Lamb Chapter 3 Web Exercise

The Marketing Environment

Vignette: In Chapter 3 you read about Labatt's marketing strategies.<Promotion is aimed at specific target groups and considers demographic factors affecting the beer market.

Featured URL: www.labatt.com 

Consumer Power-Let's Drink to That

Collecting and evaluating information helps companies like those in the beer and wine industries identify market opportunities and threats.<This is important, as it relates to external environments and to what can be controlled that impacts on marketing.< Social, demographic, economic, technological, political, legal, and competitive factors need to be considered when making marketing plans.

In preparation for this Web Exercise, review the materials that cover the demographic data for the various groups that make up Canadian society, in particular Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Older Consumers.

1. Create< three profiles.< Each will represent one individual: a Generation Xer, a Baby Boomer, and an Older Consumer.<To make this exercise more believable, give each of the three a name, sex, age, education, ethnic origin, language, career, family, life style, interests, and so on.

2. After visiting the sites provided in the Resources section, explain why each individual enjoys his or her beverage (i.e., beer or wine).

3. Devise a strategy you think might work for each individual if you were targeting him or her to buy the other product. That is, if Jane prefers beer, what campaign might you conduct to get her to try wine? If Pierre prefers wine, how might you get him interested in buying beer?

Beer

• This site is an information site for breweries, including Labatt.
•  Real Beer's Canadian Beer Index.
• Canadian Beer Review, an old site that is no longer updated but<that archives materials still relevant to the beer industry.
• A beer fan's homage to Canadian beer.
• An entertainment site targeting beer drinkers.
•  Industry Canada's Guide to Brewery Products.

Wine

• An article, "Uncorking Canadian Wine Imports," by Kathleen Wainio.
•  The Canadian Wine Home Page, listing wineries by province.
• Canadian Wineries, Vineyards, and Wine Regions.
• Canadian Wine Directory.
• Wines of Canada, with health, restaurant and cooking information.
• A tour through Ontario wine country.
• Wine news and information by Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) of Canada.
• Industry Canada's Guide to wine.

Specific Brands of Wine

•  Blue Mountain Winery.
• Mission Hill Winery.
• Pelee Island Winery.
• Sumac Ridge Winery.
• Andre's Winery.

These Web Exercises provide an additional opportunity for exploration of Chapter 3.

The initial activity for Chapter 3 provided you with an opportunity to clarify ideas about demographic characteristics as they relate to consumer buying behaviour and as they may predict how specific market groups will respond to specific marketing mixes.

You may be doing this exercise individually as a research assignment, or perhaps your instructor has decided to make this assignment the starting point for a term project done in groups of three, with each student in the group taking one of the characters. Below are some ideas for taking the exercise in more detailed directions for a greater number of points.

1. Character Development

Find two partners. Each of you will develop a character as suggested earlier. Each of you will describe your character, and illustrate him or her using pictures from magazines<or graphics found on the Web or in clip art.< Each character will prefer either wine or beer.

2. Role Play

Based on research into the characters you and your team have developed, devise a marketing campaign to convince those characters to try a different beverage.<Your team could engage in role play, acting out various scenarios-for example, a beer-tasting party or a tour of a winery.

3. Marketing Campaign

Choose one of the beers described on one of the beer Websites. Then, using the information provided on that specific site, create a specific campaign targeting that particular product to one or more of the wine-drinking characters.

4. Contrasting Strategies

Choose one or more Canadian winery sites, and compare them with sites for American, South American, or European wineries. Emphasize market strategies.