MS70102E – Global Marketing and Digital, Business
Introduction and Background (MS70102E – Global Marketing and Digital, Business)
The purpose of the plan is to prepare the strategic marketing plan for PureGym management. The reason behind this plan is to assess the online presence of business to develop business globally in a country. However, PureGym is an UK based fitness firm and came into existences in 2008 by Peter Roberts.
It has gym chains and fitness operators in Europe regions. It focuses on low-cost fitness services. This fitness contains over 500 gyms in domestic country. The group has approx. 1.6 million members across over 500 gyms in domestic country (PureGym, 2021). It holds important positions in the international market like Denmark, Switzerland. It deals in products or services such as Puregym, fitness world and base fit bands.
- Vision statement: – PureGym vision is to inspiring a healthier world by providing members with affordable services based on fitness lifestyle.
- Mission statement: – PureGym is to reach to different customer segment regardless to age, gender and income by investing in innovative technology with low-cost services.
The element-1 will reveal about PureGym current marketing situation so that global marketing plan could be developed. This plan will also discuss about the internationalization element where market entry issues are undertaken.
Based on analysis, the marketing mix strategy application will be executed into the report (Pergelova and Angulo-Ruiz, 2017). The study will focus on PureGym which would explore Asian country for expansion where India is targeted to make international expansion.
Analysis of the organisation current situation using marketing theories
PureGym is considered as medium-size enterprise in present scenario and it is first one who introduce flexible model where members pay average 20 per month and have no-contract commitment. It positions itself in UK market as a customer firm which offers the no-frills like membership program as it develops liberal policies for people to join without any type of contract (Llopis-Goig et al., 2017).
This strategy helps to save maximum investments or able to keep the low cost of services. This marketing strategy supports them to get enough recognition in its domestic market. PureGym is associated with gym services, fitness world and base-fit brands etc. Its current market areas include Europe, UK, Switzerland, and Denmark and for global marketing expansion, its must to evaluate its current position via BCG and SWOT analysis marketing theories/model.
BCG model
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is the popular marketing model which helps to evaluate the strategic position of a firm brand portfolio. The matrix has four quadrants which classifies a firm’s product and services into two-by-two matrix. Each quadrant is classified as low or high performance depending upon relative market share and market growth rate.
Star: – The financial service of PureGym is a star in the BCG matrix. It operates in a market that shows potential in the future. PureGym earns a significant amount of its income from this financial service.
Cash Cow: – The partnering strategy as a strategic business unit is a cash cow in the BCG matrix. The partnering with local gyms helps PureGym to increase its chain. This strategy helps to earn significant amount of revenue (Guță, 2017). The market share for PureGym is high, but overall market is declining as company highly focus on outsourcing services rather than developing its own fitness club.
Question Marks: – The healthy food consumption is in the current trends. The recent market survey shown that consumer focuses largely on local food or plant-based products for healthy lifestyle. Therefore, this market showing a high market growth rate. However, PureGym has a low market share in this segment (BERNSTEIN, 2017). It is recommended to PureGym to focus on providing diet-chart based on eating veggies or gluten-free products. It could help to increase market growth as firm current growth rate is its no-frill services within low costing.
Dogs: – Fitness band of Puregym is another SBU which is in Dog matrix in BCG. It clearly indicates that this product is not performing well in market as it has no recognition among the customers (Phadermrod et al., 2019). That’s the reason why, the firm fitness bands do not contribute to any market growth and market share. It simply proven as an expense for PureGym.
SWOT analysis model
| Strength
· Strong pricing strategy · Offer Multi-gym accessibility · Free Wi-Fi · No-contract commitment · Focus on high-tech gym equipment’s |
Weakness
· Less focus on promotional activities · Poor digital marketing offering · No-frills in fitness clubs (DE PELSMACKER et al., 2018) |
| Opportunities
· It could target India Asian market with low-cost pricing strategy as it works in developing countries to capture wider customer base (Shi, 2016) |
Threats
· Increasing awareness about the fitness create huge competition in local or global market |
Critical Discussions of the internationalisation theories and market entry issues
Entry into the international market has not been easy for the organisation like Pure Gym as it requires it to evaluate the external environment for meeting with competition. It leads to analysis of the marketing conditions and strategies that have adopted for carrying out right practices so that it could manage with the needs of the environment in India.
The partnership into Gym have made it less possible for the company which have affected its entry into the market. Partnership is effective in the organisation for having right entry while making the target customers to be approached and survived into the market.
It leads to management of its resources while festering and selling its products into desired market. Thus, pure gym needs to develop its market entry strategy with direct communication so that it could benefits the organisation effectively. Partnership is right market entry strategy in the organisation for exploring into international market and getting the best to be done.
Application of the relevant theories and concepts to the relevant marketing mix
The application of Marketing mix theory would help PureGym to design the marketing strategy for exploring India culture. 4Ps of marketing explains below: –
Product/Service: –
PureGym to facilitate the business in India need to provide gym membership registration to people. However, the gym could follow same business model of no-frills health clubs to people with availability of fitness services 24 hours 7 days in a week. These basic services would encourage the people to join the gym or focus on the health lifestyle (Londhe, 2014).
Clients can book the gym registration at any time or location. The PureGym will plans to partner with multiple gym channels so that register members could join any of the brand in the big capital cities. This allows the people to access fitness services at every location. This kind of services even encourage freshers to start the gym activities.
Price: –
The major USP of PureGym is its low-cost services as it excludes frills like beauty therapies, spa, or any kind of unnecessary services. It simply focuses on the high-tech gym equipment’s, trainers to support the visitors (Thabit and Raewf, 2018). They charge low-cost for these services. This is because PureGym believes that fitness majorly includes right workout or food intake instead of beauty therapies or spa facilities etc.
These won’t work for large fitness goal. That’s why, PureGym has designed the gym services in basic manner or charge reasonable price in comparison to other competitors. These practices would also support to those people who are still unexplored the fitness services as low-cost or easily accessibility would help people to get engage with the fitness services of PureGym.
Promotion: –
PureGym in its local region uses PR campaigns where it asks people to engage to Gym by outlining low-cost services for a custom fit to everybody. The brand exposes gym chains as the cyclic offering which means it opens its chain in multiple location so that member can access the gym or fitness equipment’s anywhere (Khan, 2014).
This similar kind of marketing PureGym could use for Indian people as they are price-sensitive, or firm could also undertake digital social media marketing where influencers, SEO or email promotions need to include to different customer segments. The use of right content over the social-site, email or even television commercials would help the firm to get high awareness from the Indian audiences (FLOSTRAND et al., 2016).
Place: –
In respect to place, the PureGym uses local gym networks to locate the people. It always focuses on the centralised location where people can reach to the fitness centres. This same strategy will be utilised for Indian market as well (Mintz and Currim, 2013). However, the firm also uses the online membership to people so that they can access the services with ease.
Thus, this selected marketing mix strategy could work for PureGym to expand business in international market like India.
References
BERNSTEIN, A., 2017. Socially acceptable digital marketing for the care home. Nursing and Residential Care, 19(9), pp. 525-527.
DE PELSMACKER, P., VAN TILBURG, S. and HOLTHOF, C., 2018. Digital marketing strategies, online reviews and hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 72, pp. 47-55.
FLOSTRAND, A., HO, J.Y.C., KRIDER, R.E., 2016. Implementing “Marketing Me”: A Simulation Enhanced Variant for a Student Self-Marketing Exercise. Journal of Marketing Education, 38(2), pp. 83-89.
Guță, A.J., 2017. The analysis of strategic alternatives using BCG matrix in a company. Quality-Access to Success, 18.
Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of’marketing mix’and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.
Llopis-Goig, R., Vilanova, A. and Sánchez, J.M., 2017. SPAIN: Evolution and characteristics of the private sport sector–Focus on fitness centres and gyms. In The Private Sport Sector in Europe (pp. 309-324). Springer, Cham.
Londhe, B.R., 2014. Marketing mix for next generation marketing. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, pp.335-340.
Madsen, D.O., 2017. Not dead yet: the rise, fall and persistence of the BCG Matrix. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 15(1), pp.19-34.
Mintz, O. and Currim, I.S., 2013. What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities?. Journal of Marketing, 77(2), pp.17-40.
Pergelova, A. and Angulo-Ruiz, F., 2017. Comparing advertising effectiveness in South-American and North-American contexts: testing Hofstede’s and Inglehart’s cultural dimensions in the higher education sector. International Journal of Advertising, 36(6), pp.870-892.
Phadermrod, B., Crowder, R.M. and Wills, G.B., 2019. Importance-performance analysis based SWOT analysis. International Journal of Information Management, 44, pp.194-203.
PureGym, 2021. Fitness Market. [Online] Available at: https://corporate.puregym.com/about-us/fitness-market/default.aspx
Shi, X., 2016. The future of ASEAN energy mix: A SWOT analysis. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 53, pp.672-680.
Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).
