Cats Café 1

Cats Café

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Case Scenario

The Cat Café Singapore was launched in June 2014 to create an environment for cats

lovers to catch up with friends over premium coffee and freshly baked pastries among the feline

companions. With the reports and issues surrounding the cat death at another cat café, the

Cuddle Cat Café, the management of then Cat Café in Singapore sees a decline in the number of

visitors at its outlet located at Victoria Street and is very concerned of the future of its business.

Promotional Campaign: Cats Café

The first step before addressing the given scenario, it is essential to conduct a SWOT

analysis, which will help evaluate the external and internal factors affecting the Cats Café. The

purpose of this exercise is to help in the formulation of an impactful promotional campaign. The

SWOT analysis represents the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Conducting a

SWOT analysis assists a corporate to understand its weaknesses and strength centered on the

existing inner factors, such as services and products. By doing so, they gain a competitive

advantage or realize a unique product area and a target group (Kotler, et al., 2007). This venture

also allows a firm to minimize or eliminate risks and unveil opportunities based on the external

environment which surrounds the business.

Regus, an international business company, conducted a survey and documented that

Singapore’s employees work the most extended hours globally. More than 50 percent of them

work over eight hours every day at the office, while one in five workers spend more than 11

hours a day in the office (Regus, 2011). Cats Café depicts a unique experience as compared to

other regular cafes in Singapore. Their clients can interact with cats as they enjoy their meals.

According to psychology and therapeutic surveys, animals act as a stress reliever and source of
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comfort, and this is a strength for Cats Café. Their clients will feel unreservedly accepted and

relaxed (Barker & Wolen, 2008).

The nature of Singapore’s working lifestyle makes its workers to be embroiled with

anxiety and stress, it also has a competitive business environment (Hamilton and Webster, 2015).

Cats Café can be depicted as an antithesis to the country’s working environment, where it

provides a relaxing working environment allowing people to interact with cats, thus relieving

stress. However, the business’ weakness is realized by its lack of brand awareness, as it started its

operations in 2014. This is a clear indication that most of the population in Singapore are not

aware of its existence, as it is relatively new in the market.

The location of Cats Café is strategic. Being located at Victoria Street, it is presented with

an opportunity of capitalizing on its strength to reach a large target group of the working

population. Its proximity to the central business district also offers a suitable area where business

and commercial centers are the core points of the city. Besides being a cat café, Cats Café

advocates for the adoption of stray cats. This initiative offers its clients a chance to adopt cats.

Previously, the café used to adopt its cats from Kittycare Haven, which is a non-profit shelter that

takes care of abandoned and stray cats (The Cat Café, 2014). In Singapore, there are more than

60,000 stray cats, which brings a social issue in the country. Cats Café turns this social problem

into a business opportunity. It is showing the public that they care about the welfare of cats.

The existing negative perceptions and misconceptions by the public pose a threat to the

thriving of cat cafes. This negativity is attributed to the recent cases of cat deaths at the Cuddle

Cat Café. The Straits Times covered a report about the café after the deaths. According to the

newspapers, the employees of Cuddle Café lacked the proper and required expertise to handle

cats, which lead to their death. Such news is depicted as the primary reason as to why there was a
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decrease in the number of visitors to Cats Café. Many cat lovers saw as if cafes were exploiting

the cats for commercial purposes without minding about their wellbeing. This predicament was a

blow to the Cats Café’s credibility and image, keeping in mind, it is their new venture in the

market.

Based on the SWOT scrutiny, this marketing drive delves on the issue of the decline of

visitors at Cats Café, due to the misconceptions concerning the business, or the lack of brand

awareness. Therefore, the aim of this promotion is to create an affirmative brand for Cats Café

(The Cats Cafe, 2014). From the research by Aaker, (2009), brand equity revolves around brand

loyalty in that consumers demand a brand. It is allied with dynamics such as brand recognition,

brand awareness, and brand inclination.

Starting a Cats Café in Singapore will act as an antithesis and a remedy to the country’s

working environment. Its location also provides opportunities, where its target audience during

promotions will be the working class, and the secondary target audience will be the general

public. The goals of the campaign will be achieved through two distinctive objectives, first by

increasing the Cats Café’s awareness by 70%. Second is by increasing the number of clients by

30% in the coming six months. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) (Belch & Belch,

2003), will be applied to achieve these objectives during the campaign period, which will entail

arraying several tactics from the marketing blend.

Integrated marketing communication deals with the coordination of procedures

pertaining brand promotion to market a particular service or product, to a target audience (Kotler,

et al., 2007). This method of brand promotion emanates from various promotional mix tools such

as public relations, advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, internal marketing, and direct

advertising (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).

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The techniques employed during the campaign would be public relations and mass media

advertising, to generate publicity and gain awareness of the brand. Afterward, personal selling

would be effective in giving new customers leads, which will be followed by internet marketing

and direct marketing to build and foster consumer relationships (Hanso & Kalyanam, 2007).

These campaigns will go a long way in fulfilling the major goal of creating positive brand equity.

The tactics will also create a perspective of Cats Café, as superior and unique compared to other

cat cafes. Based on Sheehan (2013), advertising is depicted as a paid form of one-way promotion

involving the delivery of information through mass media and aimed to communicate an idea

and to create awareness about a product, organization, or service.

In this case scenario, advertising will be in the form of newspapers, outdoor advertising,

and magazines, which will create brand awareness and visibility (Kotler, et al., 2007). These

advertisements will contain specific information about Cats Café, including pictures of its

interior and its location. Information about the products being offered will be incorporated, such

as cakes and premium coffee. One of the goals of the café was to provide a therapeutic

experience, and the commercials will also acme the benefits of intermingling with cats. This

approach will create a value proposition.

For outdoor advertisements, a strategic position is vital. Posters will be placed in various

public places along the central business district such as train stations doors, bus stops, and public

venues such as parks. This will help reach the primary audience for this campaign, the working

class. A huge number of working-class people read newspapers when traveling to or when at

work, thus, business magazines and newspapers will be used in advertising to reach the main

target audience who also interact with business magazines.

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The use of mass media advertising will also help capture the attention of the general

public. It will be plausible to repeat all advertisements every week. Repetition will help the Cats

Café retain its brand and persuade customers to visit their premises as their memory refreshed

more often. The advertisements will also venture in other areas in social platforms such as

Twitter and Facebook, where it will be a call for action where viewers can obtain more

information about the café including their services and products.

According to Shimp (1997), a public relation is an effective tool in developing positive

relationships with the media, the public, and organizations. During the promotional campaigns,

this tool will be used to complement advertising efforts and generate publicity in raising

awareness of the brand. It will entail forming good public relations to create auspicious publicity

through the media. This tactic will minimize negative perceptions of people. Publicity is an

effective method as it is cost friendly. It involves relaying information about a service or product

without paying (Belch, and Belch, 2003).

Cats Café will have to take part in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as part of

publicity efforts and public relations to assist Kittycare with their expenses of housing abandoned

and stray cats. As Drucker reveals, CSR involves undertaking voluntary activities by a firm for

the advantage of society (1984). This process can be fulfilled by donating a small portion of their

profits to Kittycare. Cats Café should, after that issue a press release depicting their CSR

activities to all local media platforms in Singapore. By doing so, they will create a positive brand

image and brand loyalty.

Releasing a report about CSR to the press will also connect to the two-step theory. The

theory stipulates that people who are inclined by mass media information absorb the data as

opinion leaders, who positively or negatively share the message through the word-of-mouth
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(Vazquez-Casielles, et al., 2013). These people will later influence other people known as

opinion followers, who takes up the beliefs and ideas of the prior (Czepiel, 1974). Using the two-

step flow theory, Cats Café would succeed in the diffusion of positive perceptions to the public.

For instance, the media could showcase Cats Café as a charitable firm who value the welfare of

felines. Opinion leaders could later absorb this message, then to the opinion followers through

word of mouth helping create a positive brand to the Cats Café (Kotler, et al., 2007). This will

lead to the establishment of brand reputation and trust amongst the public.

Having built public relations and advertised, personal selling could come in handy in the

interaction with consumers during their visits. This approach fosters customer relationships and

creates an emotional linkage (Kotler, et al., 2007). It also makes the customers visiting the

premise feel that the employees possess vast knowledge about their products and services,

including the firm’s mission. Personal selling entails direct contact between buyer and seller

(Weitz & Bradford, 1999). Employees can also engage in sales promotion by allotting coupons to

customers, to attract more visitors, and generate future sales. These coupons should be

redeemable during the next purchase to those who use a minimum of $20. This will stimulate

visitors to return with new customers.

Other promotion could involve inviting customers to fill their information on a form to

obtain an affiliation card (Kotler, et al., 2007). The benefits of this card would be free birthday

cakes, being updated on new offers, and free entry for every ten visits. Through this, Cats Café

will build customer potentiality and loyalty, converting new customers into frequent consumers.

Internet marketing would also help to generate word-of-mouth advertising, thus maintaining

customer relationships. Activities such as customer relationship management and email will

come in handy (Hanso & Kalyanam, 2007).

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One of the best strategies for meeting consumer demands is taking heed of their interests

(Kotler, et al., 2007). Cats Café should respond to the feedback obtained from various social

platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, to boost the perception of its café. Excellent customer

care relations such as responding to consumer’s queries will create positive testimonials, thus

influencing the opinions of others. Cats Café could also use the testimonials of its employees to

showcase how it feels like to work in their premise, which will create interesting stories to the

media.

In conclusion, public relation efforts and advertising will create awareness for Cats Café

and generate publicity through word-of-mouth promotion. Personal selling will come in handy in

the generation of new sale targets and building consumer relationships. Finally, internet and

direct marketing will be effective in communicating information and retaining customer

relationships. Proper integration of all promotional campaign tools will create positivity and new

perceptions to the primary audience and the general public, making Cats Café a preference for

many people in Singapore.

References

Aaker, D. (2009). Managing Brand Equity. Simon and Schuster.

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Barker, S., & Wolen, A. (2008). The Benefits of Human-companion Animal Interaction. a

review: Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 35(4), pp. 487-495.

Belch, G., & Belch, M. (2003). Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing

Communication Perspective. . The McGraw- Hill.

Cafe, T. C. (2014). Press Release Archives- The Cat Cafe [online] Available

at:<http://thecatcafe.sg/category/press-release/>. [Accessed 17 June 2018].

Czepiel, J. (1974). Word-of-mouth Process in the Diffusion of a Major Technological Innovation.

Journal of Marketing Research, pp. 172-180.

Drucker, P. (1984). Converting Social Problems into Business Opportunities: The New Meaning

of Corporate Social Responsibility. California Management Review, 26(2), pp. 53-63.

Hamilton, R., & Webster, P. (2015). The International Business Environment. USA: University

Press.

Hanso, W., & Kalyanam. (2007). Principles of Internet Marketing. South-Western College

Publishing.

Kotler, P., Burton, S., Adam, S., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G. 2. (2007). Marketing. Pearson

Education Australia.

Mangold, W., & Faulds. (2009). Social Media: The New Hybrid ELement of the Promotion Mix.

Business Horizons, 52(4), pp. 357-365.

Regus. (2011). Singapore Workers Work the Day and Night Away.

Sheehan, K. (2013). Controversies I=in Contemporary Advertising. Sage Publications.

Shimp, T. (1997). Advertising, Promotion, and Supplemental Aspects of Integrated Marketing

Communications. Harcourt Brace college Publishers.

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Vazquez-Casielles, R., Suarez-Alvarez, L., & A.B, D. R.-L. (2013). The Word of Mouth

Dynamic: How Positive (and negative) WOM Drives Purchase Probability. Journal of

Advertising Research, 53(1), pp. 43-60.

Weitz, B., & Bradford. (1999). Personal Selling and Sales Management. Journal of the Academy

of Marketing Science, 27(2), pp. 241-254.