Marketing research on catering

Appetite Catering is a self organized company where people get culinary art and experience to make a better future for them. Appetite Catering offers an integrated menu with a variety of delicious, hygienic, high quality food for any kind of social gatherings and events and provides efficient service catering with food and buffet service. Appetite Catering will have a selected number of high performing graduates from different culinary arts training program to prepare and serve its offerings. Appetite Catering has the management resources and capability to run the catering business. Through a concentrated study on the market, Appetite Catering found an opportunity to tap the market with the resources available and a demand of the products and services for its products.

Appetite Catering has developed a marketing plan that includes creating promotional materials, establishing strategic alliances with business in the catering area such as party rental facilities and decorators. As a result Appetite Catering will be referred by those providers. 2. Market Situation The market is dominating by some handful catering organizations. These catering companies are covering almost all of the market. However, there is still a good chance to develop this business by providing superior value with lower price and by networking.

The market consists of consumers and business users who are increasingly connecting with other people, joining different events and gatherings which lead to an increasing need of catering service. People now a day are more conscious about what exactly they want; they are demanding more efficient service with a lower price which is increasing the market competition. Appetite Catering is aware of this and planned to serve the market with flexible service, premium quality food and of course, low cost. Appetite Catering will penetrate the market by offering a wide variety of services such as, providing services to any kind of event, modified products, buffet and home delivery. By these steps Appetite Catering will try to differentiate its services and will capture the existing customer. Lower price will help to drag the attention of new customers and grab the customers of competitors.

Market Segmentation

The two main market segments are individuals hosting social events and business customers catering lunches and meetings in there work place. Social catering customers: Customers that contract for private events, usually serviced in there home. Business catering customers: Local companies and institutions that contract for services primarily for breakfasts, lunches and meetings. Social catering customers are individuals usually living in different residential areas of the city who hires catering for private events usually in community centers or in their home. The current approximate population of Dhaka metropolitan city is more than 8, 511, 228 (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, year 2001), which means there is a huge market out there to serve though there are some competitors also. There is a lack of proper service and we are going to serve these people with our all resources. Appetite Catering estimates that the total market size for social catering customer is about 200 events per year.

Appetite Catering will penetrate in business launches and meeting market through mass advertising and personal relationships. For this segment Appetite Catering’s goal is to secure repeating business for regular commercial meetings. The market of this segmentation is gradually increasing so necessity of networking is also becoming a vital factor for this segment. Appetite Catering has positioned uniquely to succeed in this market. Researches show that consumers frequently switch brands when prices and services are equal. Appetite Catering has invested to ensure good quality and provide comparatively low price to hold the customers.

4. Market Distribution Appetite Catering will distribute its service in the city by establishing outlets within the metropolitan area. To do this Appetite Catering will hire floors/spaces in 2 different areas of Dhaka. Those are Banani and Dhanmondi. There will be two kitchens, all the delivery will be made from there. Delivery will be done by vehicles to different part of city. Vehicles will be collected by purchasing and hiring. The distribution will completely depend on the orders that we will get. We will also serve people by offering food from our outlets. Anyone can have our service anytime in our outlets. Consumers who don’t have much time to have food in home will be major part of this.

5. SWOT Analysis SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, and Opportunities & Threats. A scan of the internal and external environment is an important part of the strategic planning process. Environmental factors internal to the firm usually can be classified as strengths (S) or weaknesses (W), and those external to the firm can be classified as opportunities (O) or threats (T). Such an analysis of the strategic environment is referred to as a SWOT analysis.