Week 10 EOC: Promotion Without Discounts

I'm going to promote "Joysticks" by hosting tournaments every week, with prizes for the winners. These tournaments will feature a variety of video game genres, each with its own theme. This will get the word going, the mood active, and people coming for more.

Also, one of the ways I'm going to spread word is through video games. First of I have and I play a lot of video games. When you play video games online, through your ip address, the game will try to pair you with people around you. That’s why when you try play video online in Vegas, you will most likely end up playing with people from Las Vegas. That how I’m going to find reach my target market. I already know they like video games, because they are playing one, and I already know they are from Las Vegas, because they usually display it, so all I have to do is send them a message through the game. Or I could even play with them, establish a relationship with them, and that way they will feel more interested in coming to my restaurant/bar.

Week 9 EOC: Three great mission statements

The three mission statements that, for me, are the best are:

Ricky Bubna

"To provide excellent service to our  customers and employees with the best experience in our environment and expertise in the food and bar industry. We believe in providing the best for our customers."



Jose Mayorga

"At, World Football House, we promise to deliver the football experience like only live stadiums can. We breathe life into televised matches. The rivalries are real and jerseys are worn in allegiance like a heart on a sleeve."



Peter Sullivan

"To provide quality service and product to the patrons of the restaurant, using creative and advanced ideas about brewing beer."



The reason I liked this three it's because they didn't focused on what they sale, but instead they focused on the services they offer for their customers, they concentrated on the customers rather than the products. As the book says  "...a company’s mission should not be stated as making more sales or profits—profits are only a reward for creating value for customers. Instead, the mission should focus on customers and the customer experience the company seeks to create." (Marketing: An Introduction, pp. 41)

Week 8 EOC: Creative Content

My major is Audio Production, but since I’m only in my second quarter, I don’t feel like I have the knowledge still to be able to do a good Radio or TV commercial. My plan is to script one of those, or if inspiration hits me, both. I have never used Photoshop before, but I think I could learn the basics fairly easily, and since that doesn’t require much equipment, I will try to take a picture of the place and edit it in Photoshop to make it look how I would like it to be.

To sum up, I will definitely do a script of a radio or TV commercial, and I will try to Photoshop a picture of the place to give it more or less the appearance I’m looking for.

Implementation Evaluation Control

“Marketing is managing profitable customer relationships. The twofold goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value and to keep and grow current customers by delivering satisfaction” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.5)

The implementation evolution control at Joysticks will work as follows: Customers will be able to suggest what games they are looking forward to, so that we could buy them once they are released. If the game is already out, but we didn’t buy it because we thought it wouldn’t attract that many people, we could be corrected if we see that enough people are asking for it. This will also work for consoles, our vintage consoles and vintage games. And they could also suggest what theme to us for our next tournament.

Obviously, we would also like to know if they enjoyed our food, service, or ambiance. And since our food its kind of an experiment, because some of them will be recipes imported from Venezuela, we want to know if they really appeal to the people in Las Vegas.

Customers will be able to do this suggestions through several medias, they could post it in our website or Facebook page, they could send it to us via twitter, they could leave a note in our suggestion box. Since we want to keep close relationships with our customers, our most encouraged way would be by directly speaking with anyone in the restaurant.

All we want is that our customers feel confortable, because we know it’s a bit hard to convince gamers to play outside their comfort zone. We want them to come every week for the tournaments and every day just be with their friends and enjoy some nice games and food. And we want that people that are not planning on playing video games still enjoy every second they are at Joysticks.

“The key to building lasting customer relationships is to create superior customer value and satisfaction. Satisfied customers are more likely to be loyal customers and to give the company a larger share of their business” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.14)

Price

“More and more, marketers have adopted good-value pricing strategies—offering just the right combination of quality and good service at a fair price.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.277)

Prices are a delicate thing, they must be just right. We don’t want our prices to be too high that no one wants to pay that much, and we don’t want them to be too low that people think we are not good enough.

“Consumers at all income levels—including affluent consumers—are cutting back on their spending and seeking greater value from their purchases.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.179)

First of all, our games will be free, but we will charge between $5-$10 for the buy ins for the tournaments to make them a bit more exclusive; by making our games free, and by having the popular games as soon as they launch (hopefully thanks to our partnership with GameStop) many kids, adolescents, etc. who maybe cant afford buying those games will feel more attracted to come to our restaurant, and once they are there, they will most likely spend money on food, snacks and drinks. Since our menu it’s going to have a lot dishes from Venezuela, which require the ingredients to be imported, we would first have to figure out how much would it cost to import such ingredients before setting the price on the food, but how it will most likely go is that snacks and drinks are going to be between $5-$10, the food is going to be between $8-$20, and alcoholic beverages $5-$40 (depending on the drinks.)

“Although costs are an important consideration in setting prices, cost-based pricing is often product driven. The company designs what it considers to be a good product, adds up the costs of making the product, and sets a price that covers costs plus a target profit.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.276)

Promotion

Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it. (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.54)

The way Joysticks is going to do this is by hosting videogame tournaments each week and a throwback day twice a month. The way the tournaments are going to work is that every week there will be a different tournament for a different game, Joysticks will try to keep as varied as possible, for example on week it could be Call of Duty which is shooter, and the next week it could be Street Fighter which is a fighting game, this way Joysticks will appeal every gamers taste. And to keep with our policy of putting the customer first, we will select games by having them vote on the restaurant’s website.

The way the “Throwback Day” is going to work is that twice month, all the consoles in Joysticks are going to be replaced with vintage consoles like Atari, NES, Nintendo 64, etc. and vintage games. Again, we will decide which games and consoles to acquire by having our customers vote on the website.

“…the company designs promotion programs that communicate the value proposition to target consumers and persuade them to act on the market offering.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.31)

The way we are going to reach our target consumers is pretty simple and cheap. First of all lest remember that our target consumers are gamers, and with them, all the people that may join them, either friends or family. But our goal is to attract gamers. Now, when you play video games online like Call of Duty, the game will usually recognize you ip address and that way know where you are from, then it will match you up with people from the same location. So basically, by playing online, I get to meet and play with gamers from Las Vegas, and after that I could just send them a message with the ad for Joysticks or redirect them to our facebook or twitter page.

Distribution

“…beyond practicing good customer relationship management, firms must also practice good partner relationship management.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.31)

That’s why Joysticks will try to partner with GameStop in the near future. This way we could be able to get discounts on consoles, games or other equipment, and maybe gift cards for the winners of our weekly tournaments. And since they target the same market as we do, but with a different product, we could benefit from each other by them advertising us and us advertising them.

“In the past, many companies used a single channel to sell to a single market or market segment. Today, with the proliferation of customer segments and channel possibilities, more and more companies have adopted multichannel distribution systems—often called hybrid marketing channels. Such multichannel marketing occurs when a single firm sets up two or more marketing channels to reach one or more customer segments. The use of multichannel systems has increased greatly in recent years.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.320)

Our other goal is to make Joysticks a known brand, that everyone recognizes the logo. Then another market would be selling shirts, hats, and other things with restaurant’s logo, like the Hard Rock does. Then we could sell that merchandise in the restaurant itself, or GameStop if they do join us, and maybe stores like Hot Topic. And people like it and start to wear, that will work as free advertisement for Joysticks.

“In some markets, the distribution system is complex and hard to penetrate, consisting of many layers and large numbers of intermediaries.” (Marketing: An Introduction, pp.325)