Promotional Strategy Essay

1.1 Background Nowadays, cafà © is one of the most demanded businesses. Cafà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s business development continues to grow day by day, so differentiation every cafà © has its own advantages. For example, there are cafà © for reading books, watch live music, watch football, meeting, or just as extra facility (such as in the workshop, or in the car saloon), etc. Cafà © taken from French language, that means coffee, but later become a place where people can drink not only coffee but also other beverages. In Indonesia, cafà © means a simple place, but quite interesting where people can also eat. Cafà © regarding to common encyclopedia is a place that serve food and beverages or place used to eat. Cafà © regarding to The New Collins Dictionary & Theosaurus is a cheap restaurant that serving an easy cooked food. Cafà © is a place that similar to restaurant but has a special restriction. From definitions above author conclude that cafà © is a place like restaurant with a smaller scope that s erve food and beverages with variety facilities such as live music or free internet that provided for their customer. Hanging out with friends, or family definitely becoming something that makes us happy. Especially if it is we do in a relaxed atmosphere in a room or a special place. There are several ways you can do to it, especially the design space for a coffee, tea or a chat with the family, namely by: Create a comfortable sofa and put in seating space, the comfort it would certainly have made us feel at home and comfort to sharing stories. Put your stereo or home theater set in the corner of the room, where the sound effects are produced not disturb your ears nor anyone else was in the room. Put some ancillary equipment such as coffee maker, toaster, microwave or dispencer, which makes us easy to have drinks or warm food to be able to linger together. Create the atmosphere is not too bright and exotic with the right lighting. Can be placed lamp or standing lamp and other trinkets enough to read but perfect for hanging out together. If some of above things are done, they may be called a cafà ©. Beside for relaxing and hanging out with friends, cafà © nowadays also become a place to work. University of British Columbia has recently launched a study on the effectiveness of the work based on the level of noise in the workplace. More than 300 participants were asked to complete a series of tasks to test the concentration of thought. At the same time, the noise level in the room is constantly changing, ranging from very quiet until the sounds were deafening. As reported by Genius Beauty, the participants proved to be more easily accomplishing tasks in a room that has a noise level of average sound. Atmosphere in cafà © that were not so quite but not disturb the concentration able to make them more comfortable at the thought. â€Å"And the idea of just wandering off to a cafà © with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss† J.K. Rowling (Author of Harry Potter) 1.2 Brief History of Kofielosophy Cafà © Most of restaurans and cafes in Bandung has wi-fi facilities nowadays. One of those cafes is Kofielosophy. It is located in Jl. Anggrek 36. Kofielosophy was established on June 2010. Since the owner of Kofielosophy love to work while relaxing, the owner builds a cafà © that provide food, beverage, entertainment, background music, and also meeting room. There are a lot of cafes in Bandung, which provide wi-fi for work, but there are just a few which provide a meeting room inside the cafà ©, especially in Bandung Central area. What is the atmosphere like? What does Kofielosophy look like i.e.: furniture, lighting, colors, art, etc? its very classy and elegant, relaxed with Indonesian-European sophistication. Kofielosophy have small cool stage on the second floor. This cafà © create a comfortable casual dining experience through their creative walls, woody and white walls with many accecorries , even their staff wear all black uniform And how about the outdoor seating? Kofielosophy concept is all about relaxed dining atmosphere, with back-sound music. Kofielosophy have a soft lounge area for relaxing, bar, and outdoor seating area for dinners, which is great for relaxing lunch in the sun or dinner. They don’t need any air-conditioning because the atmosphere at the location itself is already fresh. The reason why Kofielosophy still stands out is because they are a fresh injection into the Bandung central area scene. And the mission statement of Kofielosophy is relaxed, sophisticated, accessible casual dining, and peacefully working. The author asks to the Koffielosphy’s management about why they build business in Bandung Central area, and asks about are they like the surrounding area. And Koffielosophy’s told that Bandung Central area is sophisticated, neat, and hard working. They feel their cafà © concept goes hand in hand with that environment and suits their patrons perfectly. They also have very lovely neighbors; they all support each other, which are other cafes and restaurants. Even the others had more customers. About the staffs and employees of Koffielosophy, they are dynamic, friendly and of course they wear black shirts. Koffielosophy’s encourage their staff to talk to customers and be educated about its food and beverages and the facilities. Koffielosophy is also offer many else beside food and beverages, Koffielosophy can lease a place on the 2nd floor for family gathering, birthday party, wedding party, karaoke, music events, or watch football. And company meeting, seminar on t he meeting room. 1.3 Problem Identification Kofielosophy cafà © has actually managing its company poorly. It has some problems that need to be fixed. The managements of Kofielosophy are also open for insights and suggestions from visitors. The management of Kofielosophy realized that they are not as good as their other competitors in Bandung such as Bober cafà ©, etc. Therefore they would like to improve theire competitiveness on order to be able to compete with the existing competitors. There are some problems facing in the Kofielosophy, which are: first, the promotional program of the Kofielosophy is not attractive, not creative and not innovative.   In addition, there are some other things have become problems of Kofielosophy, that are the waiters in the cafà © are less communicative and tend to be passive (it means that the waiter at this cafà © is less able to show kindness and friendliness to consumer who come, they are less close to consumers), and then Kofielosophy is less able to care or maintenance of facilities they have (there are some facilities that are not functioning properly). 1.4 Research Objectives This research will be conducted to analyze, observe, and answer the specific problems with a valid method and knowledge. The purposes of this research are: 1. The author wants to find out how the managements of Koffielosophy make strategic breakthrough promotional programs, effective, and efficient. 2. The author wants to know about the service quality improvement of Koffielosophy to increase competitive strength 3. The author wants to help find solutions of problems facing in Koffielosophy The personal objectives are to fulfill the final thesis requirement for the bachelor of management business degree in School of Business and Management ITB, participate in giving ideas and recommendations for development of Koffielosophy, and also gaining experiences on managing a cafà © as basic knowledge for personal future business. Finally after all of the preliminary objectives are met then it will be able to find the gap analysis and the solution which will lead to the conclusion that will show what should the management do to improve the quality of the Koffielosophy Cafà ©. 1.5 Problem Limitation In this final project, there are several limitations of scope did by the researcher; which are the following: 1. The scope of study in this research is to know about the promotional management and promotional strategies improvement of Koffielosophy to increase their competitive strength 2. This research has been limited only to see costumers perceptions of Koffielosphy, and what should Koffielosophy do to attract customers and increase competitive strengths of Koffielosophy 3. The research will be identified through some theories (Literature Study), internal data and some articles/journals, which then saw the real facts on ground like Observaton Jump (Field Observation), In-depth Interview on customers and management of Koffielosophy itself; and the distribution of questionnaires. 4. The spread of the questionnaires only to customers of Koffielosophy, which is located in Jl. Anggrek no 36, Bandung Central Area, as the respondents of this research 5. The analysis result of this research is a case study and based on the situation of surroundings and the date resulted during the research. The observation of this research was done in Koffielosophy that is located in Jl Anggrek no 36, Bandung Central Area. To reduce the possibility of digressing from the topic, the scope of research shall be limited by these specifications: The scope research is only to measure Koffielosophy customer’s perception toward the Koffielosophy’s current management promotions condition, therefore a study of Koffielosophy current internal management is not too necessary. The research and discussion explored is all a customers based problem not the management or the employees of the Koffielosophy. The condition that is discussed in this report is based on the condition of Koffielosophy on the latest February 2013, which was the last month of the observation. 1.6 Research Questions In order to achieve the research objectives, requires some questions according to the author problems are discussed, such as: 1. Who are the potential targets of Koffielosophy? 2. How customer’s perception about the quality of service of Koffielosophy? 3. Who are the competitors of Koffielosophy? 4. What differences of Koffielosophy with their competitors? 5. What should Koffielosophy do (promotional strategies) to attract consumers to come to Koffielosophy? 6. How are the marketing strategies for Koffielosophy? 7. How is the competitive condition? 8. How is the public awareness of Koffelosophy? 9. How to increase the revenue or profit of Koffielosophy? The research questions design will mainly focus on the quality of Koffielosophy management promotions according to the customer’s perception, especially in Bandung Central Area, which in the end will result the perceived management promotion and also how to take back the customers of Koffielosophy. This thing is conducted in order to know what is the current perception about Koffielosophy of the Bandung Central Area’s customers and communities, which will give the management some suggestions, what kind of promotion strategies of Koffielosophy should be improved in order to take back the existing customers in Bandung Central Area and also to create the superior promotion management according to the customers perceptions 1.7 Research Methodology In order to help the researcher collect proper data during the research and investigation, some methods that will be used are: 1. Field Observation (Exploratory Research) Field observation is an observation that the author will do directly to condition around Kofielosophy. The author will observe about five things that related about the research topics, which are based on the facilities; then based on the services; then based on the prices; and then based on the promotions. In field observation, the author can find what the customer’s want and need; and then through the field observation, the author can get some recommendation to the Kofielosophy, especially what should they do for marketing planning in the future. Through the field observation, the author can know about the competition in around Bandung central area, and author can get, which is the key competitor, where SWOT analysis can be used to know how much the condition of music cafà © competition. 2. In-depth Interview (Exploratory Research) In-Depth Interview also belongs to qualitative method. In-Depth interview, we have confidential and secure conversation between the author as the interviewer, and customers as a respondent continually, and management of Kofielosophy. In this method, the interviewer also has to make sure about the topics that are crucial to ask for the reasons of the purpose and the issues of the survey in the conversation and the client have to approve it. The author as researcher hopes they will give the best and honest answers to be considered in applying the Kofielosophy. In addition, the interviewer will also interview the management of Kofielosophy; where the interviewer will get more information’s about the cafà ©. After that, the author will get important variable that can help me to create the questionnaire later. 2. Questionnaire (Descriptive Research) For quantitative research, the primary data collection instrument is the questionnaire. To enhance the analysis and facilitate the classification of responses, into meaningful categories, questionnaire includes both substantive questions that are relevant to the purposes of the study and pertinent demographic questions. Questions can be open-minded (requiring answers in the respondent’s own word) which yield more information but are more difficult to code and analyze, or close-ended (the respondent merely checks the appropriate answer from a list of options) which are limited to the alternative responses provided. And then, all questions in questionnaire are based on the field observation and in-depth interview. 1.8 Report Structure This report structure is discussed here to describe how the research was done in steps; therefore readers will be able to understand the report holistically. This report also consist of chapters explained below: 1. Chapter I: Introduction This chapter explains about the overview; research background, problem statement, research objectives, research questions and research scopes, and the short explanation of research methodology. 2. Chapter II: Theoretical Foundation This chapter explains theoretical foundation from various literatures regarding the subject. It is started with the theoretical concept about marketing generally. 3. Chapter III: Research Methodology This chapter explains detailed methodology use to address the problems, including the research concept, research steps, the research objectives, and also the methods, and data gathering 4. Chapter IV: Data Analysis This Chapter present the data gathered about the company, such as brief history, organizational structure, survey and interview results, also the primary data from the questionnaires spread to customers. 5. Chapter V: Conclusions and Recommendations This chapter incorporates a discussion of the result, a conclusions, and a project for the problem formulated, which is a conclusion about the customers perception toward Kofielosophy, and recommendations to Kofielosophy what should they do in the future planning.