Tourism Marketing Report for Tanzania
The methodology adopted for data collection was to check on internet, books and where possible looking for academic articles to give an objective assessment of the Tanzania tourism strategy. 3. FINDINGS The first analysis in the APPENDIX, gave me the impression that Tanzania is trying to shape the first rudiments of a marketing strategy. It is important to note the country’s awareness first at the customers coming to visit Tanzania and second to the products offered.
Also, it is important to note the country’s poor quality services. 4. DISCUSSION First at all, it is important to explain what marketing is.Respectable associations from all around the world have coined so many definitions of marketing. By my opinion, the one which suits the situation of the Tanzania country, is the one given by Gronroos (1997) as follows: ? Marketing is to establish, maintain and enhance relationship with customers and other partners, at a profit, so that the objectives of the parties involved are met.
This is achieved by mutual exchange and fulfilment of promises. The Gronroos definition contains one more aspect that others definitions does not. The Chartered Marketing Institute defines marketing as: Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably (CIM 2010). Also the American Marketing Association definition for marketing is: ? 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 (AMA 2007). Definitions from both Institutions, the CIM and the AMA, are more focused on the organization, without including elements from the external organisation environment.Tanzania has a lack of quality services due to internal and external factors (road networks and limited flights) which can badly influence the tourist’s perspective of a nice holiday.
The marketing concept focuses its activities driving the organization to the customer needs. Secondarily (but not for importance! ), the marketing concept takes in consideration two elements: ? Internal Environment; ? External Environment; Internal environment is more focused on the internal elements of an organization; elements of an organization which influence its activities and choices, capable of giving a quality service.The external environment instead, is composed by all the external elements of an organisation, capable of influencing directly the organisation. These elements are as follows: ? Customers and Consumers; ? Competitors; ? Intermediaries; ? Suppliers. The limited flights to Tanzania, are part of the external environment which can damage from the tourists perspective a nice holiday, making them willing to change holiday’s destination.
Substantially, the marketing concept could be summarized in three steps: ? Focus on customer needs, before product’s development; ?Aligning all company functions to focus on customer needs; ? Realizing a profit satisfying customer needs over the long period. Another point which can influence the tourists is their behaviour. Mr. Bwento is right in thinking that if the tourists have the perception that there is a problem in the country, they will change their holiday’s destination. Marketing gives instruments to explain how this process goes through potential buyer’s behaviour, also taking in consideration the competitors influence.
The decision-making process goes through a few steps: st – Problem recognition:A product or a service has to solve buyer problems to be sold. If a buyer does not recognize having a problem, how can decide to purchase something? 2nd – Information search:Before deciding to purchase (especially if the product is expensive or can be rarely purchased as a holiday for example! ) the potential buyer will be starting to find information about the product which suits its needs; 3rd – Information evaluation:After collecting all the information needed about the product, the potential buyer will evaluate all the possibilities (being influence by many factors, and competitors too! .Marketers have to work hard at this stage, for example in our case, for holiday decision it will be useful to prepare point-of sales material with the Tanzania’s attractions to giveto the travel agencies of the targeted market(s); 4th – Decision:This is a crucial point. If something goes wrong with one factor (i. e. , the quality of the service, lack of assistance, bureaucratic procedures) the buyer can still change his mind and go elsewhere or purchase another product; th – Post-purchase evaluation:Monitoring this stage for marketing is important because is possible indentify where the products falls short of expectations (Brassington F.
& Pettitt S. , 2007). Tanzania’s main products to promote are all the attractions offered to any potential consumers willing to enjoy its beaches and mountains. To be sure to develop a competitive service, a “branding” approach by promotional activity could be adopted. Promotional activity is an integral part to achieve marketing objectives.For example, the marketing strategy could be to develop a promotional activity in the medium term to gain financial resources necessary in the long term to build a strong brand name.
“Brand Tanzania” consists of those elements of a product or service which can be easily linked to the business (on hearing at the word Tanzania people will think immediately of Mount Kilimanjaro! ); the benefits carried by using this approach are for all the parties involved in the exchanging process (potential tourists; travel agencies; airline companies; etc… . One more point is that branding is a real challenge for competitors to compete, creating stronger competitive advantages for the country. The competitor’s identification should be done looking firstly at potential competitors, then focus at the extent to which market needs are satisfied and new needs are emerging (Brassington F.
& Pettitt S. , 2007). Before planning a marketing campaign placing advertising the CNN, it is important to give some data about costs and benefits to this marketing approach.Benefits using this method are a high impact offers by combination of colours, sounds, motion and entertainment, capable to grab a high attention (Brassington F. & Pettitt S. , 2007).
Costs otherwise could be highly derived by advertising development campaign through its steps: targeting an audience, giving campaign objectives, advertising development and testing. Other important costs could be using an international media (like CNN! ). Being an expensive method, it is also important to measure the effectiveness of its usage by two stages: ? Interim evaluation Exit evaluation The first step is useful to revise and adjust the campaign before completion; the second step is used to measure if the targeted audience has received and understood the message. One more consideration, using a pull strategy with the above mentioned advertising method, Tanzania will be able to solve its limited flights to the country because, targeting the potential tourists, more will want to come to visit Tanzania and its attractions, compelling the airline companies to strengthen the flights into the country due to higher market demand.The distribution process plays an important role for any activity. Being in into a technological era, it should be developed a different kind of distribution method by using Internet.
Internet has few benefits, by recent analysis in 2010, 30. 1 million adults in the UK (Office for national statistic. 2010) accessed the Internet every day or almost every day. Considering the fact which British population is around 62 million people (Office for national statistic. 010) means that 50% of one Tanzania main market could be targeted using internet, collecting feed-back for analysis purposes, giving services like information, flight tickets, spending much less rather than using other marketing techniques.
According to the forecast incomes analysis furnished at the APPENDIX, Tanzania seems to be more sales oriented than market oriented, probably because of its favourable money tax exchange (1 British Pound – GBP = 2,414. 35 Tanzanian Shilling – TZS).Adopting a market oriented strategy; an organisation will be driven by the customer needs, aiming at the best customer satisfaction, assuming that customers are looking more for the things that best suit their needs instead that price driven. Market Tanzania and its attractions focusing at tourist needs, will increase customer loyalty if the main elements which compose this strategy are managed properly. The main elements are as follows: ? Price; ? Information; ? Availability; Peripheral benefits (to add value to the products); Determining the price of a product / service is a delicate balance between Tanzania’s tourism objectives and market condition. The price must be linked to both country and marketing strategic objectives.
Tanzania needs to gain cash quickly to invest in its infrastructures (as improving the road networks and the limited accommodations), to do so in the short term could be useful to dropping prices in favour of a higher demand for its inflow cash benefits.Tanzania should follow the demand based pricing (most used to service sector like tourism) linked with competition-based pricing, where the prices are set considering the demand of the market and its fluctuation on time, and the structure of market (less competitors are in the market and more autonomy the organisation has to set the price) and the perceived value of the product by the tourists. Tanzania’s tourism employs almost 200,000 Tanzanians (Appendix), this meaning which many local people have direct responsibility of the quality of the product / service provided.Elements of the extended marketing mix, takes in consideration three elements in addition to the traditional 4P(s) model (Brassington F. & Pettitt S.
, 2007): Place, Price, Product and Promotion. These additional 3P(s) are often used in the service sector, to better explain the marketing activity: ? People: In service sector people have a lot of responsibility having direct interaction with tourist for the final quality of the service provided (many people are working in the Tanzanian tourism sector this means that 200,000 people have direct responsibility for the quality of the service provided.This topic should be taken in carefully consideration); ? Process:Any mechanism which can prevent a long waiting from customers to leave before purchasing (this can involve issues from the flights problems to Tanzania, to the poor road networks); ? Physical evidence:These elements is the last one which can add a physical value to the service (the scarcity of accommodations around the Serengeti national park could be solved by building more high quality accommodations, giving added value to the attraction and the wider Tanzanian tourism to the tourists coming to visit it). 5. CONCLUSIONSBuild a marketing / customer oriented organisation is a long way which will definitely bring more benefits than costs, because most of the costs sustained will change in benefits at guarantee of the efforts made to purse this goals. Maintain a competitive advantage is a dynamic process, and Tanzania should work in this direction setting firstly its objectives and secondly plan how to achieve them with the marketing techniques explained in this report.
Listen at the market mean listen at the consumer, and having the necessary flexibility to satisfy, and where possible “spoil”, them is the key of success. . RECOMMENDATIONS After deep consideration, I have figured some recommendations for the Country, to achieve better results by its marketing strategy. TIP1: Improve quality of services; TIP2:Understand the buyers behaviour to prevent ; TIP3:Brand Tanzania to strengthen the consumer loyalty and gain more competitive advantage; TIP4:Plan advertising campaign, considering the budget and those marketing techniques used to verify its efficiency to reach the targeted segment; TIP5:Improve technology to lighten derived costs by marketing costs and to reach a higher segment of the targeted market;TIP6:Determine the price of the product or service offered, in function of marketing and Tanzania objectives. By your request, I’ve been analyzing a product to segment more markets for the Tanzanian tourism benefits.
Mount Kilimanjaro has snow almost 365 days per year. It could be segmented the skiers market, to attract them offering a new product “made in Tanzania” with dedicated “skiers packages” for tourists.7. BYBLIOGRAPHY • American Marketing Association. (2010).
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