Tuesday, 8 March 2016

VeGaN LiFe Part 7

a) Your group opinion and why you selected these two places.
Nowadays, there are more and more people like to eat the vegetarian meals even they are not the vegetarians. And why the vegetarian meals are more popular compare with the previous time? This is because the vegetarian meals are very delicious and easy digest for those people who have a weak digestive system. The most important reason is more people are support the vegetarianism, so the vegetarian meals become more popular at many places. Today, that is one vegetarian restaurant introduced to all which is the Vegan Life located in the new town of Kampar, Perak. There is a restaurant decorated by beautiful light, some plants and even the pictures of vegetables. 

The Vegan Life has provides vary types of vegetarian meals with a reasonable price, for examples the noddle dishes include soups or fried and also spaghetti with vary types of sauces, and ingredients, vary types of whole-grain brown rice, and the side dishes. Besides that, customers can also order some foods that are very delicious and recommend by the restaurant. For those spicy lover can also order the foods by refer the menu which add on a logo of chili, that means the certain food are more spicy compare to other foods. A good restaurant must also consist of many types of drinks and beverages like lime juice, lemon tea, ginger tea, organic green tea, mocha, chocolate and other tasty drinks. So the Vegan Life is a very nice restaurant to recommend for those vegetarians or non-vegetarians because that Vegan Life’s environment is very suitable and beautiful, is a good choice for having the lunch or dinner.

b) Its classification of e-commerce by the nature of the transactions or interactions.

Vegan life classification of e-commerce by nature of the transactions or interactions.

The classification of the Vegan Life is consider as a traditional commerce because that Vegan Life is only conduct the business by fully physical transactions and without any online transaction, this can let them focus on there. Because that the method of traditional commerce are more concern about the face to face interaction, and give the response within the shortest time. For example the customers can ask the waiters some question and the waiters can answer them in few seconds. This can improve the satisfaction of the customers. Traditional commerce can conduct the transactions under the situation of without internet services, so they can avoid the problem of system down and any fraud or cheating through the e-commerce. Besides that, traditional commerce also can avoid the cost of set up the e-commerce infrastructure and the cost of training employees. But without the e-commerce is also the limitation of Vegan Life has to faced due to the reason of most business are improving their e-commerce for better competitive with other competitors.

c) Its business models.
The business model used in Vegan Life is viral marketing. Viral marketing describes any business strategy that rely individuals to pass on the marketing message or products information to others by using the social networks. It creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence when message is passing from one to another. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions. Viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” if off the Internet. But on the Internet, it’s called “viral marketing. There are being a lot social networking sites such as Instagram, Facebook and more. With those internet platforms, it allow viral marketing to be done more effectively. For example, Vegan Life customers are allow to give feedback in Facebook. If there is a good feedback from customers, the review will be spread out and positive response will be received.

There are few benefits that can enjoy when using viral marketing business model. It will get tons of publicity and public awareness about the foods, products, or services. A company will getting higher exposure, it will more likely to increase the brands and this in turn generates a steady flow of traffic from potential customers. The potential customers for Vegan Life are vegetarian or vegetables lovers. It enable residents and students around Kampar area to know that there is a vegetarian restaurant.

Besides that, it help to save cost. A very low cost is needed for viral marketing compare using the old advertisement method which is more expansive. The example of old advertisement method are newspaper, brochure, television and etc. Compare with other business models, Viral marketing is more on preferring anyone who sees it will pass it along to their peers and families, thus increasing the reach of the marketing and website to the public. Vegan life is promoting their business through Facebook and the word-of-mouth from customers, it is zero rate. 

The other advantages are increasing the reputation of Vegan Life. When customers recommend the nice foods to their friends and network, the reputation or credibility of Vegan Life will increase among the audiences. People will tend to visit the shop to try the foods that are recommended by their friends. Those people will recommend again to other friends after trying and this will continuosly creating buzz about the foods. Furthermore, credibility will increased with a good review. The reviews from Vegan life Facebook page showed 4.0 out 5 stars. This show that their customers are giving positive review in average. Picture below show some of the review of customers for Vegan Life.
Finally, it is easy for customers targeting. It has been noted that “since the concept of viral marketing involves passing on a message from a user to another person, most likely the user will pass it to a person whom he knows will be interested in it” (Knowles and Castillo, 2010, p.144). Viral messages can be devised taking into account specifications of target customer segment and thus they can be effectively spread within the same group through online channels. Other than that, customers will search for the information they are interested in. With the set-up of Facebook page, it will attract those potential customers to visit it.


d) Its basic approach used in marketing and advertising
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.(American Marketing Association Board of Directors,2013) Product is produce base on customers’ needs and wants in the market. According to the National Cancer Institute, as much as an estimated 70 percent of all diseases, including one-third of all cancers, are related to diet. Vegan life found that there is a demand where consumers choose to eat healthy. More people are shifting to become a vegetarian with all sort of motive. Some want to live longer, some want to their part to reduce pollution and some loved animals and are ethically opposed to eating them. A vegetarian restaurant is just a right place to fulfil customers’ demand.

The activity of producing information for promoting the sale of commercial products or sservices defined as advertising. Vegan life has limited advertising method. They only use digital marketing as their marketing strategies to advertise their foods and beverages.


Digital marketing
Vegan life were using social networking of Facebook, FooAdvisor and TripAdvisor.
  Facebook
Social networking (Facebook) is used as a good platform to promote their products. This because Facebook having 1.19 billion users and the figure is increasing from time to time. There are no geographic boundaries and people can see it anytime, anyplace as long as they connected with Facebook. Furthermore, creating a Facebook page does not cost even single cent. The cost of set up a Facebook page by Vegan Life is zero, thus, it can cut down some expenses. In the Vegan Life Facebook page, the customers could know the business information such as the location, their opening hours, contact number and customers’ review. Some photo of foods and drinks will be attach on the wall of the page when customers check at Vegan Life.

  FoodAdvisor
FoodAdvisor.my is a website that discover the best recommended food and beverage according to dish and location. This website help Vegan Life to promote their best dishes to potential customers who are specifically looking for a particular dish. This website give opportunity for Vegan Life to highlight their best foodies. However, FoodAdvisor is only available for Vegan Life Ipoh.

TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor which is a website and mobile application offers advice from millions of travelers and a wide variety of travel choices. The branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 350 million unique monthly visitors, and 320 million reviews and opinions covering more than 6.2 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. Besides that, This sites operate in 48 markets worldwide. So, Vegan life can easily reached a targeted customers. However, it only applicable at Vegan Life Ipoh brunch.

e) Recommendations to improve businesses through e-commerce
In the crowded world of e-commerce, every outlet strike hard in order to compete with other competitors. There are some weakness have to be solve in order to improve their business in e-commerce world.
Firstly, we find out that Vegan used less marketing strategic for the advertising. There is a lot of free social media and it is a waste if a company cannot fully utilize all the resources. Vegan Life should take advantage of existing’ resources by creating personal website, blog and mobile apps - Wechat. This social media are free and thus no marketing expense is needed. Vegan Life can upload their menu, foods and beverage photos, sales and promotion. Those information would drive people to the website that engage visitors and among those visitors, it might include the potential customers.
Next, Vegan Life should be more sociable. Be social means Vegan Life should communicate with their customers using the social media. We found that Vegan Life less update their Facebook page. By having Facebook isn’t enough, Vegan Life need to post more updates about the products and services. For example, promotion for the month or introducing new dishes. Besides that, Vegan Life can post some questions or polls asking opinion of their valued customers. Through the comment, Vegan may get information about what kind of lifestyle their customer leads, what they interested in and what is their favourite dish. For instance, Vegan Life may share news and personal interest stories about good eating habit, the benefit of being vegetarian and more. Your social outreach should be more than just another advertising channel. Customers or visitors would prefer a source of lifestyle contain in the Facebook page.
Last but not least, appealing images of products and services is an important element too. Customer will decide to move in the website if it is interesting. The beautiful photography will incite people to look through the content. Besides that, consistent look and feel across all the photography used on your e-commerce website to help make the experience of browsing and shopping more enjoyable. An easy navigate webpage make visitor easy to browse. Visitor can find what they looking for and the information provides related to the particular food and beverage.
  
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OC BaKeRy - KaMpAr Part 7

a) Your group opinion and why you selected these two places.
Since last year most of the UTAR student is a puff lover due to hot weather, ice cream puff was the best choice because it is a new item, cheap and it is fresh to students where attract student’s attention. We decided to choose a puff shop which is near to student especially international exchange students and new intake students because we would like to recommend to them the food popular among us. OC bakery is a shop where only needs 5min distance from our hostel. OC bakery originally is a cake shop but starting from last year it has comes out with variety of dessert such as puff and tart. 

The popular item we would recommend in this shop is puff. This shop originally comes out with more than 15 flavors of “ice cream puff” where once a hit in almost all UTARIAN and others cake shop also comes out with this idea. Starting from this year, they come out with another new flavor which is “cream puff” with 7 flavors to be chosen and from few weeks ago there was a new flavor which is “durian tart” which is not available from other shops. Their puff has more flavors compared to other shops where it can fulfill every customer requirement.

Besides that, they are also popular with designation of cake. They can make a creative 2D or 3D birthday cakes with a cheaper price compared to other shops that provide 2D/3D birthday cakes. We would just need to choose a photo from cake history they made or find a photo to do as 2D/3D cake to the baker where this service only provided in OC BAKERY among other bakery shops. By this they can make an only one cake purposely for you and fulfill customer needs and requirement perfectly. On the other hand, flavor available for cake is 15 flavor available such as fresh durian cake, fruit cake, oreo cake and etc. mousse and cheese mousse cup is also available in the shops but not available everytime hence we will need to give a confirmation call before ordering or we can request for this item the day before we wants.

b) Its classification of e-commerce by the nature of the transactions or interactions.
OC Bakery in classification of e-commerce by the nature of the transactions and the relationships among participants is business-to-consumer (B2C). OC Bakery had used several e-commerce models to carry on business such as 360fusion.net, Facebook, and Wechat to sell to individual shoppers. Consumers only needs to lists out what they want before purchase through these models to make sure they have sufficient cake, puff or tart to buy. Additionally, this model of transactions is highly recommended by the shop owner due to always not enough puff for consumers. This situation had seriously affect consumer purchase decision indirectly when always happens no puff or tart to buy. This model of transactions ensure baker to have sufficient time to prepare amount of puff, tart or 2D/3D cake which consume more time to design to consumer.






From the Facebook there are examples of cake design that they design before and we can choose for us to prefer to buy. For cake design we will have to private message for price. For normal cake they had provide price on that. Other desserts available in shop are posted and price is given too. 











360 fusion is a page that gathered variety of shops in Kampar and OC Bakery is one of them. The same method used as Facebook for 360fusion.com. every design, price, flavour and variety of dessert has uploaded on that page. The only difference is we ordered from phone or given feedback bottom of the page.






Lastly is the Wechat method. Wechat did not upload any photo or information but it’s a popular model used by students to makes order. Students can get information from the shop, 360fusion and Facebook for the first time and next time can use Wechat since had knows the information. Their Wechat id is “oc_bakery”.

There is another classification of business model which is business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C). OC Bakery tend to sells it cakes, tart and cream puff to UTAR student for event purpose at a lower price since they bought it at a large amount of cakes. It is a traditional B2B2C where focuses on fully pysical transactions which need face to face interactions and give feedback at the moment. Traditional business model can increase the relationship between consumer and sellers and indirectly improve to fulfill customers satisfactions. E-commerce B2B2C can eventually improve the sales but not used by OC Bakery hence it will be mentioned in recommendation. 


c)Business model
OC Bakery is using viral marketing business model. Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses social networks to promote their products. Products or information are spread through the social networks by the consumers to other people. It may refer as the word-of-mouth, “buzz” or social networking sites such as Facebook. Basically, viral marketing is spread through the word-of-mouth, but with the improving of technology, it is including internet-based platforms too. A good viral marketing campaign does not just pass from a person to another, but to hundreds of peoples with the social networking. As example, OC Bakery giving slice cake promotion of “ Buy 3 for RM10 only” and it is promoted on the social network (Facebook). If there is good review from the consumers, it may spread out and positive response will be received.

There are benefits by using viral marketing business model. Firstly, the cost for viral marketing is lower compare to other business model. The advertising expenses will be lower as it will buzz around the Internet and is recommended by consumers. Therefore, the business does not need to spend extra on the advertising cost. OC Bakery advertising cost is low as they promote their through Facebook, 360 Fusion, WeChat and the word-of-mouth from customers.

Secondly, viral marketing business model could improve the growth of business in short time period. There is potential impact that viral marketing to reach huge numbers of customers in a short time period without geographic boundaries and time restrictions. Once there are people share the information in the social network, it is expected there are huge traffic to the business’s site with more clicks. OC bakery Facebook page do have 637 likes since they start their business last year. By a short time period, OC Bakery is quite a famous shop now as there are many UTAR students supported them with their famous ice-cream puff.

Thirdly, credibility of a business will increased from the recommendations of consumers. When there is something good, people will tend to recommend their friend to go for a try. Furthermore, it can be recommended and shared through social networking. Therefore, it will create buzz about the products and increase the credibility of business. With the positive reviews, business will improve too. The reviews from OC Bakery Facebook page showed 4.8 out 5 stars. Their customers are giving positive reviews.

Fourthly, the response rate of viral marketing is better compared to other marketing methods. As example, the numbers of views on promotion post on the social networking was attracted, the number of times that the promotion post was shared and the positive reviews were able to attract customers. Due to the large numbers of viewers, the business generated a massive publicity for their products. OC Bakery made a giving away promotion to 50 lucky customers and the responses were good.

d)Basic approach used in marketing and advertising
Marketing is the process of preparing a product by understanding what is wanted by customers and attracts the market. Due to the hot weather in Kampar, OC Bakery found that there is demand where consumers need something which is cold, friendly-wallet and convenient to eat. Therefore, they innovated ice-cream puffs. They would like to receive feedbacks from customers and make improvements on their products. Some customers demand for more flavour of ice-cream to be sell, so recently they add more ice-cream flavours in order to meet the demand of customers.

Advertising is the process of making the product known to the marketplace. OC Bakery is using online advertising methods. OC Bakery is using various marketing strategy in order to advertise their products which is ice-cream puffs, cream puff, cakes and others. Sales promotion and digital marketing are their marketing strategies.

Sales promotions
OC Bakery had few types of sales promotion such as discount, setup booth in university, buy one free one and loyalty incentives.










Loyalty incentives which giving away 50 pieces of free cakes to 50 lucky customers by just like the page and share the post. It may help in attracting more customers, and increase the people awareness on their shop. Furthermore, they would like to repay their loyal customers who supported them.


OC Bakery set up booth in University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) to promote and sell their products.


Digital marketing
With digital marketing strategy, they were using social networking of Facebook, websites of 360Fusion and also phone application which is WeChat.
//www.360fusion.net/#!oc-bakery/mqoh1

WeChat ID:oc_bakery
Facebook page:OC Bakery-Kampar

360Fusion is an advertisement website which discovers the businesses and promotions in Kampar, Perak. OC Bakery had advertised in this website in order to promote and update their recent products and promotions.


Social networking (Facebook) is used as Facebook is a good platform to promote their products. Almost everyone in the world use it and there are no geographic boundaries. OC Bakery created a page for their business without any single cents needed. Therefore, it will cut down the marketing costs. Through Facebook, the customers could know the business information such as the location, their opening hours and latest products.

Besides that, WeChat is an mobile application to interact with others. For OC Bakery, they used this application as one of their marketing strategies. Customers could make early booking on the products through the application to prevent any disappointment. As OC Bakery’s ice cream puff is so popular in Kampar, it is always out-of –stock. Therefore, customers can made early booking before go there.

e) Recommendations to improve businesses through e-commerce
In the competitive e-commerce world, every business tend to get the better of others and try to attract customers. Therefore, it is a must to improve the business through e-commerce.


Firstly, creating a blog is recommended. However, to maintain a blog requires a lot of effort by keep the information or content updated, but it would drive people to the website that engage visitors. Humming Bird Bakery is an example where the bakery shows the recently cakes which are very attractive and describe on the cakes. It also provides online ordering. OC Bakery should create a blog by upload the custom made cakes as requested by customers to ensure the blog is attractive to increase their visibility.

Secondly, OC Bakery is recommended to use social media marketing to communicate with the customers and share the best content. It is an effective and low cost way to advertise and interact with the customers. OC Bakery should often promote the products at least a few times a week instead of promote the products few moths once. Furthermore, OC Bakery should interact more with their customers in the social media by accepting customers’ feedbacks and try to improve it.

Lastly, E-mail marketing is recommended in order to improve business. A list of loyal customers can be build by using E-mail marketing. In order to attract customers to subscribe into the business’s email, OC Bakery should offer special promotions, discounts or sales to the e-mail subscribers which could not be found other where in the beginning. With the email list, it will help in the growth of business by sending updates, promotions and others content to each of the customers. Besides that, the direct communication which is the customer’ inbox is also a good way to build a strong connection with the customers.
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Saturday, 5 March 2016

OC BaKeRy -- Kampar


OC Bakery is a small bakery shop allocated in Kampar where they share half lot of the shop with a saloon shop. This shop was formed since 2015. Inside the shop they have a white and bright colour of wall and the shop full of the sweet smell. This shop is more suitable for the dessert lover since the shop sell dessert more than bread. The most popular dessert in the shop is the cream puff, ice-cream puff and 2D/3D birthday cakes. They named those puff as "BOLOH PUFF". It was a combination of Cantonese bread "Boloh pao" and ice-cream puff from west country. This creative combination was the main reason why is it so popular. Most of the customers will visit again the shop after eating the puff cause the it is crunchy and delicious. Besides that, they sells beautiful tarts and mousse cup too.


 Short History of Cream Puff and Ice-cream Puff
Cream puff is a type of choux pastry ball filling with whipped cream, custard, ice cream and pastry cream. The puffs may left plain or garnished with caramel, powdered sugar or chocolate sauce. Nowadays, the cream puff from a royal Victorian dining dessert became a bakery aisle staples which you can buy it at most of the supermarkets. The taste still remain simply divine and bite one of them and imagine you're back to French royal court that feelings was great. Boloh puff is the Cantonese traditional food where made by pineapple. The combination of east and west eventually attract people attention internationally. Due to hot weather, peoples tend to change the cream boloh puff into ice-cream boloh puff which becomes a sudden popular product where sells everywhere. 

Feedback by Existing Customers
Positive
- Customer mostly review that the cake, cream puff or ice cream puff and the mousse cup are delicious. 
- Design of the cake are very unique and beautiful. 
- Their kitchen is a open type kitchen, you can go trough inside kitchen increase students known of boloh puff.
- The environment of kitchen is clean and tiny. Besides that, there are Korean students visit the bakery shop when we interviewing the shop owner. We interviewed them and they said they like the cream puff very much especially under this hot weather.
Negative
- Mousse cup, tart and some not popular item need to make reservation before pay a visit. They usually don't made it unless someone make a reservation.
- There only have chairs for consumers to seat where there is no tables inconvenient for them to enjoy

 Value Proposition of OC Bakery

There are more than 15 flavours of cream puff and ice cream puff. The most attractive things is the puff are made by pineapple. It makes the puff become more tasty and sweet smell. there are durian, corn, cempedak, green tea, and many others flavour we never expected. Price for the both of the puff are reasonable because just only RM1.20 for each when you purchase 6 pieces there are special discount which only RM7.00 and it was definitely affordable for students. The size of the puff are big and full of cream or ice cream.

Other than that, OC Bakery they also have special service for customer. Customers can ordered the cake on their own design and flavour. Many customers like this service so much. Most of them ordered the "only one" cake for their children or lover. Some of the design are a bowl of ramen, durian, burger shape, there are very creative and freshness.They just look a like with the real durian and burger.


Mousse cup look very delicious. The taste just like an ice cream and it melt quickly in your mouth. There are tiramisu, oreo, chocolate and green tea flavour. The price for the mousse cup is RM4.80 per cup. I believe people like beautiful things. this mousse cup design is so beautiful and not available at other store in Kampar.



OC Bakery - Kampar
No.2347,Jalan Hala Timah 2,
Taman Bandar Baru Kampar, Perak.
Business Hour: Monday to Sunday ( 2.00pm until 11.00pm)
Tel No :016-406 8745
Longitude and Latitude: 4.328135, 101.143713


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