Factors Affecting Marketing Strategy Term Paper

Factors Affecting Marketing Strategy - Term Paper Example In this sense, Dr. Thunder can be asserted as being a low-involvement brand. There have been no major advertising campaigns run by Wal-Mart to market Dr. Thunder as a brand. For this reason, the recommended marketing strategy is a newly developed. The reason behind developing a new marketing strategy for Dr. Thunder is to highlight the subliminal attraction of the brand, as the brand name is similar to internationally popular Dr. Pepper. Market Size, Performance and Growth From the review of U.S Census on the size of the market segment to which the marketing campaign of Dr. Thunder would target, it has been found that the marketing campaign would target around 3 million Americans. Over the past 10 years, it has been noticed that the target market segment has grown for about 7.7% (United States Census Bureau, 2013). Moreover, the target segment would expand by another 8.9% in the coming ten years. Upon understanding the dynamics of soft drink industry in USA, it is found that the foll owing three factors have an impact on the consumer behavior of this industry: 1. The top most influential factor in this regard is health concerns amongst consumer circles. Consumers perceive that carbonated or fizzy drinks have wrong affects on their health and thus avoid drinking soft drinks at all or usually purchase these drinks. 2. Size and design of the packaging also influences consumer behavior. If a soft drink is offered in a glass bottle, it is not possible for customers to take it home or travel along with a bottled soft drink. On the other hand, a canned or plastic bottled soft drink would be seen as facilitating and thus consumers would prefer to purchase it. 3. Lastly, the soft drink industry in the world is perceived as the most competent and saturated industry. Presence of single handedly market share sweeping companies like Pepsi and Coca Cola makes it difficult for other brands to survive in the market (Mise, Nair, Odera, & Ogutu, 2013). Reference Group and Diffusi on of the Marketing Campaign Soft drink brands are usually more popular amongst younger target audience. For this reason, it can be asserted that the most influential reference group for Dr. Thunder would be the social circle of teenagers. As the majority of the US population is comprised by young generation, and the social circle of young audience is identified as the most influential reference group, it can be suggested that a marketing strategy focused on targeting a younger audience would achieve the quickest diffusion rate. Moreover, adopting a deterministic model would help Wal-Mart to the state of acceptance by a particular segment of buyers of Dr. Thunder and overcome the flaws in production and marketing strategies. The diffusion determinants pertaining to Dr. Thunder are the perceived health advantages to customers, low riskiness in purchase, easy to use packaging of the drink and ability to quench thirst (Saha & Theingi, 2009). Diffusion Enhancement Strategy To enhance th e diffusion rate for Dr. Thunder, the marketing strategy would primarily target college and school students. Moreover, the target audience belonging to the age bracket of 25-30 years would also be focused in the marketing strategy. To attract the attention of the target audienc