Joy Daycare is a recently established business that has been in existence for six months. The center offers full and part time day care services for toddlers between the ages of three to five years. In addition, the center has modern child development facilities to ensure that toddlers grow up in an all rounded environment. The center also offers continuous training and development to care givers. Subsequently, the above acts as its’ key differentiation strategy. Joy Daycare serves its market needs by providing accessible, friendly and fairly priced services. Furthermore, statistics in this industry indicate that this market base is slowly expanding as parents resort to long working hours in order to support the rising cost of living. According to Kotler and Keller (2009) a market needs analysis is very significant during the development of a viable marketing plan.
Market objectives
Consequently, this marketing plan was designed in order to fulfill the following marketing objectives;
- Develop customer loyalty through excellent care for toddlers and top-notch customer service for parents
- Expand our market share by 10% annually
- Strive to promote Joy Daycare to be the preferred brand name
Market segmentation
Iacobucci (2011) underscore that market segmentation is highly critical for businesses success simply because no brand has the ability to meet each and every need of individuals within a certain target market. Initially, mass marketing was effective, but has become economically non-viable in the changing global marketplace (Kotler & Keller, 2009). This implies that identifying a core group of customers otherwise known as market segmentation is the key to market objectives achievement (Iacobucci, 2011). Against this background, market segmentation for Joy Daycare was identified based on the following four aspects; demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioristic. Joy Daycare market segment is made up of middle to upper market married couples within the ages 30 to 37 living within a 10-mile radius from the center. In addition, we allow flexibility whereby mothers can opt for part-time or full time services. This market segment was chosen because we want to create confidence in first time mothers who have high purchasing power. This is crucial for sustaining our business profitability in the long run.
Target market
As epitomized above, Joy Daycare business is directed to one specific market segment that of middle to upper market families whereby both parents are in professional jobs. These parents are always working and most of them hold more than one job. As a result, they require the services of a reliable daycare. This market was targeted because they have stable income and are willing to spend extra to ensure their children get better services. In addition, the services offered by Joy Daycare comes in handy as they no time to take care of their children. Furthermore, this segment is growing and this guarantees sustainability of our business in future. This changing long hour’s trend will be the key driver of Joy Daycare business. Consequently, we hope to tap into this target market in order to achieve the market objectives identified above.
SWOT Analysis
Kotler and Keller (2009) underscore that a situational analysis is never complete without a detailed SWOT analysis that enables a marketer to evaluate organizational strength before embarking on development of a marketing strategy. Most importantly, SWOT enables a company to anticipate external threats and internal weaknesses in order to come with effective strategies to counteract these factors (Kotler &Keller, 2009). Against this background, the results of Joy Daycare SWOT analysis were as follows:
Market positioning
Joy Daycare will position itself against competitors as a center that offers advanced day care services by incorporating learning and developmental programs within its curriculum. Consequently, in order to achieve this positioning, the center offers specialized training for care givers and teachers’ to ensure they are qualified to deliver the promised services. Apparently, specialized training is the key factor that differentiate our business from competitors and we hope that the good reputation will work in our favor. Moreover, we will strive to deliver innovative learning programs that are unlikely to be replicated by our competitors. We understand that most parents within our target market have been tutoring their children at home; thus we hope to continue with this trend within our premises. This strategy will assist us to gain parents confidence. Furthermore, we also hope it will generate word of mouth advertising.
References
- Iacobucci, D. (2011). Marketing management: 2010 custom edition. Mason, OH: South- Western Cengage Learning.
- Kotler, P., & Keller, K. (2009). Marketing management (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.