
company aims to provide 100% genuine, authentic, natural and value rich organic foods to the
people of Saudi Arabia. The company has its own farms, retail stores and distributes its products
through sole agents so that they can reach wide range of customers. The company aims to give
100% satisfaction to customers while preventing any adverse effect on the environment.

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Discussion
Analysis of the current market situation
The organic food is considered as the most rapid growing sector in the global economy
and there has been double increase in its growth annually. This growth has already passed the
overall growth rate of the food market (Pearson 2016). The primary driving factor of this kind of
crops is the growing concern about the environment (Lee and Yun 2015). The pesticides are used
to keep away insects, bacteria, mites and others, which accumulates in the water and soil. It gets
consumed in the human body and it has negative side effects on the human body. This has
detrimental impact on the health and wellbeing of the people (Lee and Yun 2015). This is the
reason for gaining prominence of organic foods.
The organic agriculture is a worldwide profitable business, which can be sustainable
business for the producers who are willing to enter the market. The current growth of organic
food market is 20 to 25 percent in the global sphere and the advanced countries are spending
more amount on the organic farming (Willer and Lernoud 2016). However, the organic food
market is highly unorganized and organic pulses/food grains dominate the market. The current
market of the organic foods is growing at the rate of 25 to 30 percent at present and this figure s
expected to rise in the coming years (Lee and Yun 2015). The current growth in this domain is
being affected by the increased health consciousness, disposable spending, changing lifestyles
and the increasing availability of the organic foods industry.
The organic food industry in Saudi Arabia is in nascent stage. The National
Agricultural Marketing Co. is in charge of developing the idea of organic foods in Saudi Arabia
and deriving ideas from Europe. The center is involved in adapting of the practices of the organic

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food farming in the country. The country is characterized with health related problems which are
directly associated with diets (El Bcheraoui et al. 2015). The Saudi Agricultural market has
shown quite improvement in the recent past and there is considerable amount of investment to
grow organic foods. The Ministry of Agriculture in Saudi Arabia is active in the organizing of
several support and movements concerning organic food products.
Organic food is quite popular in Saudi Arabia but people are sometimes averse about
purchasing the product due to its high cost. Thimar is a popular organic food store in Saudi
Arabia which offers healthy foods to the customers (Bush 2016). The organic food industry is
concentrated on few important things such as water, air, mud and others. However, the
production of organic food is low in the country owing to the impure water and lack of
infrastructure for supporting this kind of farming (El Bcheraoui et al. 2015). The country has
huge potential for the purpose of retail and distribution food products. It has also scope for the
purpose of importing organic food materials. The consumption of organic foods in the country is
expected to grow at the pace of 55% within the next couple of years (Memish et al. 2014). The
country has supermarket chains such as Carrefour, Thimar and Tamimi that make available the
fresh organic products and offer fresh products to the consumers.
The target market for organic foods would be from 18 years to 55 years and it includes
both genders. The organic foods would be positioned within the middle income group and the
high income groups.

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Determination of the integrated marketing communications objectives
The main objective of the integrated marketing communication is to enhance the levels of
interaction tools that would create seamless experience for the customers as well as reinforcing
the core messages of the brand. The broad objectives of the organic foods is enumerated below-
 Understanding of the consumer behavior
The marketing communication plan would be helpful in understanding of the consumer
behavior of the nation. These would help in the better formulation of the promotional strategies
as well as programs. The primary target market for the organic foods would be women and men
aged between 18 years to 55 years. This group of population comprises of the productive age
group who requires fresh, healthy and nutritious foods so that they can carry out their daily
activities in a better manner. The marketing campaign would also help in the determination of
the actual preferences of the target market.
 Creation of product awareness
The integrated marketing communication campaign would helpin the generation of sufficient
product awareness among the target audience. There is low level of awareness regarding the
organic foods and their subsequent benefits (Solomon 2014). The marketing campaign would not
only be profit centric but it would also highlight the advantages of consuming organic food
products. This would not only help in gathering new customers but it would also aid in higher
retention of the existing customers.
 Projection of an image

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The basic purpose of the campaign is to enhance the product image in the minds of the
consumers (Solomon 2014). The organic food is often perceived as snob and middle class
income segment are reluctant to try them. This notion needs to be changed and improve the
image of the organic food industry.
 Stimulation of desire
When the consumers are better aware of the benefits of the organic foods, then they would be
highly attracted to their consumption (Solomon 2014). Even if there are people in the target
market, who have a pre-conceived notion regarding the consumption of organic foods, this
campaign would help in the stimulation of desire to consume healthy food alternatives.
 Increase in the sales of organic foods
The marketing communication campaign would aim to increase the revenues gained from the
sale of organic food products (Solomon 2014). It would help in better projection of the products
among the consumers and increase their purchasing frequency.
Establishment and allocation of the promotional budget
The promotional budget is an important thing to be considered while trying to
implemented integrated marketing campaign (Ismail and Bawa 2013). The promotional budget
can be estimated by calculating the last year’s sales percentage as well as the projected sales
which is estimated for the next year. The budgeting process should take into amount the type of
money that should be spent on type of media. There should be more budget allocation for the
digital media campaigns as compared to the traditional marketing methods (Bimber 2014). The

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marketing campaign considering the organic food promotion should take into account the mobile
marketing as it is a popular mode of promotion. It is especially common among the youths of
today’s population and more people are opting for them. There should be fairly large amount of
budget allocated for social media networking as it is the best cost effective method for
promoting a new product (Ismail and Bawa 2013). A big part of the growth of the product is
possible through effective social media marketing. This kind of marketing would allow greater
interaction with the target audience since the more number of people use these media to stay
connected with their friends and peers..
This promotional campaign would use the zero-based budgeting, in which the onset of
budgeting process would start from zero and there is little reference made to the earlier year’s
budget (Callaghan, Hawke and Mignerey 2014). The budget for the overall promotional would
be proposed to the senior management for their approval (Ismail and Bawa 2013). The
components of the marketing campaign need to be reviewed with all the different heads requiring
approval. This would ensure an optimal allocation of the resources in the most important
promotional tools. The allocation of promotional budget is illustrated below-
Promotional Tools Estimated budget ($) Estimated impacts
Social Media Marketing 9,000 High
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 8,000 High
Email Marketing 3,000 Medium
Magazine Advertisements 4,000 Medium
Radio Advertisements 2,000 Low

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Video Advertisements 2,500 Low
Facebook & Twitter Advertisements 3,000 High
Cost of materials 11,000 Medium
Manpower recruitment 12,000 Medium
Cost of evaluation tools 1,000 Medium
TOTAL BUDGET 55,500 -
Fig: Promotional Budget for organic foods
Source: Created by author
Development of an Integrated Marketing Communication program
The development of an integrated marketing communication program is essential for the
purpose of promotion of the organic food products in Saudi Arabia (Ismail and Bawa 2013). The
integrated marketing communication would use two different tools for promotion. The two tools
used are digital marketing and advertising. The digital marketing comprises of the different
search engine optimization, mobile marketing and social media marketing.The first is the
identification of the target market in which the campaign would be aimed at (Ismail and Bawa
2013).A message would be created that would be circulated to all the social media websites and
mobiles marketing tools. This would be done in an attractive manner and interactive manner,

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which grabs the attention of the readers. The campaign would also be used for development of
brand awareness, building of relationships and the generation of website traffic. The following
illustration is the poster that would be circulated in digital marketing campaign-
Fig: Digital Marketing Campaign
Source: Created by author
The above poster would be posted live in various social media websites such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and others. This can be posted in the company page of the
social media website. It would also be used in various video websites such as YouTube. This
would also be posted in the official website of the company who is promoting the product.The
digital marketing should be done in such a manner that the target market of organic food is
catered to. In Facebook pages, there are pages of organic foods in Saudi and these should be

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targeted. The product should be advertised on these channels. The creation of the company page
would also be helpful in reaching out to the masses.
The advertisement function would comprise of the circulation of the content in various
online as well as offline modes. There would be various media tools involved such as radio
advertising, video advertising, print media, broadcast media such as television.
Fig: Advertisement of the organic food product
Source: Created by author
The above advertisements would make the audience realize the bas effects of non-organic
food products and they would be more bend towards the organic food products. It should be
decided regarding the number of times the advertisement would be broadcasted or published.
The frequency is important for penetrating into the target market within short period of time.