Free Essay

Supermarket Deals

In: Business and Management

Submitted By gdot80
Words 904
Pages 4
Grade Received - "A"

The United States is experiencing inflation, increased unemployment, and escalating gas prices. A 71-year-old food company is associated with hard times, and as the economy heads downward, the product bucks the cycle and enjoys sales increases.

During the down economy, marketers are experimenting with various tactics to entice consumers to buy. Cars come with free or cut rate gas; buy a gift card for a friend, and you get one free; and the supermarket is full of 2-for-1 specials each week.

Excluding the supermarket deals, choose a product and marketing campaign that targets buyers in a down economy. Discuss the effectiveness of the campaign and how you might improve upon it. Be sure to include your thoughts on competition and differentiation (3 paragraphs total for the post).

With the way the economy seems to be going, it is not getting better anytime soon. I see small businesses shutting down, and not to mention big businesses going out of business. An EntertainMart in my area recently went out of business. It is a business that sells movies, music, MP3 players, video games and posters. I thought it would do well but that is what I get for thinking. I still see blockbusters slowly but surely going out of business in my area. I am surprised that they lasted as long as they did. With the way the economy is, more and more people are moving to Hulu, Red Box and Netflix. There are still companies that are out there still striving to bring business of their way. Doing so, they have to come up with new tactics and conduct experimental advertisements to keep their business not only up and running, but also profitable. In this discussion, I will attempt to choosing product and marketing campaign that targets buyers in a down economy and discuss the effectiveness of the campaign and how I might improve upon it. The company that I chose to discuss is a company called Empire Today. The type of product this company advertises our floor installations and window treatments. Their specialty is to install carpet, laminate flooring, hardwood flooring, ceramic flooring and vinyl flooring and offers next day installation. I chose this company because every time I watch Dr. Phil, this commercial is advertised during those hours. It seems as though their deals keep getting better and better as time carries on. You see an individual and a commercial claiming they had flooring done in their whole living room but only paid for about a quarter of the size of the living room. Within the past two weeks I have noticed that during these advertisements, if you buy one room of carpet or flooring, you get two free. This almost seems to be too good to be true, but I guess it is true. My mother recently built a house in Prosper, Texas had the entire living room and kitchen installed with hardwood flooring and received two of the bedrooms of the bedrooms downstairs had carpet installed for free. I am assuming because they have three more rooms upstairs, one room was paid for while the other two received free carpeting. Because my mother is very frugal with her money, she swears up and down that she received a deal like no other. So far she has been very happy with their work. I personally do not know how about floor installation companies can be a deal like that. I have researched other flooring companies within the Dallas metropolitan area, they cannot beat that. When looking through Sharp Floors website, they only offer six months of no interest with a flooring coupon. Trinity Floor Company offers no discount. Texas Best Flooring Company is does offer discounts on five different types of hardwood flooring that are either overstocked, closeouts, discounted or has a "Super Crazy Deal". They are still not as good of a deal as Empire Today. The last flooring company I researched is Peek’s Floor Co. I cannot find any type of discounts or deals on their website but the fact that they offer state-of-the-art carpet from Mohawk. I do not see what it is that I can advise Empire Today to customers during a downed economy. I was thinking about when they remove carpet from people's houses, they can have a recycling program that recycles old carpets but it seems as though they have thought of this already. When they referred a friend of theirs to have their carpet installed by Empire Today, my mother received a $100 gift card. It seems as though this company is going many things right and has that old school business hospitality.
Update: I called my mother and was told that two rooms did receive free floor installation. I also want to the websites and they did and offered everything that the websites specify they would do. I do not know if my mother received $75 off to sign up, if she signed up. I also asked how much was spent for the floor installation and she replied, "It was very expensive," even though she said how much of a good deal it was. I do not know what that means because my mother considers free cheese "very expensive."
References
http://www.trinityfloors.com/ http://www.sharp-floors.com/dallas-flooring-coupons.html http://texasbestflooringcompany.com/ http://www.peekscarpet.com/ http://www.empiretoday.com/

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