International Marketing, Innovation and e-commerce

Introduction

The Farm Girl café was started in order to close the gap in the lack of a good healthy café that would serve both tasty foods and good coffee. The café serves dairy free and vegetarian alternatives and has been a budding zone for healthy eaters. From avoiding refined sugars to allergic foods, the café has become quite famous among the people of London. Over the time it expanded its outlets to Notting Hill, Fitzrovia, and Knightsbridge, Soho and Chelsea but none outside the UK. The report below thus focuses on the prospect of Farm Girl to prosper in the global market if it wishes to expand their business internally.

Task one

STP analysis

Advantage and disadvantage of standardization and adaptation

Standardization helps in making the production process uniform throughout its organization. In the case of Farm Girl each outlet needs to indulge in practices that remain stable and steady for their business transaction (Express Pharma. 2020). This has been quite dissimilar with adaptation which again requires the application of variation and flexibility as per the needs of the circumstances. From an online review, Women’s Health (2020), the advantages include the cost efficiency due to non-implementation of varieties thereby maintaining consistency throughout the entire organization or outlets with regards to the Farm Girl. This occurs through the reusing the marketing and distribution system that have already been established instead of frequent customization and thus the product image could be built efficiently.

On the contrary another disadvantage involves lack of responsiveness during market expansion (Amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org. 2020). Apart from that adaptation has advantages of catering to the needs of the local market along with good local image and customer attention whereas bear the burden of higher cost and inefficiency due to understanding the requirements of the local needs (Statista. 2020). Thus, Farm Girl needs to analyze both the impacts of standardization and adaptation of the international food market before driving in.

Rationale behind choice of standardization and adaptation

Farm Girl could implement standardization where required to decrease ambiguity and to enable their employees to use pre-tested procedures that would act like fail proof and shock absorbing strategies. Adaptation helps in gaining competitive advantage over other similar companies by applying methods to make the products and services way more alluring than others (Forbes. 2020). The rationale behind implementing adaptation by the farm girl could be to allure the local market customers with the design and quality of the products as per their choice along with flexibility in pricing strategy and the packaging and other intangible elements like the post sales services and guaranteed customer service to make them stand out.

Explanation of Glocal and its strategies

Global refers to the customization of a product or services as per needs of the local market by an international organization. According to an online review Forbes (2020), this permits the co-presence of both the universalizing and the particularizing. It enables them to adapt according to the market niches so that the product could be sold in large quantities (Farm Girl. 2020). Taking into regard if Farm Girl broadens out their outlets into the international platform in the USA market, it needs to adapt their services such as food preference, pricing strategies, timings and so forth according to the preferences of the local markets of the host countries.

The Glocal strategy would involve implementation below:

Promotional Element of Marketing Mix

The firm has been found to operate five restaurants alongside a booming catering business (Farm Girl. 2020). The well recognized café offering commendable services in the central areas of London could improve their market position both nationally and globally through the implantation of 4Ps of marketing mix, that are as follows:

Product:

The concerned firm is one of the best cafes for brunch and offers a wide range of breakfast items starting from salads and sandwiches to deserts. In order to surpass the expectation of the existing customers and also to attract newer ones the firm could incorporate more sweets and heavy meals to enhance the menu variety (Thabit and Raewf, 2018). Better product quality, export of coffee, improved after sale services, increased availability of services are some elements that the café could work on in order to enhance customer values.

Pricing:

In order to maintain a competitive age in the market and expand the business the firm needs to strategize the pricing of food as this manipulates the decision of customer’s purchase to a great extent. Affordable prices, appealing discounts would grab attention of more consumers.

Place:

The Farm Café currently operates in five different locations in central London. To obtain competitive advantage they would need to offer easy accessibility from various cities and even some rural locations (The Independent. 2020). Opting for distributors and some wholesale retailers would expand their market and help to foster wide customer recognition across the nation even to reach global platforms easily, especially the market of the USA.

Promotion:

Although the restaurant is recognizable in London for their hospitality and staple coffee yet an impactful promotion of their products as well as services would be favorable for their business expansion. The firm can promote their name internationally by lending their venues for shoots and major events. They can allure customers by distributing fancy goodies from different offline and online platforms. Mohammadi et al. (2018) opined that incorporation of innovation in advertising can contribute to aware more customers. Moreover, they can consider the approach of creating blogs to reach the global market through the internet.

AIDA Model

This model includes elements like attention, interest, action and desires and all of these indicate the steps through which a customer goes while making a purchase (Corporate Finance Institute. 2020). Implementation of this model can prove to be beneficial for the Farm Girl Café’s business enhancement.

Attention: The webpage of the concerned brand looks alluring and interesting because of the refreshing food and their decorated outlet images (The Independent. 2020). Still they can provide more attracting information and make the site more easily navigable.

Interest: For further impact on customers they can add taglines to their particular food items. They can even inform their visitors about various café events through their pages.

Desire: To promote the brand further they would need to include services that are desired by the customers. Rewards, discounts, different vouchers would encourage the clients to visit them regularly and also promote the brand indirectly.

Action: Only promises would not be enough to retain the customers the café would need to act accordingly to fulfill the promises. Customer satisfaction should be their priority for business benefit.

Communication Model

Considering the current infrastructure of the concerned firm to enhance relationship with the clients an effective two way communication is highly needed. They can thus opt for the Interactive Model of communication.

Interactive or Convergence Model of Communication:

This model in particular indicates a two way communication between the sender and receiver. Tang, (2020) opined that the sender waits for the reply from the receiver and next the sender becomes the receiver of that reply. The model recognizes the feedback element also includes some aspects like cultural ethical backgrounds, geographic locations, individual experiences.

Recommendation

The Farm Café is popularly known for providing the customers with healthy food and great look and feel under one single roof. Both the physical and virtual reach of the concerned firm is considerably limited as it operates within a limited geographical location. The firm can obtain competitive advantage in the market by penetrating it and enhancing the customer base.

On the other hand, Partnership with a food delivery organization would be highly beneficial. In order to secure a position in the food market of the USA they would also need to target the customers of that specific region through the internet and make alliances with other existing brands.

Conclusion

Based on the overview of the international market, Farm Girl despite seems that it could broaden up their business by stepping into the USA food market that would be more prosperous for their e-commerce. Through different strategies like the STP analysis, glocal strategies, standardization and adaptation along with the marketing mix, AIDA and communication model, the firm has prosperous opportunity to flourish in the US market. This can be beneficial for the brand go well in the upcoming future.

Continue your journey with our comprehensive guide to International Human Resources.

References

• Corporate Finance Institute. 2020. AIDA Model - Understand The Steps In The AIDA Model Hierarchy. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 July 2020].
• Express Pharma. 2020. Going Glocal Is It The Way Forward? - Express Pharma. [online] Available at: < https://www.expresspharma.in/cover-story/going-glocal-is-it-the-way-forward/> [Accessed 29 July 2020].
• Fairchild, G.F., 2020. Consumer credit in the retail food industry: attitudinal analysis and market segmentation (Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Libraries).
• Farm Girl. 2020. Farm Girl. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 July 2020].
• Forbes. 2020. Meet Farm Girl: The London Café That Dishes Out Holistic, Instagram-Worthy Food. [online] Available at: < https://www.forbes.com/sites/courtneyporkolab/2018/10/29/meet-farm-girl-the-london-cafe-that-dishes-out-holistic-instagram-worthy-food/#2f46356473a5> [Accessed 29 July 2020].
• Mason, K., Chakrabarti, R. and Singh, R., 2017. Markets and marketing at the bottom of the pyramid.
• Mohammadi, H., Saghaian, S. and Alizadeh, P., 2018. Prioritization of expanded marketing mix in different stages of the product life cycle: The case of food industry.
• Rayner, J. (2020). Farm Girl Café, Chelsea: ‘We don't stay for dessert, because we have suffered enough’ – restaurant review | Jay Rayner. Retrieved 29 July 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/11/farm-girl-cafe-chelsea-we-dont-stay-for-dessert-because-we-have-suffered-enough-restaurant-review
• Statista. 2020. Restaurants And Cafes: UK Consumer Spending 2005-2018 | Statista. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 July 2020].
• Tang, Q., 2020, May. Construction of Interactive Integrated Communication Marketing System in Big Data Era. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1550, No. 3, p. 032142). IOP Publishing.
• Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).
• The Independent. 2020. Farm Girl Brunch Review: A Place For Free-From Diet Following Millennials. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 July 2020].
• Women's Health. 2020. Behind The Brunch: 10 Things You Didn’T Know About Farm Girl. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 July 2020].