Seattle University

PCC Community Markets

Marketing Plan

Joe Barnes

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Table of Contents

Introduction of Business……………...... 3

Situation Analysis...……………………………………………...... …………………………..3

S.W.O.T. Analysis...... ……………...... 3

Creative Brief...... ……………...... 4

Marketing Objectives...... ……………...... 5

Target Market...... ……………...... 5

IMC Marketing Mix and Marketing Strategies...... 7

Marketing Tactics...... 8

Budget...... 8

Timetable...... 9

Performance Evaluation/Measuring Success...... 9

Conclusion…………………………………………………………...……...………………....10

References...... 10

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Introduction of Business Puget Consumers Co-op, more commonly known as PCC, is a regional grocery and natural foods chain with stores located across and in neighboring towns in the Puget Sound region. Founded in 1953, PCC is owned by 58,000 plus members and is managed by a board of trustees, with each individual elected by the members of the Co-op. Members also receive a monthly newsletter on relevant topics of food sustainability and environmentalism. Board of trustees represent the interests of the members and manages the operations of the organization. All profits made by the organization are put into the stores and local communities. PCC sells specific products that need to meet many of their strict requirements and preferences. They offer 95 percent of their produce as certified organic and require their suppliers to follow a number of standards and certifications, including GMO transparency and animal welfare regulation. PCC has ever evolving standards as new guidelines towards sustainability are found and implemented, with new inspections of farms and factories being implemented on a regular basis.

Situation Analysis As PCC is constantly growing with more members, more vendors and more sustainable stores, we have seen a “revamp” of their current marketing campaigns. They have first, provided a remodel of physical changes. This includes a different logo, different environment in the stores, and cutting out any extra vendors/suppliers that do not align with their main mission. They have also decided to make more billboard ads around the Washington area. Their social media market channels include all different Facebook pages for each individual store, Instagram of current events and stories in the communities, and a Twitter account that follows different events/sponsorships that PCC provides. As we have researched, we found out that it is controlled by only one employee who does all of the posting for all channels, going to each individual store to find news around their communities. However, there is no specific application for their mobile device marketing channel, where it can talk about different stories, events, and products that consumers can download and experience the app firsthand. We have researched the importance of apps for businesses in class, since the consumer is changing and adapting to technology. Because of this, we believe that PCC should have some type of app to talk to their customers and suppliers.

S.W.O.T. Analysis

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Strengths: Some strengths that we have seen from PCC has to come from their key customer touch points. Members are always welcomed to express their concerns and experiences with management. Customers are welcomed to events like cooking with the employees with different local products and try samples. Employees are encouraged to dress in normal attire, to comfort the customer rather than intimidating them. Weaknesses: Some weaknesses that we have seen from PCC has to come with their lack of a social media team, since it is only operated by one person. Another weakness would have to come with the high prices of local organic food products. Since they want to focus on local products, some customers will turn down PCC due to either the many different options of a particular product or turn away from their own branded product, since it may be too expensive to purchase. Opportunities: Opportunities that PCC can seek to achieve is a new marketing campaign that can be focused on smartphone users. One opportunity comes through with storytelling. We believe that they can create an app where it shows all different products, stories, and fun facts about PCC and their loyal members. Since they do not have a specific marketing team, going out to the local vendors and interviewing them, we believe that it may be beneficial to focus on the stories that these local farmers/vendors are expressing with their products rather than explaining what PCC is as a whole. Threats: Some threats they will have to face is the comparison of prices against fellow competing companies. How can PCC bring in quality products at a reasonable price? How can they compete with other competitors? Why should customers buy at PCC rather than other competitors. These are some of the questions PCC has to face in order for their mission statement to be authentic as possible. Since is merging into this industry, how can PCC differentiate from Amazon?

Creative Brief Background / Overview: PCC markets has the existing customer loyalty and well known recognition. For more than forty years, PCC has been growing its reach to its customers by adding new store locations, funding small family farms and businesses, and providing food with proper education of sustainability to its neighboring communities and customers. Our plan is to increase consumer engagement and encourage new loyalty through our PCC campaign. Our campaign consists of incorporating a PCC app, another company communication channel with the aim to provide more information for our customers of what PCC means to them. Since our target market is always changing, PCC must change with technology as well. As we have researched and analyzed, there is no specific PCC app for consumers to download and experience. The PCC app should include many different features and stories.

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Categories on the app could expand further than just its products and services. Since PCC prides itself on its mission and ethical values as a natural foods store, their values must be conveyed further, through storytelling. As we have researched, PCC does not have a real refined storytelling channel. They have very little to no information or stories about their local vendors and suppliers. Through the implementation of a company app, we would like to implement a story to our products by sharing the true stories and relationships between the farmer, supplier, and their locations. As our local products are being distributed throughout our stores, we would like to tell the story of how they got here, from growing the product to finished product. The narrative between producer and consumer will strengthen the importance of PCC values and why they should be respected and treated sincerely.

Marketing objectives Objective: The goal of our marketing campaign is to increase customer engagement through a digital medium. This app will be an online platform with various handy features to encourage consumers to interact more with the brand, for example, by providing local recipes that consumers can alter and cook for themselves. Because of this, we think it would be great for customers to have a simple way to exchange ideas and opinions. Therefore, this app will also let customers communicate between each other. Customers can engage with each other through posting their recipes and dishes via social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and most notably, Instagram.

Target Market Target Audience: The target audiences we will be focusing on are adults, young adults, and teenagers. These three groups are largely active smartphone users and spend a large majority of their time on their phones. In order for a brand to stay relevant in this digital age, customers want connections through social media and online apps. Our adult target market are categorized to have a middle to upper income and live either in the suburbs or in a urban environment. They have an interest in healthy and organic food culture and are willing to pay the extra cost for sustainably sourced foods. They have adapted the smartphone lifestyle and like to look up product availability, recipe ideas for future meals, and make online purchases on the go. Whether they are at home, at work, or running errands, the use of the PCC will improve their connection and experience with PCC if they can have easy access to the store on their phones. Our second audience are young adults, at the ages of 18 to 25 years. This generation of consumers are crucial to our campaign as they have immense power in deciding if the app can maintain an exceptional degree of interaction, possess a smooth user interface with fluid navigation, and be able to stay relevant with its customers and current interests. Young adults are the largest users of mobile apps that also have an immense influence on the company and its future revenue. The success of the app will

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be determined by this target market. The young adults targeted for our app will have interests in food sustainability, ethics, and organic farming. They are willing to spend more money on organic foods or have parents who buy organic for the household. They will either have grown up with the grocery chain or have recently gained interest with PCC and its products and values as they are likely to perceive themselves as social responsible and environmentally conscious. The final audience are teenagers, at 13 to 17 years of age. This demographic is known to have grown up with smartphones and are found to be one of the largest consumers of online media and entertainment. However, unlike the young adults of our target market, teenagers are commonly dependent on their parents and as a result, will not make a direct positive impact on PCC regarding sales and revenue. However, they can control how the organization can be perceived based on its online presence and its mobile experience. The app must produce the correct balance of education and entertainment to keep teenagers interested enough to come back for more.

Message: Some key points that are needed to be said can come from members being always welcomed to express their concerns and experiences with management. Also, customers are welcomed to events like cooking with the employees with different local products and try samples. Since they want to have a comfortable environment, employees are encouraged to dress in normal attire, to allow the customer to be expressive rather than intimidating them. The website and social media needs to be consistent through their messages that aligned with values.

Tone: The tone of PCC, its app and promotions will be presented with a warm and friendly voice, partnered with colorful and crisp images. The appealing images will also convey a passionate and enthusiastic consideration for both the customer and the morals the company cherishes. The statements made on the app will reflect the message of the brand by continually connecting their products, events, and stories to the importance of organic and sustainable food industry practices. While the beliefs of PCC will be heavily emphasized, the messages will not be conveyed in a forceful or in demoralizing manner. While the organization highly encourages its customers to become members, there are no systems put in place to coerce individuals to pay the $65 dollar entrance fee. Customers and visitors of the app will be welcomed to an open- minded community where all are welcome to browse and share their own ideas on the app. Since the store merely puts emphasis on eating great tasting, sustainable, and organic foods, a right all individuals should have, there will be no need to push a one sided agenda or force their customers to act or believe in a restricted set of beliefs.

Focus: PCC emphasizes on a healthy community for people and for the environment. These key factors include:

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1. Planting community gardens- PCC provides free communal gardens where customers can grow their own vegetables. a. Interaction with co-ops, non-profit organizations b. Coming together- being the examples of people that shows our planet is more important than our profits 2. “We operate on a Triple Bottom Line, always balancing our economic, social, and environmental impact and results.” a. Ethical consumption- Reject vendors who have been corruptive in the past. b. Sustainable policies- Apply policies in store that exemplify sustainability. c. Honest Products- Give an honest price, for an honest product. d. Green Stores- Location of our stores need to be clean with the process of waste and non-perishable goods. e. Healthy Community- promote healthful products with healthful recipes. f. Fair Trade- Never over-price our products, will match any product from other stores.

Call-to-Action: Some of the reasons that people would want to download the app, is to be part of a community that is tightly-connected with purpose and dignity. People want to be included in progressive messages and groups, and we believe that people would want to try out the app to find a common purpose with others in their communities. Another reason would be through a more technological that provides this kind of thing. As technology grows more and more complex, people want to have an app that is simple, yet efficient, that differentiates PCC from other apps and more importantly, differentiates from different grocery chains.

IMC Marketing Mix Product: To increase the recognition of the PCC brand, we want to mainly focus on establishing the app for PCC on smart devices first. ● PCC Application: App would include the following: a. Live feeds and 360 photo/Different Views (farms and stores) b. Stories of famers and food companies (suppliers) c. Geo fencing: show notifications of sales/events if close by a store location d. Recipes e. Store locators w/map f. Departments, their products with real time inventory count per specified store location g. Online delivery links for Interact and Amazon h. Events calendar and weekly specials

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Purpose The purposes of making this PCC app are to send out more messages and establish a closer relationships with our target audiences.

Price: The PCC will be free.

Place: The PCC app will be available for download in the Apple App store, Google Play, and on other popular mobile app sites.

Promotion: Advertising can come from the following channels of media: ● Facebook - Posting constant news and events relative to our common values. ● Instagram - Posting stories of farmers and employees and why they stay with PCC. ● Twitter - Posting currents deals and events for customers and suppliers. ● Television (news) - Provide a classic television Ads that appeal to the different target markets. ● Radio - providing a classic ad via radio through a music/news station.

Marketing Tactics This app is going to be our main marketing tactic. We will be sharing eye- grabbing recipes according to seasons and holidays, as well as relevant issues regarding the food industry and the environment. Users will find this information useful and use other appealing features like 360 video, thus will spend more time on the app. We will do this by staying up-to-date with current trends on social media.

Budget PCC would start at a $45,000 budget to complete the following: ● App team a. Software engineer- The app would have to be created and monitored, thus PCC would have to plan a paid internship to save on labor and costs. The worker would work part-time, constantly updating and improving the app. Internship would cost $25,000/year. b. 360° Video/ Pictures- PCC will buy camera equipment to take pictures and videos. PCC can acquire a good camera and decent 360° view cameras for $10,000. Thus, the 360 videos would be streamed to the app. ● Advertising (marketing) team

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a. Advertising- Classical advertisements like television and radio would differ, since PCC would try to negotiate different deals. PCC will pay $5,000 in these classical advertisements to promote the app. b. Content creators of the advertising- Hiring a content creator for a deal would be beneficial for PCC. PCC can also negotiate terms and agreements for the package that they can get from content creators. PCC should set aside $5,000 for content creators for the app. Content creators would have to use the app in a creative way to show how easy the app is. They can either use this budget for only one creator or accumulate different creators for different events. c. Fan creations- PCC can host a commercial contest to members of PCC. Members of the PCC family can produce ads of any marketing channel to promote the app. Whoever is the most creative, voted on by members of PCC, wins the cash prize of $5,000.

Timetable In a timely manner, PCC can have a timeline of one year. Within the first three months, they can promote the app, telling the customers what the app is about. They can also begin the member contest in this timeline, so they can have a reasonable amount of time to launch both the app and the winning advertisement. From April through June, we can see if the app has quirky, ineffective data and to see whether or not the app is useful to our customers. We would like to see if the app is compatible with the different types of mobile devices. From July through December, we can collect data of performances to determine whether or not the app is being reviewed as a positive/negative effect on customers.

Performance Evaluation/Measuring Success Measure success: App 1. Number of downloads- Collect the data per month of how many downloads the app is actively collecting. 2. Reviews of app - PCC should monitor all different review sites, Yelp being the biggest contributor. They should also review the Android/Apple stores and constantly be answering questions on all sites, so there is no confusion for the customer. 3. Average time spent on app everyday- Keep track of data of how many times a customer may go on the app to make an order. 4. Frequency of shopping- collect data of every sign-in and whether or not the customer is ordering something or looking for special deals. 5. Social media- See the different views on all channels of social media. For example, we can track the amount of views on YouTube, the amount of “shares” and “Likes” on Facebook, and the “Likes” from Instagram. 6. Storytelling- How many people “like” any particular story on the app, where it can affect different products and services.

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7. Maintain efficient and helpful communication between customers and PCC’s app team.

Conclusion In conclusion, PCC should create an app where it provides different channels of media to educate and provide an easier experience for their customers. This app could be beneficial due to the simplicity and expressiveness that PCC needs to differentiate themselves from other competitors. Building the relationship with local vendors and customers is something you normally do not see in the grocery outlet market. PCC wants to be “the glue” in that relationship, bringing both sides closer together to provide a better environment, better product, and better experiences. PCC can become the main channel between a business and a family.

References Brian, Matt. (2011, July 16). Mobile Apps: A Looks at What Makes a Good App Great. The Next Web. Retrieved from https://thenextweb.com/mobile/2011/07/16/mobile-apps-a-look-at-what-makes-a- good-app-great/

https://www.pccmarkets.com/sustainability/

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