There are two strong alternatives I have came up with in order to reposition Royco to your intended target audience and create awareness. If you look at exhibit 13 the Nielsen Survey of the top reasons people trust forms of advertising the number one overall reason was “recommendations from people I know” and the number three overall reason was “consumer opinions posted online.” The thing these reasons have in common is that they both are considered Word of Mouth (WOM) advertising. If you look at exhibit 10, the trnd example of multiplier ratios, you can get a good idea of how many people can potentially be reached just by starting with 3,000 participants. In the textbook “Marketing for Growth” figure 9.1 indicates the largest impact on purchase decisions comes from third-party recommendations, such as friends and family. For these reasons I am going to incorporate WOM advertising heavily into both of the alternatives.

The first alternative is going to involve WOM advertising through focus groups, web advertising, social media, and a small amount of television commercials. When looking at Exhibit 1, the Royco Marketing Budget from 2011-2014, I realized the trend of the decrease every year in TV and the increase in Web and wanted to continue this trend. Since the target audience will be active and professional women between 25-49 years of age this is who will be brought into the focus group. There will be 10 total focus groups ran, each consisting of 150 people each. The objectives of this focus group will be for the target to try the product and to create a buzz within their friends, who also are in the targeted segment. You will provide these women with samples and certain buzz words to use, such as “healthy”, ”hearty”, ‘tasty” and “office snack.” This should help get away from the perception that instant dry soups are low quality in terms of taste and