Final Marketing Project

Hypothesis:

Expansion is inevitable for WVC at its headquarters, Oquendo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our facility which holds 66,000 sq. of lab / meeting space, is ready to expand starting next year, 2016. One of the services we provide, among many others, is brewed coffee/hot tea in small coffee pots. We are not going to be able to keep up with the demand of coffee with the expansion bringing in more clients.  Opening a Coffee shop like Starbucks would be a solution and a profitable idea for the company.

Analysis

At its core, the Oquendo Center is a facility designed for professionals to share, communicate, teach and learn. It is a truly incomparable venue which houses over 66,000 square feet of state-of-the-art space devoted to practical, clinical and knowledge-based learning for any medical profession. It can also serve as an open canvas for any meeting or event. The Oquendo Center has earned the distinction as one of the only facilities of its kind in the country.

At Oquendo Center we cater to two different costumers, those who work for the veterinary field and those who work for the human medicine field. The veterinary clients will try to save money in any way while the human medicine clients will spend whatever it takes to make their events better than their competition. The only thing both fields have in common is coffee, they love their coffee!

Starbucks restricts its dealings to corporations, companies or groups of people. It engages primarily in joint venture and licensing agreements with stores where it did not originally have the ability to create its own store outlet.

The results of the survey conducted at oquendo Center were not surprising, eighty-nine percent of customers/attendees are coffee drinkers. The majority prefer Starbucks brand over any other major chain. Opening a Starbucks cafe at Oquendo Center will be a profitable added value to the company.

" Starbucks record financial and operating performance in Q2 was driven by our people all around the world yet woven together by one common thread-industry leading partner(employee) facing and customer facing innovation" said Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman and CEO. "Innovation is the force that will continue to drive our business and enable to expand and increase revenues and profits.

For 87 years, the Oquendo Center and Western Veterinary Conference has been among the most highly anticipated events in the veterinary community. More than a conference, it has become and industry institution, a place where the best and brightest congregate , where the latest breakthroughs are announced, the most innovative techniques are shared. All these give us a reason to partner with and bring together two successful companies.

The Dark Side of Marketing Research

Marketing has always had a dark side or questionable ethics when it comes to get the attention of the public for their own profit. I am going to give you one of the many great cases where marketing played a big role in saving a mayor industry: The tobacco industry.
The next article talks about the tobacco industry during the 60's thru the 80's and their efforts to stay in "power".
During the introduction of low yield cigarettes, manufacturers were concerned that consumers may become weaned from smoking. These manufactures employed tactics to lead consumers to perceive filtered and low yield brands were safer relative to other brands. This tactics included using cosmetics filters, using medical menthol, generating misleading data on tar and nicotine, etc. "Advertisements of filtered and low tar cigarettes were intended to assure smokers concerned about the health risks of smoking and to present respective products as an alternative to quitting. Corporate documents demonstrate that cigarettes brands described as "light or "ultra-light" because of low machine measured yields"(tobaccocontrol.bmj.com).
 The advertising spending for new low yield products from 1976 to 1978 was awesome and commanded a very disproportionate share of the firms' total advertising budgets—share-of-voice (SOV). Contemporary advertising trade accounts described this promotional flurry as “a numbers game that boggles the mind while promising to relieve the lungs” New brands and product line extensions (variations of familiar brands) were introduced with major budgets as shown in the box below.

“The phenomenal growth of hi-fi brands is, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hi-fi expenditures have grown from 7% SOV in 1972 to 45% in 1977, much faster than actual segment growth”.⁶²“[T]he low tar revolution [of 1976ff] is not ignited by a particular event, such as a Reader's Digest article, a Surgeon General's Report, etc.; it happens quietly based on technologically improved products and consumers' desire for a reasonable compromise and the industry's massive advertising support leading category development”(The dark side of marketing seemingly Light cigarettes: successful images and failed fact, R.W Pollay, T. Dewhirst)..