MRK 106 Assignment# 2 Packaged Good Company: Quaker Oats Tazreen Sikder Professor Katherine Faubert Friday, April

16, 2010

1. Why is understanding the target market(s) a crucial aspect of the process?

communication

In order to understand the target markets, we need to take one step back and clearly recognize the term itself; The target market of Quaker Oats (1) represents the audience most likely to purchase their packaged goods. The audience may include potential buyers of Quaker Oats, current users, individuals, groups, particular public, or even general public. All in all, the audience must have something in common that solidifies their desire for Quaker Oats products, and that something distinguishes them from the market at large with various demographic dimensions (people of all ages, all income levels, all education levels, all types of occupations, all social classes and all lifestyles). However, not everybody's needs and expectations can be at exceeded at once due to their differences. Therefore to breach the gap between their differences, picking a specific group of people from the market at large is known as target marketing. In addition, it is important to acknowledge exactly how the target market relates to the communication process. Simply put, the communication techniques (different methods and styles) which are used by Quaker Oats to target their market is known as the important aspect of the communication process. The communication process involves the following seven elements (2): Source (the party sending message to another party) Encoding (process of putting thoughts into words or symbolic forms) Message channel (the carrier transmitting the message) Decoding (the transportation of the message from source to receiver) Receiver (the party receiving the message sent by another party) Noise (miscommunication during the process leads to wrong interpretations of the message) Feedback (the response the receiver communicates back to the sender) Thus, the target audience will critically influence the communicator's decision on what is to be said, how

it is to be said, when it is to be said, where it is to be said, and who is to say. By doing this, the marketing communicator will comprehend how to motivate the target audience in order to increase their state of readiness to buy. 2.

How have each product or service differentiated itself from its competition? Describe how each brand has been positioned in terms of product attributes, desired benefits, beliefs and values?
Quaker Oats is always adapting and expanding to meet consumer tastes and lifestyles while still retaining the brand's traditional identity; The smiling face of a quaker pilgrim. By providing reassurance and quality to its first generation of consumers, Quaker Oats has been able to build upon a reputation of offering healthy, wholesome food. Their brand maintains such a tight hold on the breakfast foods industry. However, as tastes change over time, it has been necessary over the years for Quaker Oats cereal division to find an enhancement to its plain old bowl of hot oatmeal to compete with more sugary, more convenient brands, such as Kellogg's and Nestle. Quaker launched products with a positioning based on nutrition, taste and easy-to-cook over the years. This led to differentiated marketing strategy which provided solutions to these problems; In the 1950s, instant oatmeal was introduced, and in the 1980s, along came microwavable single packets in multiple varieties with added sweeteners in order to meet the desired benefits of taste, and easy-to-cook breakfasts. This is also a clear example of packaging adaptability.

Changing tastes also resulted in the diversification of childrens traditional breakfast cereal with healthy snack food bars, mixes and syrups, as well as rice cakes. Many of Quaker Oat's competitive rivals such as Aunt Jemima and Kellogg's were already serving those products, they still saw this as an opportunity and responded by implementing product developments by introducing new products to meet consumer needs, which resulted in Quaker Oats' Quaker Chewy; currently the top-selling granola bar brand in the US.

Quaker Oats expanded their product lines in order to satisfy new consumer tastes and needs (13), (14). Another example of how Quaker Oats differentiated itself from its competition is through the reshape its image. The Quaker pilgrim icon has been enlarged across the spectrum of oatmeal packets, while the word instant is reduced since most existing consumers who purchase the oatmeal are aware that it is now instant.

The old package (left) of Instant Quaker Oatmeal is clearly distinct from the new package (right) of Quaker Instant Oatmeal (11), (12). Moreover, I personally believe that the modification of the Quaker trademark has been the most visible differentiation. The development of their symbol went from a sketched, immensely detailed, full-body picture of a Quaker, into only a simple smiling face of a Quaker. The image of the Quaker was chosen to represent purity, simplicity, and quality. This represents the preference of customers today, as they like to remember products with straight forward icons.

Various Quaker Oats logo have been modified over time (10).

3. What stage in the product life cycle is the product. Explain (a) how you were able to identify the stage.
Quaker Oats is currently in the market maturity stage of the product life cycle with the objective of maximizing profits and defending market share. They have successfully accomplished various competitions, full product line, and maximum outlets. Their promotional strategy is reminder-oriented, constantly reminding their existing customers as well as potential customers about their packaged breakfast products. Quaker Oats products have been successful for decades due to the company's ability to develop strategies to extend the maturity stage of their products so they remain competitive. They clearly did this by modifying their target markets, their offerings, or their marketing strategies. The change in their packaging is a clear evidence of one of their marketing strategies:

The old packaging of Quick Quaker Oats (left) is simple, whereas the new packaging (right) is more detailed and states Quick 1-Minute in order to reassure customers of their fast to-go breakfast.

Moreover, the message at the top of the new package Oatmeal helps remove cholesterol gives customers a sense of comport and scientific knowledge of their products. Lastly, there is greater emphasis on the face of the Quaker in the new packaging as it is more zoomed in than the old one. This reveals the importance of the pilgrim symbol (18), (19).

Modifying their packaging helped Quaker Oats attract different customers by seeking new users and finding new uses for a product in order to attract additional customers. For instance, the new packing of their Quick Oats will attract more health-conscious consumers, as well as employed consumers who are always on the run and are looking for a fast east-to-make breakfast. These types of customers are most likely to have the characteristics of being either an early majority, or late majority. The increase in their customer base also helped them extend the product's maturity stage.

4. What forms of mass media advertising was used to promote this product? Explain the type of media used (identify the magazine, or newspaper, or television program; radio, outdoor media social network, viral) were used? Identify the

promotional tactics used. Perhaps sponsorship events, sampling campaigns, consumer contests, direct mail, buzz marketing, Influencers. Why do you think the marketers made those particular choices?
To begin with, advertising is mass communication an advertiser pays for in order to convince a certain segment of the public to adopt ideas or take actions of benefit to the advertiser. Quaker Oats has used various forms of mass media advertising throughout the decades, such as packaging, branding, and billboarding. Their cereal ads made up a large portion of the old newspapers advertising space. Having a good breakfast was as important back then to customers as it is today.

Photographic Quaker Oats advertisement, 1897 (left), (6).

Advertisements in old newspapers (The Fine Print, 1905), (7).

Another form of mass media which was used by Quaker Oats is a vintage recipe folder featuring 12 different recipes, most likely published in 1938. This was a great way to promote Quaker Oat products

such as Quaker Oats flour and Mother's Oats, which are required in most of the recipes shown below:

The attention-grabbing cover of the recipe folder by Quaker Oats (15).

Contents inside the recipe folder reveals the target market; health-conscious housewives with buying power (15).

Pages from Quaker Oat's recipe folder (15).

Quaker Oats ran the following holiday paper advertisement, taken from a 1957 magazine, which features Party Cream Puff Appetizers, Date Blended Oatmeal and Candy Cane Cookie recipes. The back of the page is dated, December 1957:

Quaker Oats 1957 Magazine advertisement of more recipes (16). The following Quaker Oats vintage billboard ad is not dated, but the message and the target market for their products remain the same throughout all these other advertises, reminding their customers of nutritious facts of their oats.

Quaker Oats vintage billboard advertise (19).

Although in the past, Quaker Oats would greatly rely on more traditional marketing, they chose to make a transition into digital marketing; Their recent campaign on Yahoo! Depicts their involvement with technological external market environment; The company show their support to eliminate child hunger. This raised awareness within consumers, increased sales, and immensely gained publicity. The marketers decision regarding going online created a huge impact on the company as the ad exposure brought about more buyers by attracting new consumers, greater buying power of consumers, and higher quantities on the average purchase occasion of existing consumers. Therefore, it is important to comprehend that marketers made this marketing strategy of consistent branding and billboarding with caution to compromising existing qualities.

The campaign Go Humans Go on Yahoo! revealed the effectiveness of Internet advertising, and helped Quaker Oats benefit from it (5), (4).

5. Describe the importance of integrated marketing communication and describe how the campaign effectively (or ineffectively) integrates its marketing communication.
Integrated Marketing Communications, or just IMC for short, has been defined by the American Marketing Association as a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time. The Quaker Oats company utilized both traditional media as well as online marketing channels in order to interact with their consumers in every way possible. The importance of IMC can be delivered through their essential goal which to unify all different departments (advertising, sales, customer services, public relations, direct marketing, etc.) of Quaker Oats company to work together towards the same objective, rather than independently. This is important because this allows consumers to gain a single brand message across from all of the company's marketing channels. Therefore, misconceptions within the consumers do not take place, which would obviously be beneficial for Quaker Oats. The campaign Go Humans Go effectively integrates its marketing communication because today, there is more widespread internet use than ever before, Quaker Oats therefore has endless opportunities of selling their brand and products online 24/7, outside office hours. On the other hand, Quaker Oats company can more effectively integrate its marketing communication by applying specialized media, rather than mass media, since consumers in this century are very selective due to countless options from which they can choose from.

6. What do you think the advertising objectives are? To inform, persuade, or remind customers? Given the target audience, do you think the advertising is effective, why or why not.
Primarily, advertising objectives are the communication tasks to be accomplished with the target customers of Quaker Oats. Out of the four advertising objectives, I believe Quaker Oats is striving to achieve reminder advertising due to its current product life cycle; the maturity stage. This type of advertising objective involves a strategy known as continuity advertising, to provide it's existing customers with new and different information about their products. This is simply designed to build customer loyalty. Quaker Oats implements reminder oriented advertising to their customers, in order to maintain interest and awareness of their well established products in the market, and considering their target audience, this type of advertising is effective because it helps to maintain their leading position in the market.

7. What types of consumer sales promotion tools were used. Explain and provide examples. Page. 433 Determine the objective of the promotion in relation to the AIDA (attention, Interest, Desire, Action) model. For example a coupon might be used to stimulate a purchase. In-store demonstration sampling might stimulate interest and action purchase).
The types of sales promotion tools which were greatly used by Quaker Oats throughout were print advertisements, coupons, and free samples. They use these coupons tools the most during launches of new products, such as Quaker Instant Oatmeal offerings - Wild Blueberry Muffin and Hazelnut Latte, which is currently offering a $1 off coupon for that particular product (20). Consumer sales promotions are used by Quaker Oats to receive attention from customers about their new, improved products, and to

identify customer reactions towards their new products. Similarly, the free samplings are used to hold interest, after receiving attention. In case a product is unexpectedly losses its customer base and consumers run out of interest for that particular product, this tool of free sampling helps regain their interest. It also gives the company a second chance to communicate a strong benefit of their products to its consumers. The free samplings eventually create a new desire within existing customers, as well as new customers, for the company's products, increasing sales in the future. The objectives of promotion are therefore very effective when put to use.

Quaker Oats' coupon (left), and their offer for free samples (right), (21), (22).

Bibliography
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