Botanic Marketing Plan 2010

Mouna MAACHE, Anne JACQUINOT, Sophie FILIP

Presentation of the company

Since 1995, France In the Savoie region, by Claude Blanchet. The company is run by a group of horticulturalist families. The head office is in Haute-Savoie, near Geneva. Plants and the natural world are the roots of the company and the reason for its existence. The Botanics goals is to promote a new lifestyle more fulfilling and innovative.
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Macro environmental analysis

c Political: The growing power of the ecological political party in France. c Economic factors: The economical crisis with less budget for leisure. c Socio-cultural: Publics awareness of the environmental issues and the raising number of retired people in the society. c Technological: New discoveries to do with the effects of the pesticides on the environment and its impact on human health. c Legal: Laws and regulations about the protection of the environment.

The market analysis

Botanic comes from the French word botanique; botany in English, which is strongly associated with the companys know-how and offer. Products: Garden products and pet shop. The company has also a biological food section. Every product respects the environment. The market: Based on the ecological development, leisure such as gardening.

Competition

Direct competitors - Other garden centers: Jardiland, Vive le jardin, Jardinerie Truffault, Gamm vert & Hermes Jardinerie (focused on ecological gardening) Tree nurseries

Indirect competitors Ecological and garden section in supermarkets.

Market segmentation
Target: - people who like nature - people who like gardening - people who care about the environment - people who want natural, ecological and organic products

Principally, people who are 30 to 70 years old, they like gardening and live mainly in houses, and finally they have enough leisure time.
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Marketing-mix

Product: Products related to the garden, the pets and the biological food. Promotion: Development of the customers loyalty with a club, flyers and catalogs in recycled paper, internet website. Place: 59 shops in France and 6 companies in Italy

Price: Depends of the product but the products : middle-of-the-range

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Strengths & Weaknesses Opportunities & Threats analysis

Positioning
We found out that our business was perceived by our existing clients as having a quite good ecological positioning and a quite good services to customers in comparison to most of our direct competition. But we have to develop a better services to the customers in order to be better than the tree nurseries. (graphic in annex).

SOURCES OF INFORMATIONS: The web site of the company : http://www.botanic.com Interview with the director of the shop Botanic in Troyes, Miss GUYONNEAU.
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Marketing strategy
See annex 1

Next year Botanic will develop a landscape gardeners service, mainly for our existing customers, as well as to attract new customers. In parallel, Botanic will promote the existing services and products. Furthermore, we will open our own garden training center in the last quarter of next year.

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Desired market segmentation

We will target our own customers at first because they already know our values and the quality of our products. They might be interested in an advice service. We will also try to gain new customers interested in a landscape gardening service and customers who want a beautiful garden and dont like or have no time.

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Desired marketing-mix
Product: Create a new service: department of landscape gardening in each Botanic shop. Place: In each of the 59 shop of Botanic. Promotion: - Recycled paper flyers to be handed-in to the customer within the shops. - Banners on company website and advertising in gardening magazines like Rustica Price: - Less expensive that traditional landscape gardener. - Different options are available.
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Marketing objectives as a result of the SWOT

Strength into an Opportunity: As we are the leader in our market and enjoy a good reputation, we have to expand our service faster and better. Strength that may become a Threat: We will try to keep our prices down and our quality high to make it difficult for our competitors. With the landscape gardening service we will be closer to the customer. Weakness into an Opportunity: We will take advantage of our opportunity with the expenditure of ecological gardening to develop a new service. Weakness that may become a Threat: We will minimize the weakness by launching our landscape gardening service. We will also try to avoid the threat of losing our employees by maintaining improved employee relations by teaching them landscape gardening.
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Position gaps
See annex 2

We will keep our ecological position and try to improve it. We will also improve our customers loyalty and the contact with our customers in order to minimize the perceptual gap with our new service because its customized. For example, we will emphasize the politeness and contact of our employees towards our customers: Employees will ask to be called by their first name in order to create a better relationship with the customer (They will know and trust our employees).

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Sales forecast
Our landscape gardening service will be approximately 20 or 25% cheaper than the traditional gardening service. The average price of this service is: 3,000 Euros for the all inclusive options for an average garden. We are expected to operate 5 gardens per months. Next year, our revenue with our new service is expected to be: 115,000 Euros.

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Main cooperative bodies and retaining marketing activities

A few companies should be considered for collaboration: o GoodPlanet Association that promotes the respect of the environment. To increase our reputation. o Partnerships with new local biological farmers or producers in order to sell their products in our shops (Honey as an example). o Parternship with HANDICAP INTERNATIONAL every Christmas.

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Developing new products and its pricing

Service: we create a landscape service in each stores of Botanic. The objective is to accompany the customers in the development of their garden. Many garden owners buy qualitative products for their garden, but they dont have the experience, nor the knowledge, when installing their garden. Quality of service: when the customer asks for an estimate for a garden to be installed, first we analyze the request within one week and than inform the customer. Finally, within 3 days of customers confirmation, a date is set to launch the project. Pricing: If people dont buy the plants at Botanic, the price of the project would be more expensive. Price will be between 150 and 6 500. Its depends on the level of installation of the garden.
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Marketing activities, including service marketing

Direct marketing: dedicated flyers. Sales promotion: advertising within Botanics stores. Public relations: articles in garden magazines.

We are going to revise the following quality of service standards: o the quality of our employees (politeness as an example). o how to increase clients satisfaction rates.

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Gantt scheme
See annex 3

WHAT

WHO

WHEN 14 December beginning of March beginning of December TOTAL COSTS

COST

COMMENTS

Flyers in postal boxes of Marketing households towards year-end Manager Sales In-store sales promotion Manager Marketing Articles in garden magazines Manager

3 000 Database in France Distribute near the 5 000 department of plants In the local newspaper 15 000 or in garden magazine

23 000

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Control bodies and control tools

The members of the marketing control committee will meet regularly on the first Thursday of every month. We want to compare the new service to the satisfaction of the customers. The control tools mainly include company reports, satisfaction surveys (clients and employees), marketing busget and Gantt scheme.

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Control by monthly milestones

Jan Marketing activity Animation for Christmas Print Advertising, 1 page, full color during 8 weeks when its time to start gardening Mothers day (May 30th) Halloween The Ecological week in our shops
End of the month

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

June

July

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

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Control by weekly milestones

Activity

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat/ Sun

All the employees in the shop to take care of the customers Gardening workshop Weekly meeting

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Criteria of success
Based on this years results and performance, we would achieve a new ecological engagement label.

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