Good Host Pet Food Company's Brand Positioning And Brand Promotion Strategy

With economic development, the level of living standards keeps rising. In the urban and rural households, the relationship of family animals represented by cats and dogs, and people are experiencing significant changes. While their function values of guarding doors and catching rats are gradually decreasing, they are becoming adored family members that fulfill the emotional needs of people. Therefore, more and more people are beginning to use professionally produced food to take care of these animals.China's pet food industry is slowly scaling up. Represented by Nestle and Mars, the international giants have taken most of the market share and the high-end consumer group by their brand marketing advantage and influence. Meanwhile, China's domestic enterprises lack brand awareness and brand building capabilities, and rely on low-price strategy to enter the market, which hardly gains them any competitiveness over international brands in the market share. The gap in between is being largely increased.The issue of obscure brand strategy and brand positing is getting obvious and has become the bottleneck for future development. This study on brand positioning and promotion strategy tries to guide the enterprises to solve these problems. Taking the company the writer works for (Care Pet Food) example, this thesis discusses how to make brand marketing strategy, design product line, coordinate internal brand framework, carry on scientific brand positioning, and targeted brand marketing promotions according to the market demands. It is necessary to give an impetus to the transition of domestic pet food industry from "the price war" to brand competition, which will promote brand value and increase brand premium price.This thesis consists of six parts:Chapter One is an overall summary that introduces the background and significance of Care Pet Food's brand positioning and promotion research. By comparing the process and present status of domestic and international pet food industry development, this chapter mentions the lack of brand names in brand marketing of domestic pet food, and the need to address the issue by brand building.Chapter Two analyzes Care Pet Food's brand status. Combined with the management mode and operation results, this chapter analyses the existing problems of Care Pet Food's brand marketing:1. The strategic positioning of single brand and simply following the trend does not adapt to present pet food market conditions.2. Dismatch of all channel brand and channel differentiation.3. Inconsistency of brand positioning communication strategies.Chapter Three analyzes Care Pet Food's marketing opportunities. With survey data, this chapter analyzes the sector that the company belongs to from a domestic macro-and micro-environment point of view. It also analyzes the brand marketing possibilities and the reasons of Care Pet Food's positional opportunities in brand marketing with SWOT analysis method.Chapter Four presents Care's brand positioning proposal. It analyses brand positioning theories according to the problems and opportunities in Chapters Two and Three. Referring to Kotler's "STP" positioning method and Trout's "Six-Step Positioning Method ", this Chapter further re-positions Care Pet Food's brand with multi-brand and brand extension strategy. It presents Care's high-, medium-and low-brands'positioning strategy in product, price, channel and promotion with the "4P" multi-brand positioning. It proposes different brand positioning for different consumers, so as to achieve market goals by differentiated positioning strategy through different channels and promotion strategies.According to brand promotion "triadic theory" and Kotler's brand communication portfolio theory, combined with Care's brand positioning from the previous chapter, Chapter Five presents the idea of adjusting the company's unified identification system, and promoting relevant strategies in accordance with different brands and stages. It further provides solutions for possible problem of "brand cannibalism".Directed to the company's brand strategy, brand positioning and promotion strategy, Chapter Six focuses on the conditions for multi-brand strategy application, clearness and consistency of brand positioning, as well as segmentation of brother brands. Meanwhile, brand promotion and operation strategy should have its own focus. This Chapter further brings up the idea that quality of brand marketing is the foundation. It makes suggestions for possible problems after Care Pet Food's introduction of new brand and during its brand extension.This thesis brings in two innovative ideas:Firstly, it is the author's reflection and refinement upon MBA management theory combined with the author's company's actual operation and cases. Secondly, the viewpoint of this study, namely, the application of brand positioning and promotion strategy theory in domestic pet food companies. Brand positioning and promotion strategy theory are a relatively mature marketing theory in the West. During the practices, however, the author finds little conscious use of the theory by domestic pet food enterprises. Instead, most companies carry on pet food marketing based on the marketing experience of productive resource products in feed industry.By comparing domestic and international pet food company's brand positioning and promotion strategies, this thesis carries on survey of demand characteristics tailoring to consumer's consumption traits, values and consumption methods to further make product positioning, brand positioning and promotion strategies in line with market rules. The goal is to guide domestic pet food enterprises to carry on marketing activities with the application of modern marketing philosophy. During this process, the writer emphasizes channel building and brand quality for domestic companies at the early stage of brand disadvantage. He also suggests to quickly reduce product differentiation, and to make up brand disadvantage by channel advantage.The shortcoming of this thesis lies in the unavoidable inaccuracy of relevant data and information manual collection due to the present starting period of China's pet food industry and industrial authorities. In addition, the view points and strategic proposals still need further revising and improving due to limited personal theory research level and personal experience.