Marketing Analysis of Hampton by Hilton Hotel in Jewelry Quarter Birmingham (Essay Sample)

Marketing Analysis of Hampton by Hilton Hotel in Jewelry Quarter Birmingham
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Marketing Analysis of Hampton by Hilton Hotel in Jewelry Quarter Birmingham
Background
Located in Birmingham, in the worlds famous Birmigham jewellery Quarter, 10 minutes from Birmingham city center andeasily access through the M5 and M6 motorway, the Hampton is a luxurious hotel that offers guests a feel-at-home environment coupled with a wide range of amenities too guarantee a comfortable stay. Being a hotel operating within the mid-price segment, the Hampton Hotelencounters a significant level of competition. Business strengths, including huge popularity and staff diversification have been instrumental in ensuring the hotel handles this competition, as diversification promotes new cultures and practices (Hastings, 2007). Despite this, the hotel faces weaknesses such as inability to reach a wider customer population resulting from the fact that the hotel has not fully exploited market opportunities provided by modern technological developments(Lusch, Vargo and Tanniru, 2010). Modern internet technology especially plays a key role in accessing wider market for products (Armstrong, 2011). A promising fact however, is that the hotel enjoys opportunities such as continued expansion in the utilization of its brand name, meaning, the hotel is better placed in expanding its customer base (Cho and Hyoung, 2006). Also, the availability of social media provides access to wider customer range as it connects a large number of people globally (Nicholls, 2010).
Target Market
Hampton has a well defined target market, which reaches people of all classes and age.. The market segmentation adopted by the Hampton hotel is based on understanding customer behavior, as well as the quality of service the customers expect, classified as a price-quality segmentation. This mid-price segment hugely comprises of individuals and families within the middle class capable of affording the middle-tier brand of services and goods. The Hampton hotel has been outstanding in providing customer-based services to much appreciation of its guests. This has been attributed to a strong leadership structure, which puts significant emphasis on provision of exemplary services. The hotel design, consisting of a finish level categorized from mid-to-upper tier, with improvedguest rooms design, improvedlobbies, expanded areas of fitness and services such as free access to high-speed internet complement its recognition as a quality performer in the hospitality sector.
Image and Positioning
An image for an organization is meant to enhance and augment the positioning concept communication. In cases where the concept is straightforward, there is no need of the image (Lefebvre, 2011). The right image serves to promote the objectives and interested of the business, whereas a tainted image limits the business fortunes and competitiveness (Chang and Zixue, 2005). The Hamptons current brand image focuses on market development, diversification of its products and services, development of new generation products and services and also growth in its already existing market. The Hampton hotel has been previously overshadowed by the popularity of the Hilton hotel and as such its poplarity in the market stood at a low point. However, with strategies such as extensive advertising and promises of a significant improvement in the level of excellence in its service delivery, an influx in the number of guest has been witnessed. Owing to the comprehensive examination of the current image also, the hotel realized that its competitors targeted higher customer segments because of affordable prices on their services (Steward and Bruce 2010), and in response, the hotel sought to provide services at affordable prices.
Positioning stands as an important part towards the launch of a product and the organization as a whole in the market as it influences and controls the market perception of the organization. The image of the organization in the minds of the target customers is created by the positioning of the products offered by the organization (Frey, Carl and Gary, 2000). Ensuring above average profitability is solely dependent on the sustainability of competitive advantage of the company (Levine, 2010). Competitive advantage is demonstrated through differentiation and through low cost. With a sufficient focus on the two basic approaches to competitive advantage, the activities of the company may enable it achieve the three generic strategies, which are focus, cost leadership, and differentiation (MacInnis, 2004).
The Hampton hotel has been keen in enhancing both its cost and differentiation advantages, which are the major factors for sustainable competitive advantage (Stephen and Frederick, 2005). Among such operations has been the hotel’s ability to deliver similar benefits to those of its competitors at a relatively low cost (Joseph and Aimee, 2008). Owing to the fact that competitive advantage facilitates creation of superior value by the firm for the customers as well as superior profits for the company (Neuendorf, 2002),the Hapmton hotel’s most important aspect is its ability to bring down costs while enhancing efficiency (Defourny and Nyssens, 2010), thus maintaining its positional advantage (Madill, Brouard and Hebb, 2010).
Majority of businesses are bound to fail because of incompetence among its leadership (Madill, Brouard and Hebb, 2010) but in Hampton hotel, the invention and design of efficient human resource and employee satisfaction has been tasked to a competent management team which ensures smooth operation and profitability of the hotel (Richards and Catharine, 2002).
Hampton hotel has the ability to identify avenues of profitability and understand the costs of internal activities which determine its performance in the marketplace (Potter and Karyn, 2007). This means that Hampton hotel can have a differentiation benefit and a relative low cost principle that would see its success irrespective of the challenges facing it (Nelson and Hye-Jin, 2007). Differentiation advantage makes consumers perceive that the hotel provides unique products that meet their needs. Uponachieving this, the hotel can exploit the advantage by increasing the price of its services until it offsets improvement in the consumer benefits or price its products below that of its competitors to build a large market share, a strategy (Stevenson and Linda, 2011). The low costs benefit would allow the company to maintain its productivity through maintaining current performance while gaining market share and matching the price of the competing services to increase its performance and profitability (Andreasen and Kotler, 2003). Hampton develops and maintains an inbound logistic that is well-structured, which is efficient in managing all its operations. For instance, the company has managed to maintain an upward trend in the number of customers using its services, and this has facilitated the expansion of the company operations (Kerr and Don).
Strategy and Tactics in Marketing
Building relationships
Building relationship by the hotel would require the hotel management to integrate the various promotion mix elements in order to meet the requirements for information for all customers on target (Crano and Michael, 2002). This implies that the promotion mix is meant for the satisfaction of both regular and prospective buyers. Certain elements are thus meant for the customers who have no knowledge of the product, while the rest are for customers that are informed of the product have a higher likelihood of purchasing it (Ziegler, 2010). Customer relationship is also a vital aspect in the operations of the Hamptons Hotel. A friendly, welcoming staff awaits every guest. The staff aim at recognizing every guest by their firs names thus creating a good rapoort with them. Product promotion activities including vast and catchy advertisements on a number of websites help in educating the public about the numerous services at the hotel. Thus attracting new guests and informing the already existing guests of new developments in he hotel.
Implementation and Control
Among the major elements the hotel should embrace arehigh levels of advertisement through the numerous platforms that include the internet, radio, television, brochures, billboards and catalogues (Bailey, 2006). Secondly, promotions and exhibitions would persuade the public into adopting the hotels products and services and publicizing news that contain the hotel’s policies, which is cost effective and informative, should be adopted (Rodgers and Esther, 2000).
Lastly, sales promotions stimulate the market, consumer demand, and improve product availability and when coupled withdirect marketing,customers who lackaccess to advertising channels such as newspapers, radio and television are reached(Nyilasy and Leonard, 2007).
References
Andreasen, A. R., 2002. Marketing social marketing in the social change marketplace. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 21(1), pp.3-13.
Andreasen, A R. and Kotler, P., 2003. Strategic Marketing for Non-profit Organizations, 6th edn. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Armstrong, J. S., 2011. Evidence-based advertising., 30 (5), pp.743–67.
Bailey, A. A., 2006. A year in the life of the African-American male in advertising: A content analysis. Journal of Advertising, 35(1), pp.83-104.
Chang, T. K., and Tai, Z., 2005. Mass communication research and the invisible college revisited: The changing landscape and emerging fronts in journalism-related studies. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(3), pp.672-694.
Cho, C. and Hyoung, K., 2006. The State of Internet Related Research in Communications, Marketing, and Advertising: 1994– 2...