Effectiveness of the Marketing Mix on Tunnocks

Background information

I am investigating the effectiveness of the marketing mix on tunnocks. They company was a family baker based in uddingston, Lanarkshire in Scotland, which was formed by Thomas tunnocks in 1980, when he purchased a baker shop in Lorne place. Boyd tunnocks grandson of Thomas tunnocks has owned the business for over 30 years. There are now three shops located in Glasgow near uddingston, which are the tunnocks tearoom, bakery and the original shop. They company uses the method of flow production to produce their products, as they use robot machines to increase productivity. Tunnocks is a private limited company and is in the second and tertiary division of industry, as they manufacture and sell their products. The products the business provides are teacakes, caramel log, snowball, caramel wafer etc. they also sell these products online to over 40 different countries worldwide. Tunnocks target market is at everyone who enjoys their products.

Research methods and sources

I carried out a survey for my primary source to find how many people recognised the tunnocks logo, how many have purchased product from the tunnocks brand and how many had returned back to the business. I used this type of field research because it allowed me to gather first hand information from a wide variety of people. The information conducted by the survey was relevant because they were questions I had asked myself to see if I could get good enough response, and therefore I know it was up to date and directly related to my proposal. However it was quite time consuming to collect the information from the survey as I did all my surveys face to face asking my friends and family members. Although the information gathered was valuable as it gives accurate feedback as to how many people recognised the brand, as to how many purchased products and as to how many had returned back.

I carried out an online research from the tunnocks website as my secondary source to find out how the company advertise their products and what new opportunities do they offer. I use this type of desk research because it was easy to obtain as the tunnocks website had a vast amount of information to collect from, which was readily available. The information collected from the website was relevant because it was up to date as the website states the year 2016, which was the last time they had changed or added any new information, so website it still fresh and new. The information didn’t take that long to gather in as I was only using one website for my research. The information was also valuable as it gives accurate feedback as to how the business advertise their products to consumer and as to what opportunities they offer.

I carried out an online research from one news article, which was the the bbc news .I am using this article as my secondary source to find out how the tunnocks teacakes sales have rocketed in the last few years . I used this type of desk research because it was easy to access, as there was a lot of information available in the news article, to analyse from. The information collected from the article were relevant because it was up to date, as they were published in the year 2014 and so article are still quite new and there hasn’t been major changes in the business since 2014 years .the information was was much quicker to collect than carrying out my own research .the information was also valuable as it gives accurate feedback as to how tunnocks teacakes sales have increased in these couple of years.

Analysis and interpretation of findings

The information gathered from the primary source, I had found out from the survey that

78% of people have purchased products from tunnocks. This means the business is well established as majority people from the survey purchased tunnocks product as the business has been around for 120 years so have been improving their products since then. This also means the company must be enduring high quality product which will attract lots of happy customer. This impacts the business because good quality product will make customer want to purchase their products, as they trust that the business will provide good products and that will make business reliable and which will increase loyalty from customer and sales of the company.

I had also found out from the survey that 82% of people had recognized the tunnocks brand.

This means the business must have a strong brand and this can be die to the business high advertising campaign, which is why it is a well-known business. This impacts the business as it shows that widely know brad will bring brand recognition which help customer make purchasing decisions toward the brand and builds up positive sentiment which further strengthen the company amongst other competitors and with a strong brand the company can command higher prices which will increase profit and makes the business successful.