Bass Pro Sections - Marquel PDF

Preview

Summary

This is a group Marketing plan analysis utilizing the framework from chapter 2. It breaks down the SWOT analysis for Bass Pro shops, along with other elements such as the 4 P's and a small trace of Porters 5 dimensions....

Description

Derek

Braun

Niccole Brewer Marquel Harris Cing Zo

Bass Pro Shops (Outdoor World)

Summary Bass Pro Shops is revolutionary in their company structure.

They managed to make the

experience of shopping at Bass Pro Shops one that is appealing to much more than just outdoorsmen.

By filling their stores with exotic animals, grand waterfalls and massive

aquariums, Bass Pro has become a place not only to purchase a fishing pole of camouflage clothing, but a place to drive hours to just to experience what it means to shop at one of their stores. What makes the appeal even greater is their adaptation to their surroundings. Each store is not a mindless clone of the previous model, but rather the store is a reflection of the local biomes. Not only does the changing scenery of the stores, but Bass Pro also attracts people with their clinics and educational programs. This again adds to the destination feel of their stores. However, their stores have the clear disadvantage of their massive overhead cost. Whether it be the cost of their land and entertainment factors or the fact that they hire hundreds of workers per store, Bass Pro has a major disadvantage in the fact that they need a massive amount of initial investment to even consider the development of a new facility. This is particularly a large issue due to their large number of competitors. While there is only a number of stores that strictly focus on outdoors sporting goods, there are an increasingly large number of sporting goods stores in general. Despite their somewhat limited inventory of outdoors goods, they still remain a significant threat to Bass Pro’s dominance.

Relevance to Text: Chapter Two introduces the concept of marketing strategy. Target marketing is defined as a marketing mix tailored to fit some specific target customers, which implements the “Four P’s” (Place, Product, Promotion, Price) as a small basic guideline for defining the many different

features a product can satisfy the needs of the customer in it’s own specific way. Bass Pro’s target market would be the mass of outdoors people who hunt, fish, hike, canoe, and bike, along with any other outdoors activities dealing with nature. The products are growing for outdoor users, as there’s opportunities to build new products and come out with new innovations. They’re building and expanding their product range from just fishing and hunting, to clothing lines, to grills, to other appliances. The promotion of Bass Pro is very refound, with the many fishing sponsorships they commit, along with tv commercials, internet ads, tutorial videos on youtube, etc. The “place” aspect leads them to being successful at destination development, having 50 large retail stores around the nation and one in Canada. The 80-20 rule toward customer retention is in effect with Bass Pro because typically loyal customers who buy products there would keep the place going. Vilfredo Pareto (1906) defined that an organization’s revenue would typically come from roughly 20% of its customers, sharpened down to about 80% revenue. Bass Pro’s loyal customers developed a relationship with that place for their outdoor endeavours. These are the people where a company geared towards trying to target and expand. One very great way how Bass Pro retains this customer retention is due to educating people about their product. When a fisherman goes in to buy a new lure, the staff assists them in picking out the lure, and they describe what type of fish it works well on. For poles, Bass Pro is well known for having people as staff proficient in fishing as well, which they will break down the different types such as medium, heavy, or light-action poles as well for the customer to help them decide which one they want. The retention of the customers is heavily reliant on the customer service of the shops and by having friendly and knowledgeable staff helps to keep people coming back. Another relation to the chapter is segmentation. Similar to target markets, Bass Pro Shop definitely segments their markets. The first way they segment their market is regionally. As mentioned earlier, Bass Pro tailors their stores based on the geography of the surrounding areas. Which is brilliant. If the area is swampy, then the inside of the shop is bayou themed. They expertly segment based on region. However, they also segment based on family. The structure of their stores makes outdoors shopping a lot more family friendly. A dad can go check out the newest lures or shotguns, while little Billy and his baby sister can watch the fish in the aquariums or marvel at the taxidermied wildlife. That is a great attribute and makes shopping more than just buying goods, but something that can serve as an afternoon of entertainment. Finally, they

have found themselves a fairly niche segment of outdoorsmen. While they do appeal to a wide range of consumers, their base market segment is those involved in outdoors sporting. By focusing on this rather than the broad spectrum of all sports, Bass Pro narrows the types of products they need to keep stocked which helps to lower the cost of their already very expensive business.

Question I: SWOT Analysis Strengths Bass Pro Shops has many strengths. Firstly, they have piloted and mastered the concept of destination retailing. They are drawing in crowds from hundreds of miles away, and attracting people who would normally not shop at a sporting goods store. Another strength is their brand recognition. Bass Pro Shops is extremely well known and their reputation has been strongly built up. This leads to one of their other strengths. Bass Pro Shops is well known for hiring expert associates and having superior customer service. This retailer hires sales associates who are experts in fishing, hunting, hiking and other varieties of outdoor activities. They has also found strength by pairing these expert associates with workshops for customers to learn hands on how to use the equipment they want to purchase. Additionally, their brand recognition and sheer size of the their company makes them a leader in outdoor sponsoring. They are linked to major fishing and hunting tournament as well as a number of the professional athletes involved in outdoors competitions. This only further grows their brand exposure and their credibility. Weaknesses Despite Bass Pro Shops many strengths, they are not without their weaknesses. Bass Pro Shops have been difficult for competitors to emulate because they are very large, expensive and labor intensive. While this is an competitive advantage they have, it is not without ailments. To give an example, Bass Pro Shops outdoor world in Denver houses a museum, art gallery, aquarium, and education center in its 180,000 square foot building. Generally, about of 30 percent of each store's retail space is used for massive displays including waterfalls and aquariums.. Each shop takes an incredible amount of work just to open. Between acquiring the land, erecting the building, designing the interior and exterior spaces and filling the store with inventory, Bass Pro Shops requires an incredible amount of initial investment. The other

weakness is the high cost of labor. Each store hirers well over one hundred employees, many of which are highly skilled outdoorsmen and women. As if the the tangible assets of the company were not expensive enough, the company has to then think about all the employees that need to be hired in order to maintain both their appearance and their reputation of highly knowledgeable workers.

Opportunities Bass Pro has a variety of opportunities it could take in order to increase their competitive advantage to other competitors. One could be to inherit new depths into technology. Whether it could be developing new products or increasing the efficiency of their operations. People are typically susceptive to a new product that can be used for the outdoors, and or having more product variety to choose from. The innovation for a product can actually lead to ideas leading to labor costs being reduced as well. Bass Pro has the opportunity to become more monopolistic in their market. For example, they are currently in process of trying to buy out Cabela’s, which is the second largest outdoors retailer in the US. However, they have hit a snag with the antitrust legislation that has all but halted the acquisition at this time. They may be able to buy out smaller firms still though which would lessen their competition and give them a larger market share. Another opportunity is to start looking at international expansion. Bass Pro somewhat did with the one retail store in Canada, but many more can be placed elsewhere around the map. They could promote expansion to other countries to globally make business in countries that use fishing more frequently than others. It seems as if Canada would be a prime location for expansion, mainly due to their geographic location and massive amounts of woodland areas and fishing spots.

Threats Just as Bass Pro Shop had some weaknesses internally, they also face external threats. On major threat they have faced is a political one. With the great deal of uncertainty surrounding the second amendment recently, Bass Pro, and other firearm retailers, have been feeling the stress. For example, with the predictions all pointing in Clinton being our next president, Bass Pro stocked up heavily on firearms, anticipating a panic in consumers worried that they would no

longer be able to purchase guns. However, with the election favoring Trump, the panic never came and most of the shops are currently overstocked in weaponry. Another threat, briefly touched on earlier was the antitrust laws that Bass Pro is hovering so closely around. While they do not currently have enough monopolistic power to raise too many red flags, they are under a magnifying glass with the attempt to purchase Cabela's. Additionally, they face the threat that their is a large number of other sporting goods stores that carry similar products. While most do not focus solely on outdoors merchandise, there are a large number of companies that have outdoors sections.

Question II: Another company that tried to sell the experience of their store is (was) Sports Authority. Sports Authority had a golfing tutorial, along with a trial of golf clubs that can be used in a back room to practice golf swings. This was a great idea relating to Bass Pro for selling of their golf clubs at the time because people had the opportunity to test them out in the actual store. Other retailers, like Hobby Lobby, can bring in more customers into their store the way Bass Pro has by promoting more art classes and activities, along with contests for craftsmanship for people to participate in. Another retailer who has used this model of destination retail is Margaritaville restaurants. Locations are built along coast lines and feature local flair. Each location has a variety of attractions such as snorkeling, water sports and a store front. While Margaritaville has mastered the ocean side market, they might do well by expanding further away from the ocean. Margaritaville would have to consider whether or not this expansion would correspond with the vision they have for the company as an ocean side destination. They could also consider indoor water amusement in areas like the Great Lakes where it gets cold in winter months. They might do well in this by continuing to target their older market as many retirees travel to the great lakes each year. To briefly touch on another destination store in a similar market, one could think about Scheels. Scheels is another sporting goods store, but their most defining feature is the massive ferris wheel in the middle of their stores. A ride on this ferris wheel shows that Scheels is more than just a standard sporting goods store. From forty feet above, you can see all the sections of sports as well as a fudge/candy shop, home goods store and arcade areas. They take the model

outlined by Bass Pro and broaden their consumer base massively while still appealing to people simply for entertainment purposes.

Recommendations According to the case study, Bass Pro Shops is counting on baby boomers who will be retiring therefor having more leisure time in coming years. While this is a good strategy that will bring in a steady stream of business for the near future, it may be time to expand to youth and young adults. As we’ve seen with the tiny house fad, many young adults are looking for more adventure in a city-driven country. Bass Pro should focus their marketing campaign on family outdoor activities, and simple living. By catching this audience young, they will develop their outdoor skills and want to add more activities to their outdoor routine. They need to build the relationship young so that they have their clients for life as the baby boomers phase out. Another recommendation is to open more stores in locations where there is a lack of a major store. By this, we do not mean the grand Bass Pro Shops that we are used to, but smaller ones that will satisfy the majority of small outdoor needs. They could serve more as bait and tackle shops, rather than outdoor super stores. By now, most people recognize the name of Bass Pro and people are likely to trust the products and expertise of a smaller shop just as much as they do with their megastores. This would allow Bass Pro to expand their operations to more remotes places at a much lower cost. They wouldn’t need hundreds of employees or massive interior installations in order to run the business, but it would still allow the company to reach a larger percent of the population. While this would dilute the image of a destination store, it would still keep those incredible superstores open for destination, but also allow a greater amount of accessibility at a lower overhead cost....