Applebee’s Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)
Marketing Strategy of Applebee’s analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on Applebee’s marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the Applebee’s Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:
Quick Glance:
Applebee’s Product Strategy:
The product strategy and mix in Applebee’s marketing strategy can be explained as follows:
Applebee’s is one of the largest restaurant chains in the world. Applebee’s offers Classic combo and customers can build their own Samples. There are variety of dishes offered including Mozzarella sticks, chicken Quesadilla, crunchy Double crunch bone in wings, spinach and artichoke dip, mouthwatering grilled chicken Wanton tacos, innovations like Pretzel cheese dips, healthy indulges like salads menu offering small Caesar, house salad, French onion and soups like chicken Tahiti, tomato basil. The calorie content is also mentioned on the menu for the health-conscious customers.
Apart from appetizers, the main course menu is expansive.
Chicken: Bourbon street chicken, Fiesta Lime, Tender basket, platters, wonton stir fry.
Salads: Oriental, grilled chicken Caesar, oriental, blackened shrimp.
Sandwiches and Burgers are also on the menu. Some of the dessert options include blue ribbon brownie, triple chocolate meltdown, butter pecan blondie, hot fudge sundae dessert shooter, brownie bite and southern apple fritter. Customers can also order add ons with main courses like fries, grilled, baked potato and garlic mashed potatoes.
Image: Wikimedia
Applebee’s Price/Pricing Strategy:
Below is the pricing strategy in Applebee’s marketing strategy:
Applebee’s offers competitive price for its food items. The average ticket cost per person is $10.
It is moderately priced and this pricing is set by cooperate based on various factors, especially competitive to the offerings of TGI Fridays, Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday. They also offer “2 for $20” to customers who depend on location and availability. Appetizers price around $2 during happy hours to $7. For the high quality food served at its restaurants, the prices are extremely competitive, and hence it attracts millions of customers.
Read more about Applebee’s
Applebee’s Place & Distribution Strategy:
Following is the distribution strategy in the Applebee’s marketing mix:
Applebee’s is located at 50+ states and eight abroad countries. It has expanded to over 2000 restaurants and serves over 20,000,000 guests every month. It is present in semi urban and urban places, with lot of crowd, apart from the busy streets, it is present at airports, malls.
Despite strong competition, the brand is present in strategic locations, which gives a strong boost to the brand operations.
Applebee’s Promotion & Advertising Strategy:
The promotional and advertising strategy in the Applebee’s marketing strategy is as follows:
Applebee’s has a strong mix of daily and weekly visitors and customers count on their sense of familiarity with American culture. Marketing messages like “You belong at Applebee’s” and “America’s favorite Neighbor” reinforce their brand image. Late night happy hours, half pricing at certain locations after 9 pm on week days and after 10 pm on weekends, positive customer reviews about their world class service. Digitally, they have an extremely catchy website that displays all of their products and services which includes catering and gift cards. Apart from the website, they have an online presence through twitter and Facebook page.
Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Applebee’s.
Physical Evidence:
Applebee’s is viewed as casual dining, family hang out place with a full bar. It offers catering and resembles the ambience of TGI Fridays, Chili’s. The logo consists of vibrant color combination with an apple clip art on top. “Bar +Grill” is mentioned as subscript to show the kind of variety of services they have to offer.
People:
Applebee’s targets people of the age group of 18 to 34(secondary), 35 to 54(core target); Market analysis suggest approximately 55 percent female and 64 percent married customers are regular customers, predominantly Caucasian with African American as the second highest category. The staff is well trained with excellent communication skills and willing to provide quality service to the customers. Messages like “Neighborhood Grill +Bar”, “Its whole new neighborhood” reinforces the idea that the company main goal is to serve the neighborhood and this increases the level of familiarity and acceptance of the brand among the people.
Process:
There are large booths and central bar area to accommodate larger number of customers. Online catering services and brick mortar restaurants, offering wide range American dishes. The people order the food and get that on their table. The whole service is seamless and customer friendly. Customer comfort is key when it comes to service industry, thus, the staff focus on providing quality service. Hence this completes the marketing mix of Applebee’s.
About Applebee’s:
Applebee’s is an American company, Subsidiary of DineEquity. It’s headquartered at Glendale, California US and has a network of 2000+ restaurants in 1900 locations like US, Puerto, Rico, and Guan.
The ambience is themed on casual dining with offering mainstream American cuisines like salads, pasta, burgers and famed for it’s signature recipes “Riblets”. It also featured different type of beverages.
This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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