Marketing Chester Zoo to 16-to-24-year-olds Essay -- Business and Mana

Marketing Chester Zoo to 16-to-24-year-olds At the moment, Chester Zoo is the leading zoo in the country. It is a non-profit organisation and its mission is to support and promote conservation by breeding threatened animals, providing excellent animal welfare, high quality public service, recreation, education and science. Currently, their main source of income is from the admissions (see appendix 2B) Currently, the zoo is facing a marketing problem: The 16-24 year old age group is not visiting the zoo as much as expected to. (See appendix 7B) My task is to analyse the situation and come up with a solution. I shall do this by looking at the marketing strategy of Chester Zoo. Marketing is a continuous process of learning about and understanding a business’ customers and competitors, anticipating their customer needs, providing a suitable product at the right place, with the right price and the right promotion to attract customers. A marketing strategy is a plan that is evaluated carefully, for the future marketing of a business. It takes into account the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, together with the 4P’s (Price, Product, Place and Promotion), with these two areas in mind, a suitable plan is thought out. In this case, Chester Zoo will be looking to improve their marketing strategy to attract and keep more 16-24 year olds. My main research methods will be by: -Going to the zoo and interviewing the staff there. This is for me to judge the level of their service without any bias from other sources. -Consulting a range of sources, which have both primary and secondary evidence, including articles of quality from different media. This will help me see any trends over the years, and hopefully, their weaknesses and strengths. -I will also conduct a survey in form of a questionnaire aimed at 16-24 year olds. This will be to get a better perspective of the situation, to understand the reason behind the low visiting rate by this age group, anticipate their needs, and hopefully as an eye-opener to the solution. -Reading through various news report (related to Chester Zoo) -Reading about / visiting some of Chester Zoo’s key competitors to understand / see how they attract their customers of this age group. -Consulting some relevant business textbooks to further understand and improve my knowledge, especially about m... ...rket was students, so a ‘Student Card’ could be used. But what about the non-students? Some people may feel like their privacy is being intruded upon if they have to prove their age before gaining entrance into a zoo; as a result, they may choose to go elsewhere, and Chester Zoo would lose out. Some forms of identification could be false/ forged without the knowledge of Chester Zoo, and unfair entrance gained. There’s also a potential risk of losing customers from the other sectors, especially if they feel that the zoo has â€Å"changed†- they may lose the familiarity they already have. If Chester Zoo decides to carry out this scheme temporarily, when they revert to their â€Å"usual† fees, there is a chance that this situation will go back to the old problem of the 16-24 year olds not visiting as expected to but they may have retained some of the age group who may be visiting them regularly. As with most ventures, this is risky and daring. In theory, my proposal should work well, and serve to improve Chester Zoo’s marketing strategy. However, in practicality, this may not be the case, and in the end it will be up to Chester Zoo to decide whether or not this proposal is worth executing.