Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the basic theoretical principles of marketing.

DMUIC

Principles of Marketing

LIPC1140

Individual Assessment Guidelines

April- June 2022 

*Please note that the TCA will be launched at 9am UK time on Tuesday 31^st  May 2022 and is due on same day (31^st  May 2022) before 3 pm UK time.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the basic theoretical principles of marketing.

2. Apply the theoretical knowledge gained to relevant business situations.

3. Present effective marketing analysis in written formats.

A major expectation of all assessments whilst at DMU/DMUIC is that students work in the English language and generate their assignments in the English language.   Initial work should be produced in English not a second language. This means that the use of any language generation/translation or websites is discouraged. The use of such tools may be considered Bad Academic Practice and the consequences outlined in the previous section will apply                     

DMUIC

**** This assignment is due in today ****

Source: Mintel (2021)

The company your work for is Getir, a Turkish company that now operates in London, UK. When you arrived at work today you found your boss waiting for you in reception.  Before you could even get your coat off, he took you straight to the board room, where you found the Board of Directors waiting for you, with a confidentiality agreement for you to sign before anyone would tell you anything.  (The signed agreement would make it illegal for you to talk to anyone outside of that room about what they were going to discuss with you). 

The company you work for is privately owned and has won contracts from various retailers to deliver groceries.  The company has an excellent reputation, underpinned by a first-class delivery service.

The Board have decided that the time has come for the company to start offering national grocery delivery service to members of the public, and it is that which they wanted to discuss with you this morning. 

Given your company’s delivery record, the Board of directors is confident that a national rollout will benefit the company and they want you to report back to them on the marketing of the idea.  They realise that it’s far too early to be developing a marketing plan – to do so would be premature in the extreme.  However, the Board has taken you into its confidence so you can comment on what approach to take in advance of the launch. 

Your task

By 3pm, submit a 2,000-word report for the board to outline the following:

1.    Where do you see your key markets and who would be your main customers?

2.    What pricing strategy should be adopted?

3.    What promotional techniques would you recommend?

4.    Who are your competitors, and which ones will be the most important?

5.    How will the various elements of the marketing environment impact your plans?

In all cases you must explain why you are making your recommendations and justify them fully by using quality academic referencing and marketing theory e.g. PLC, Ansoffs matrix, BCG.

Use the assignment template provided on Blackboard under Assessments folder. Clear headings, subheadings and intext citation using Harvard reference convention. Background information should be relied on as part of research and paraphrased as well as cited accordingly.

Submission date                             Before 3:00.00pm on Tuesday 31^st  May 2022

Submission method                       Electronic (and no other)

Weight towards final grade            50%        Pass mark      40

• Text formatting: - Arial 12, double line spacing.
• Word limit: - 2000 (+/- 10%) suggested.
• Submission: - Via Turnitin (Blackboard)

See assessment support information on page 6. The feedback sheet on the next page gives details of how much weight is put on different aspects of the assignment.  You should bear this in mind when writing your answers. 

Unauthorised Late Submission of Work

The definition of ‘late’ will be after 9.00 a.m. to Blackboard for electronic copy.

Plagiarism and Related Academic Offences

Please refer to your programme handbook for specific details regarding plagiarism and bad academic practice.

Please be Aware:

• You have been warned in the Module Handbook, and in the Regulations, so explaining that your plagiarism was accidental or that you hadn’t been told it was wrong will not be a valid excuse.  

• Plagiarism is an academic offence. You will be referred to the Academic Practice Officer (APO) if we suspect or find evidence of any of the above offences. There will be a full investigation which will delay the release of your marks.  

• Your assignment will not pass if it contains material which has simply been paraphrased or plagiarised from the learning notes or other electronic or printed material.

• You must not ‘cut and paste’ or copy from any on-line or any hard copy sources. 

• The use of only the citation or abstract of an article is not acceptable. 

• You may be expelled from the University for an offence of these types

• Please see the University Guidelines on Plagiarism and Bad Academic Practice for more information on what is acceptable and what is not.

Assessment Support Information                         

Online Grocery Retailing - UK - March 2021

Launch Activity and Innovation

Leading courier foodservice delivery firms pivot toward grocery due to COVID-19

Consumers are demanding faster deliveries for the products they purchase. As we highlight in the Mintel Trend Straight to You, speed is fast becoming the key differentiator in home delivery and brands need to highlight how speedy their delivery services are.

While the likes of Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat had trial partnerships in-place with leading grocers prior to the pandemic, their influence and use within the sector has exploded since the pandemic began 

In particular, Deliveroo and Uber Eats have been active in this area. At the time of writing Co-op, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, and perhaps most notably Aldi are, along with many others, available on Deliveroo while Sainsbury’s, Iceland and Asda, again along with many others, are available via Uber Eats. Options on Just Eat are more limited with the businesses historic reliance on restaurants providing drivers limiting the ability to tap into the grocery demand. However, the businesses new Scoober arm will break down these barriers and has helped Just Eat already sign an exclusive deal with Greggs. 

While born out of the pandemic such partnerships look set to be a feature of the market moving forward, and will break down barriers in convenience to accessing the online channel. At present usage of these services for grocery delivery is very closely linked to their core takeaway audience (see: How Groceries Are Delivered). This is why we have seen the likes of the Co-op looked to advertise its partnership with Deliveroo on-shelf, to grow awareness throughout its customer base.

FIGURE 102: Co-op Deliveroo in-store activation, December 2020

Source: Mintel

Other established names in the courier/private hire market also looked to enter the consumer-retail space because of the pandemic. London-based private hire taxi company Addison Lee launched a click-and-collect service in November 2020, enabling customers to use drivers as their own click-and-collect collectors. The service, AL REQUEST, allows people to get access to everyday items, such as groceries. The taxi delivery service resonate with the Mintel Trend Extend My Brand, which discusses how brands under pressure, in this case falling passenger numbers during lockdowns, are expanding into new sectors to find new business.

Existing couriers joined by a host of new entrants

The demand for delivered groceries not only created a greater role for existing third-party courier firms, it has created a space for a host of new entrants in the market many of which are dedicated grocery services. Many of these are using a ‘Deliveroo-type’ model but focusing solely on the retail channel 

HyperLocal is once such service, a new rapid delivery start-up focused on offering delivery in more rural areas, providing food retailers with a service they do not already have in smaller towns. The venture launched during the first COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 after founder software engineer Ross Walker identified a gap in the market for rural rapid grocery deliveries. Orders are picked by personal shoppers with delivery in as little as 20 minutes.

Foodens.com is a new Somerset-based online platform to connect food suppliers and retailers - from farm shops to delis - to their local customers. The business was set up during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a zero-contact source of food during the crisis.

HyperLocal and Foodens are just two examples of a host of similar services, including Click It Local and Beelivery, which are aiming to provide smaller players with localised delivery access to consumers.

Centralised distribution in the local area, the future?

Just as significant as the growing role for businesses such as Deliveroo and its new-retail focused rivals, has been the explosion in localised centrally-distributed services. Many of these launched in the second half of 2020 or indeed the early months of 2021, and it is clear the rush of entrants is a ‘land-grab’ in this heightened online market. However their operating model, if successful, will prove a significant challenge to the established online order, and indeed the physical convenience market.

Turkish on-demand grocery delivery firm Getir entered the UK in London in January 2021, following a $128m round of investment, initially delivering to 100% of Zone 1 and 80% of Zone 2 before expanding further into London’s Zones. Distinguishing itself from other courier-based firms is the fact that the business has centralised delivery, so is un-reliant on store inventory, allowing for lower levels of potential out of stocks. While describing itself as a delivery-service, the business is essentially a retailer – buying goods from wholesale and selling on at a marked-up price, alongside delivery fees. Part of the businesses rollout plan has been aggressive marketing in the capital, including taking real-estate on the UK’s largest outdoor advertising structure, the IMAX at Waterloo.

FIGURE 103: Getir, IMAX Waterloo advertisement, March 2021

Source: Mintel

Getir is far from alone in launching this type of model into the UK market, and specifically London.

London-based grocery delivery start-up Dija, which officially launched in early March 2021, promises to deliver grocery and other convenience store items within 10-15 minutes of ordering. The company has a shop in central London and its own hyper-local, delivery-only fulfilment centres - so-called “dark stores” - in South Kensington, Fulham and Hackney, with plans to open 20 further hubs, covering central London by the summer. Each hub carries around 2,000 products. A flat delivery fee of £1.99 is charged per order. 

Gorillas launched into London in early 2021, with the German-based business looking to recreate the success it has had in its home territory as a result of the pandemic. Like Getir, the business has been aggressively marketing to customers in early 2021 and notably has branded its dark-store fulfilment centres, the majority of which are found in vacant retail units, under its brand name – creating awareness of the service in the local area.

FIGURE 104: Gorillas order fulfilment in-centre, March 2021

Source: Gorillas PR

Weezy, an on-demand supermarket that delivers groceries in as fast as 15 minutes across London, launched in July 2020. Weezy uses its own delivery personnel on pedal cycles or electric mopeds to deliver goods. As well as working with wholesalers, it also sources groceries from independent bakers, butchers and markets. Following a successful cash injection in January 2021 it plans to expand its grocery delivery service across the UK, with some 40 more fulfilment centres by the end of 2021.

FIGURE 105: Weezy advertisement, London March 2021

Source: Minte 

These are only a select few which are launching into this burgeoning market. Not all survive, but the sums being poured into these businesses from investors and the spend on marketing seen from these firms in early 2021 highlights how serious they are about staking out their slice of the enlarged online grocery market. These are not businesses to challenge the traditional ‘big-shop’ in-home demand, these are best viewed as new convenience operators which just happen to trade online. If successful these new formats will only further accelerate the need and numbers of convenience operators looking to the likes of Deliveroo for partnerships – to allow them to compete in this rapidly growing convenience online market.

Autonomous robot and drone home grocery deliveries

As highlighted in the Mintel Trend Who Needs Humans?, retailers can create more convenient and time-saving paths to purchase by embracing automation, as well as making things easier for their customers. Driverless delivery vehicles and drone deliveries have the potential to play a key role for online grocery retailers wanting to extend their reach as well as meeting customer demand for faster, more flexible delivery options.

In November 2020, the Co-op expanded its use of autonomous robot delivery to 5,000 households in Northampton following a successful trial using same-day robot deliveries from eight of its stores in and around Milton Keynes in 2018 in partnership with Starship Technologies, a leading provider of autonomous delivery services. The robots can travel up to three miles from the store. Customers can choose from a range of more than 1,000 Co-op food and drink items on the Starship Food Delivery app. The service requires customers to share the delivery location by dropping a pin on an interactive map. They are then able to track the journey of the robot in real-time. The Co-op is looking for more towns and cities to operate autonomous deliveries 

Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, launched its first trial of drone home deliveries in October 2020, delivering groceries to shoppers in County Galway, Ireland, within 30 minutes to an hour of an order being made.

Eco-friendlier online grocery deliveries

Consumer research carried out for Mintel’s Online Grocery Retailing – UK, March 2020 report revealed 45% of online grocery shoppers worry about the environmental impact of ordering groceries online 

In October 2020, Asda has become the first supermarket to trial a new form of electric assisted cargo bike, allowing customers to receive their weekly food shop with zero carbon emissions. The first-of-its-kind Electric Assisted Vehicle was used by Asda as part of a trial to make deliveries from its Cambridge store, as it looked at potential solutions to reach customers who live in proposed zero emission zones where future access for traditional delivery vehicles could be limited.

In January 2021, Ocado Retail, the joint venture between online-only grocer Ocado Group and Marks & Spencer, launched a trial of electric assisted and pedal-powered vehicles for Zoom, its rapid grocery delivery service, in West London.

Zero-waste online grocer

As mentioned in the Mintel Trend Hungry Planet, our throwaway culture is becoming a contentious issue and consumers are looking for ways to preserve the environment and conserve the planet`s resources 

Online sustainable grocer Good Club has launched a closed-loop, zero-waste delivery service. Products arrive in reusable and returnable packaging. The customer decants the products into their own containers, and leaves the empties out for collection the following day. Good Club then washes and refills the empties and the whole cycle starts again.

Good Club’s service is similar to that of reusable packaging platform Loop – which launched online with supermarket Tesco in July 2020 – but Good Club differs in that it only sells sustainably produced products.

Making greener choices easier for online grocery shoppers

Online-only grocer Ocado.com has launched a dedicated shopping aisle for B-Corp certified brands, making it easier for consumers to find greener and more sustainable items. The aisle features more than 1,100 products from over 35 B-Corp certified suppliers including Ella’s Kitchen, Innocent, Method, Charlie Bingham’s and Alpro among others 

100% vegan online supermarket

Jessica Chan, creator of the world`s first vegan salmon sushi, opened a 100% vegan online supermarket, The Good Kind Supermarket, specialising in artisan and high-quality plant-based products in early 2021 in North London. The Good Kind sources only vegan products from sustainable and eco-friendly brands including Biff’s, Sgaia, I Am Nut Ok, Mouse’s Favourite, Tiba Tempeh, Follow Your Heart, Tofurky and Veganz.

Source: Mintel (2021)