K-mart Australia is one of Australia’s largest discount department stores. K-mart allows consumers to buy a wide arrange of products from clothing, sporting goods, homeware, pet toys to kids toys and party goods at low prices.
(Wikipedia 2018)
K-mart has been opened in Australia for more than 49 years building its brands and bring Australian people a place to buy any item they need in one convenient location. With its long history, it has become one of the most well-known companies in Australia, with its parent company of Wesfarmers being 461st (Forbes 2017) most power company in the world and 8th in Australia. But k-mart also has well-known competitors such as Big W and Target which is also owned by Wesfarmers. With strong competitors in the market, K-mart had to develop a strong understanding of consumer behaviors so they can remain competitive as well.
Value Proposition:
Value proposition by definition “describes the benefits customers can expect from your products and services.” (Osterwalder 2014). By this definition, we can assume how pricing and overall experience can influence a customer’s benefits from the product. To show this Kmart “unveiled a campaign which centres around the store’s positioning of dropping its prices for good. Created by BWM, the campaign invited 1000 mothers into a Kmart store with no price tags on any products, asking them to ‘guess’ the prices of everyday products.” (Ad news 2011). This advert showed the difference in price (decrease) and the quality (increase) of each product and how the consumers reacted to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9wEdxz3gjM
Consumer Perception
The definition of consumer perception “encompasses a customer’s impression, awareness and/or consciousness about a company or its offerings. Customer perception is typically affected by advertising, reviews, public relations, social media, personal experiences and other channels.” (Business Dictionary 2018).
Kmart has had time to develop the brand identity to describe what they are all about and how they interact with consumers these being, discounted items, convenience and overall experience
“Want irresistibly low prices?” this slogan is one of Kmart most well-known as it directly indicates what they do and how they want to be perceived. This clearly shows its relationship with its consumers as they show that they are able their consumers in giving them quality merchandise at affordable prices for all social statuses.
(Vesna Ksaric 2014)
To enhance Kmart’s consumer perception, they have been working with influencers on Social media to show what their products can be used for and how they can look in different environments. Kmart primarily uses the platform of Instagram to create and show unique and “organic advertising content” (Koehn 2017).
To bring awareness in this advertising/marketing method (influencer marketing) Kmart invites “a select group of 20 social media savvy Kmart fans to special preview events several times a year, giving the store’s most passionate shopper base access to new products and hopefully inspiring their Instagram posts.” (Koehn 2017) These influencers Instagram accounts must be high enough for followers to attain such as “Helen James, whose Instagram account @i_heart_kmart has 112,000 followers.” (Koehn 2017)
These events allow influencers of the Kmart/DIY niche to come together and show their consumer perception of Kmart products and influence other people’s views to view Kmart the same way.
Reference List:
Ad News 2011, Kmart “Guess #1” TVC, Accessed May 6 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9wEdxz3gjM;.
Business Dictionary, What is Customer Perception, Access May 6 2018 <http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer-perception.html;.
Forbes 2017, The World’s Biggest Public Companies, Accessed May 6 2018 < https://www.forbes.com/global2000/list/#search:we_country:Australia;.
Koehn, E. 2017. How to follow Kmart’s lead and build a troop of your own social media influencers, Accessed May 6 2018 <https://www.smartcompany.com.au/industries/retail/how-to-follow-kmarts-lead-and-build-a-troop-of-your-own-social-media-influencers/;.
Ksaric, V. 2014. Consumer Research – Kmart’s Science to Success? | vesnaksaric, Accessed May 6 2018 <https://vesnaksaric.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/kmart_consumer_research/;.
Osterwalder, A., Pigneur, Y., Bernarda, G. and Smith, A., 2014. Value proposition design: How to create products and services customers want. John Wiley & Sons, Accessed May 6 2018
Wikipedia 2018, Kmart Australia, Accessed May 6 2018 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmart_Australia.
Daniel Jacimovic MARK217 Blog 