For each and every organization product is their fundamental components to inform and attract the customers to their organization. Without designing and developing a perfect product it is impossible to target the right group of customers. The organization needs to work on the core and basic components of the products to market them successfully and make the people interested in the products to make a sale. For that purpose, organizations need to go through extensive research, product development, and improvement for the product from time to time. Here the report (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab) is based on designing a new product for the famous hotel The Burj Al Arab (A Tower of the Arabs). It is one of the best luxury hotel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Since its opening in late 1999, the hotel with its distinctive sail-shaped silhouette has thrust Dubai onto the global luxury tourism landscape. The hotel is built on a triangular man-made island reclaimed from the sea managed by Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts.
Sales Development and Merchandising of Burj Al Arab – Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab
The hotel already has some excellent features and facilities which are very unique and only can be found there. So for developing a product for the hotel can customize a design a whole new package for the guests and sheiks. So here the hotel can introduce brand new “Platinum Premium Package” for their new attractiveness for the customers. As the sales executive of the marketing department to generate new ideas and improve the service and portfolio of The Burj Al Arab in Dubai is my duty (Blythe and Martin, n.d.). Here the following things can be done to influence the betterment of the service (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) for the hotel to attract more people.
Evaluate the key components of the new product/services of the Platinum Premium Package
The key components of the Platinum Premium Package are described as follows:
- Opportunity: To introduce an original product idea for a service-related organization is a critical term. So as a sales executive, I need to think about the market opportunity for the potential product or service or how this will be appreciated in the market. How to introduce or launch a new service or product is the prime consideration of all. Through the new product, the clients will get the opportunity to experience something very classy, new, and innovative (Blythe and Martin, n.d.).
- Audience: Any product will be launched based on the audience’s needs or demands of that specific time how they want their product or service to become customized. For that, the audience or customers of the hotel need to consider their customer base and work on their profile to approach them in a most prominent way. The success or failure of any product highly depends on the proper identification of the potential audience.
- Scheduling: How and when to launch the product or service depends on the customer’s consideration of the peak and off-peak time. The hotel needs to review their previous track records to know about the business peak our time and based on that they need to launch their service of “Platinum Premium Package”. The launch schedule should be aligned with each and every step to reach out to their goal, and your entire team should aware of the scheduled tasks accordingly.
- Positioning: The position of the package will be focused on the premium elite class, who likes to spend any amount of money for the different, unique, and extraordinary experiences. So the platinum premium package (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) will be designed with all kinds of life experiences and very unique segments that can be experienced just once in a lifetime. All of the services will be customized from person to person (Hollensen, 2019).
Segmentation is a key part of positioning. Whenever to fix the target audience the market opportunity and determining how the needs of those individual segments differ can be aligned with the product’s position (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) with those needs.
- Trained Employees: Training is important to step into the success of the service. Overall customer service, support, public relations, and marketing teams need training around the departments to need to perform all kinds of conversations and written communication (Hollensen, 2019).
Training teams will help to incorporate the product and allow them to really get to know it to help customers.
Discuss the range of contributions to sales and profit of elements in the product mix
The range of contribution of sales and profit of elements in the product mix is described as follows:
Product Mix: The product or service is the actual offering for any organization for use, consumption, or experience. The product can be a physical object or a service. The range of different kinds of products offered by an organization is called the product mix. Among all of the organization’s revenue is going to be obtained from the sale the service so it is important for Burj Al Arad to make the range and quality of the product mix perfect and praiseworthy.
In general, branding is important for the travel and tourism industry. So the service needs to be branded in such a way so that the service gets the overall attention from the people (Hollensen, 2019). The presentation of the service should be so delightful that can be important to reinforce the brand image and the point-of-sale to the buyer.
Emphasis on the vital sell benefits to the potential customers should take into account. It is about the product life-cycle. Services are related to experiences so it is very important to ensure and keep up the uniqueness alive to attract customers every now and then.
Considering the various stages of the product life-cycle and the period of time, it is possible to plan the development and introduction of new products. If the current position of any one product is to start their journey preplanned and correctly on its life-cycle, it is possible to assess the potential growth of sales or the degree to which prices to maintain the market share (Lamb, Hair, and McDaniel, 2012).
Assess how market segmentation contributes to sales maximization
The service (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) is designed based on the niche market strategy. So the market segmentation will add new value for the customers. So the clients will get higher value in addition to higher standards of services and they will provide the premium price of the whole package. They will also maximize the sale with their additional enjoyment and all ensure better relaxation from the hotel.
As it is one of the best unique and prominent hotels of the town the overall experience will increase their customers and elite class people will come more often to enjoy their time here and they will share their experiences to the people they think would love to get (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2012). So the branding and personal promotion will also add value for the better experiences of the sales maximization.
Discuss the factors affecting buyer behavior (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab)
Buyer behavior is the combination of the different kinds of factors associated with their situation, personality traits, characteristics, etc. For the hotel Burj Al Arab the factors to affects buyer behavior are discussed below:
- Psychological Factors: The factors associated with human psychology can play a very significant role to work on consumer’s preferences and likes or dislikes and different other factors. Here the various psychological factors such as; Motivation, Perception, Learning, Attitudes, and Beliefs can change their behavioral pattern. For example, the targeted customers of the hotel are elite class people all over the world. So they have their own different taste and preferences (Rosenbloom, 1976). They want everything new, unique, and different for others. So as a sales executive I will be focusing on their psychological mindset and convince them based on different aspects of the work to develop the new service like Platinum Premium Package.
- Social Factors: We live in a complex social environment where people are surrounded by different types of buying behaviors. As social animal people think about their acceptance and try to imitate socially acceptable behaviors. Hence, the social factors influence the buying behavior to accept the service like Platinum Premium Package and some factors related to that are their Family, Reference Groups, Roles, and status in the society.
- Cultural Factors: As the entire individual learns different sets of values, perceptions, behaviors, and preferences from the people in the family and the other key institutions in their developmental stage. Thus, the behavioral patterns are developed from cultural factors such as their Culture, Subculture, and Social Class, etc. Culture is also very important to know about the mindset of the people to accept the service like Platinum Premium Package and how they will behave in taking that services (Rosenbloom, 1976).
- Personal Factors: Different individual’s decision-making process varies from each other. Individuals focus on their buying decisions and work on that based on their personality and choice or preferences. They choose their lifestyle or other vacation decision on how they spend and live their life every now and then. In that case, services like Platinum Premium Package must carry the personality traits of that individual customer.
- Economic Factors: Another most significant factor is the economic factor which has a significant influence on the buying decision of an individual. Personal Income, Family Income, Income Expectations, Savings, etc. can influence the customers in the long run and such kind of factor will surely influence the people who want to visit the hotel and enjoy the service like Platinum Premium Package at least once in the lifetime (Walters and Kerby, 1970).
These are some of the factors that influence the buyer behavior of the hotel and as most of them are elite class and business people all of them are very conscious and concern about that. As the sales executive, I need to keep all of the factors in my mind and use the strategic marketing decision based on that.
Assess appropriate advertising media for sales development situations – Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab
For the best advertising and promotion activities (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) of the new service of Burj Al Arab like Platinum Premium Package and while promoting it through social media or doing business to business communication will be very beneficial in the long run. By considering the overall situation of the hotel environment and the setup of the hotel, it will be very interesting to use the following media for better exposure to sales development.
- Using Social media: Creating a buzz by using social media and making contents and informing the people about the brand new service of the Burj Al Arab hotel (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) is going to attract people and all the luxury lover elite class people to find a perfect place to spend their vacation or any valuable time to create memories and moments.
- Corporate Meet up: The arrangement of corporate meet up can be very useful for increasing the attractiveness of the service (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ). If they enjoy the services of the platinum premium package they will talk about it in the long run and the hotel will be able to get more clients and customers from all over the world (Walters and Kerby, 1970).
- Shooting sport and attracting celebrities: Making the place suitable and convenient for many national and international movies and bring the hotel’s highest exposure from all over the world. The international directors, producers, and all the celebrities around the world will become great sources to promote the hotel and its excellent services.
Overall the common medium such as advertisement, TVC, buzz marketing can also be done to create a revolution through the advertising of the hotel in a very unique way to attract a maximum number of the customer.
Evaluate the role of external merchandising in maximizing customer volumes, making recommendations for improvement
External merchandising is the way of attracting the target customers of the hotel Burj Al Arab with their Platinum Premium Service and make them understand the benefits and facilities included in the service. The external merchandising will suggest the target customers about the service in the first place and make them feel attracted to the service for making appointments and quick reservation.
It is also helpful to maximize the customers with the best offers of the market and make them understand the value of the service (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) and how premium and world-class unique services they are about to experience with the hotel. For example, the whole dine process will be served by some top talented chefs, and each and every guest can order from the live telecast from the food preparation (Walters and Kerby, 1970). They can customize their orders and also can see how the foods are being prepared in the LCD monitors like a movie or a live show.
External merchandising will promote all the facts and small details to the customers and make them attracted to the service to get the maximum customers for the hotel. It will also play a very significant role to promote and improve the marketing and campaign strategy to do better in the future (Blythe and Martin, n.d.).
Assessing how design and layout might affect customers to spend – Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab
There is a tendency on customers that if they become satisfied they would pay a premium charge. The quality product, as well as the promised product, should be provided to get customers’ satisfaction. This technique mostly depends on internal sales promotion. To make the customers spend, design and layout might affect more to the customer’s mind. Design and layout may impact customers’ mind and that will attract people to that area again and again (Brooks, n.d.). Burj Al Arab is such a luxury hotel in which design and layout attract people to spend their time with their favorite person on some special occasions and this will make them spend more.
Good design and layout may create a great impact on customers mind which force the customers to spend more for such a lovely moment. The premium quality of service may impact greatly on customer’s mind which increases sales volume. Though Burj Al Arab charges prestige price, so services should be money worthy. For this reason as a sales manager, it is necessary to arrange premium services for the target customers.
Reviewing and evaluate internal merchandising materials for Burj Al Arab – Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab
Internal merchandising materials include guest service directories, electronic marquees, and table tent cards as well as lobby posters. In short, all the facilities are related to highly providing hospitality services to the customers. For this reason as a sales manager I prefer, the internal merchandising plan should be specific and the plan may include the following factors:
- Cohesiveness: In the planning of internal merchandising, sales executives must work with the logo, brand name, and positioning strategy (Farley and Weinberg, 1975). To attract all guests to the hotel, one should be cohesiveness in managing internal merchandising materials.
- Condition: To make sure that all available internal merchandising material is in excellent condition. Besides you have to protect the exteriors because other than the materials will start to look scruffy in a week’s time.
- Copy: With the improvement of the internal health of the hotel, hotel copy should be written, to bring in publicity copy write is essential.
- Coordinated: Internal merchandising materials are kept securely tied into the all fascinating marketing plan. Innovate new ideas for the hotel and work properly. However, most used forms and ideas should be avoided.
- Cost-effective: At the end of this planning, sales executives should take internal merchandising materials to become cost-effective and promotional costs also be used here.
Evaluating promotional activities for different scenarios and making recommendation for improvement
The ultimate goal of marketing to draw customers’ attention by providing attractive and best quality services and retain them with the organization and continuously try to attract new customers through different promotional activities. Mainly they gain brand recognition through effective public relations strategy. Products or services can’t reach to the customers without marketing activities. So they should inform customers about their offering in the market. Only brand recognition won’t be enough to draw customers’ attention (Hospitality Education or Hospitality Training, 1985). So in this global era, Burj Al Arab should use the following types of promotional activities for different scenarios and as a sales manager for the product exhibition purpose I must prefer that it is required to follow the following promotional activities:
- Advertising: Burj Al Arab can promote its services through advertising on different media like television, radio, newspaper. Besides they can cover this promotional activity through social media, outdoor signage, and so on.
- Personal selling or telemarketing: Good interpersonal and communication skills may help in the promotion of services. Along with this excellent knowledge about the services as well as the ability to sales its services to prospective customers helps to fulfill the marketing demands.
- Publicity: Word of mouth may use here to make publicly known. Besides using printing, broadcasting as well as arranging an interview session may make it more popular to the public.
- Short term sales promotion: Burj Al Arab may offer discounted services on some special occasions to know about their high-class services to the customers. However, competitions or arranging coupons may also use here.
- Direct marketing: To make the customer feel special direct making is another type of marketing where sales executive contacts directly with the target customers by sending letters, emails, pamphlets, and brochures to individual customers.
To improve the present situation of the restaurant sales executives may use these techniques or they use the combination of these types to improve their current position in the market.
Evaluating personal selling technique and making recommendations for improvement
Only taking several promotional techniques is not sufficient to earn a higher profit. After improving promotional techniques sales executives should take some selling techniques. For Burj Al Arab personal selling technique (Sales Merchandising Burj AlArab ) was not much required as it was doing well because of its brand image. This is one type of advantage but on the other hand, it becomes a disadvantage as always focusing on the brand image may indicate out of date (Seidman, 2012). For this reason as a sales manager it is necessary to follow the following personal selling techniques for the improvement of their services:
- Sales presentation: To do a virtual or in-person presentation about the services of the restaurant.
- Conversation: To sell services sales executives should do conversation based on their services with prospective buyers.
- Demonstrations: Sales executives should highlight favorable services according to benefit offers to attract customers and sell their products.
- Addressing objection: Always try to address the perspective concern to the target customers and remove any obstacle to get the services.
- Consultative selling: here sales executives at first know the requirement of the customers than suggest according to the requirement.
- Referencing selling: Happy customers will bring more customers and this technique is called referencing selling.
Discussing the influence of operational design on sales volume
Operational design is the implementation stage of planning. Considering the current circumstances as a sales manager it is required to take initial steps to fulfill the demand of the customers according to their customers’ needs (Sorokina, Semrad and Mills, 2016). Burj Al Arab is such a luxurious hotel in Dubai, it has a good operational design on, marketing department. But for the new target customers and new sales executive, there should be a new operational design, which is a strategic activity and it will lead to operational management. When it did fine and renowned, it becomes an integral factor of an advanced, effective, and efficient organization. The sales volume much more depends on operational design. Without a proper and innovative operational design, the organization cannot provide high-quality services. As Burj Al Arab charges prestigious price and their target customers are the upper-class people, so they have to provide premium services to their customers (Staffieri, Cavagnaro and Rowson, 2018). This is possible only then when they implement a well-organized operational design. So operational design influence on sales volume.
Justifying key principles that should be included in a sales training program
Employers should arrange a sales training program for newly joined sales executives. This sales training program nourishes their skills and knowledge and makes them more effective in their works. This training program would be more effective when there are performance standards that help individual employees know about their quality (Staffieri, Cavagnaro, and Rowson, 2018). The sales training program is essential for growing sales volume, progress morale, cut selling costs, progress relations, assist them to adjust with changing work, progress image of the company, and so on. There are some key principles for a sales training program and they are:
Personal development of skills: All sales executives try to improve their personal development of skills. Considering the performance standard level, all executives should improve their level of skills.
New Sales opportunities: Through their training program employees are taught how to make new opportunities for sales and how to target new customers through their new sales techniques (Toop, 1978).
Teamwork: Employees should be taught about teamwork and the importance of teamwork. A real-life case study may help them do better in these criteria.
Prepare effective content: For a better training content should be specific and concrete. Trainers should include all available contents on the sales training program with a clear explanation of the trainee.
According to the customer’s demand employers should organize an effective training program that is enriched with proper effective content along with sufficient explanations, improve communication skills as well as improve interpersonal skills and so on. A successful training program may improve employees’ skills and make them more innovative in their works. From the promotional activities to the selling of services, sales employees have to follow several techniques and implementation of these techniques will improve the sales volume.
Conclusion
After considering the overall idea of the platinum premium package it is not impossible to understand the importance of the marketing and the market strategies to promote the service. By doing all the promotion it can be expected that the hotel will enhance their customer’s experience and will be able to meet up their satisfaction.
References
- Brooks, W. (n.d.). Sales techniques.
- Farley, J., and Weinberg, C. (1975). Inferential Optimization: An Algorithm for Determining Optimal Sales Commissions in Multiproduct Sales Forces. Operational Research Quarterly (1970-1977), 26(2), p.413.
- Hospitality Education or Hospitality Training. (1985). Hospitality Education and Research Journal, 9(2), p.II-II.
- Seidman, D. (2012). The ultimate guide to sales training. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
- Sorokina, E., Semrad, K., and Mills, B. (2016). Practical Sales Forecasting: Potential Solutions for Independently Owned Hotels. Tourism Analysis, 21(6), pp.631-644.
- Staffieri, S., Cavagnaro, E., and Rowson, B. (2018). Change as a travel benefit: Exploring the impact of travel experiences on Italian youth. Research in Hospitality Management, 7(2), pp.81-89.
- Toop, A. (1978). Choosing the right sales promotion. London: Sales Machine Ltd.
- Blythe, J. and Martin, J. (n.d.). Essentials of marketing.
- Hollensen, S. (2019). Marketing Management. Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education Canada.
- Lamb, C., Hair, J., and McDaniel, C. (2012). Essentials of marketing. [Mason, Ohio]: South-Western Cengage Learning.
- Rosenbloom, B. (1976). The Trade Area Mix and Retailing Mix: A Retail Strategy Matrix. Journal of Marketing, 40(4), p.58.
- Walters, C., and Kerby, J. (1970). Essentials of Marketing Management. Journal of Marketing, 34(4), p.108.
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