Marketing Mix and Strategies of Sainsbury

MARKETING MIX AND MARKETING STRATEGIES OF SAINSBURY
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Introduction             This essay is about Sainsbury, one of the UK retail supermarket chains. This study will look into the marketing strategy of Sainsbury and will attempt to conduct a digital marketing mix audit. This effort will provide an insight into the levels of contribution that particular marketing strategy of Sainsbury is making towards performance.             Sainsbury is the name of perseverance and high quality; since its inception, the focus of the retail giant has remained on “quality food at a competitive price.” A history of 150 years plus coupled with a product line of 30000, of which 50% are their brand is indicative of Sainsbury’s priorities (Plunkett, 2009)  .          Currently, Sainsbury is one of the biggest retailers in the UK, having 1200 stores  (Plunkett, 2015), which also entered diversified businesses like banking, clothing, and furniture (Xiao, Chen, and Yu, 2021). The current UK grocery market situation is depicted in following Figure 1.   Source: (Xiao, Chen, and Yu, 2021, p. 111)             The present study revolves around the digital marketing mix and its audit, which requires a brief understanding of the concepts. The marketing mix is critical to any organization’s marketing strategy(Wichmann et al., 2022). The changing world and its uncertainties also impacted the composition of the marketing mix, which is nowadays regarded as a digital marketing mix (ibid). (Kannan and Li, 2017) sees digital marketing as a journey from using technology for marketing to acquiring and retaining customers through digital technologies. They defined digital marketing as “an adaptive, technology-enabled process by which firms collaborate with customers and partners to create, communicate, deliver, and sustain value for all stakeholders.”             While shedding light on the marketing mix concept (Jackson and Ahuja, 2016) identified three marketing mix categories and their elements. These categories are presented as under   Source: (Jackson and Ahuja, 2016, p.173)     Sainsbury Digital Marketing Mix Audit Product             A website review indicates that Sainsbury uses the same templates for all its stores, whether Argos or Habitat. It makes customers more comfortable as the products are presented with a personalized perspective. This comfortability and satisfaction are reflected in Sainsbury, the second largest online grocery store in the UK (Report, 2022). A large part of their achievement is also based on their wide range of product lines, with a higher percentage of their brands offered to many customers. Their product range includes fruits and vegetables, fish and meat, chilled, dairy, bakery, wine, baby, health and beauty, household, and pet-related food. Price             The central philosophy behind products of Sainsbury is affordability which is helping them tackle the onslaught of current inflation in the world. The reflection of this strategy is visible in the increasing sale that placed them at the number two position in the UK. It is largely because they control cost by offering their food brands(Xiao, Chen, and Yu, 2021) and cost controlling through right sizing as the savings are passed on to the customer in the form of affordable prices and new company products at affordable prices than what the market is offering. Place             Earlier Sainsbury was located in the city center, which competitors challenged for some time by opening stores in the city’s suburban areas. Sainsbury benefited from the government policy change, taking advantage of high footfall areas. Around 2015 Sainsbury attempted to transform to an online system as they started with home deliveries. Later in pre and post-pandemic times, they utilized their experience in online selling and became a leading retail chain. (Urquhart et al., 2022) revealed that 234 Sainsbury stores are operating online, and their strategies like “click and collect” enabled them...