Articles
COOPERATIVE MARKETING A WAY TO STIMULATE SALES AND CONSUMPTION OF A PLANT?
Article number
836_33
Pages
235 – 238
Language
English
Abstract
While on many markets well-known brands have been established, the flowers and plants sector developed a different approach to successfully promote the consumption of its products.
In Northern and Western Europe cooperative marketing organisations which stimulate sales and consumption of flowers and plants have been set up.
Usually, these activities do not focus on one product only, but cover the use of flowers and plants in general: e.g. as decoration item for personal usage, gift etc.
Cooperative marketing organizations for flowers and plants were set up because of the special characteristics of plants and their market.
Given the number and versatility of products, not one product, not even a certain product range has a market share which enables it to spend budgets necessary for brand marketing.
Brand marketing is very expensive.
Big brands like Coca Cola spend hundreds of millions of Euros for advertisement every year.
Flowers and plants that are not generally branded have a big advantage: instead of paying hundreds of millions of Euros for expensive advertisement, marketing through Public Relations is the preferred way to approach the public.
Starting point to conduct cooperative marketing is a bottle neck.
This can be achieved either by a law or by a group of companies deciding to collectively conduct marketing measures on a voluntary basis.
Examples for successful marketing campaigns are e.g. the Plants of the Month approach in the tree nursery sector.
Campaigns focusing on pot plants are the Dutch Verrassend Buiten, and the European marketing campaign Cyclamen Colour Europe or Stars for Europe, which is the European poinsettia campaign. The goal of the marketing campaign for Cyclamen is to promote the outdoor use of Cyclamen. The goal of the poinsettia campaign is to change the old fashioned image and link the Poinsettia more strongly to Christmas as a time to spend extensively on decoration.
The present paper focuses on how to set up a cooperative marketing campaign, discusses the budgets necessary to do so, and lastly considers the effects of such campaigns.
In Northern and Western Europe cooperative marketing organisations which stimulate sales and consumption of flowers and plants have been set up.
Usually, these activities do not focus on one product only, but cover the use of flowers and plants in general: e.g. as decoration item for personal usage, gift etc.
Cooperative marketing organizations for flowers and plants were set up because of the special characteristics of plants and their market.
Given the number and versatility of products, not one product, not even a certain product range has a market share which enables it to spend budgets necessary for brand marketing.
Brand marketing is very expensive.
Big brands like Coca Cola spend hundreds of millions of Euros for advertisement every year.
Flowers and plants that are not generally branded have a big advantage: instead of paying hundreds of millions of Euros for expensive advertisement, marketing through Public Relations is the preferred way to approach the public.
Starting point to conduct cooperative marketing is a bottle neck.
This can be achieved either by a law or by a group of companies deciding to collectively conduct marketing measures on a voluntary basis.
Examples for successful marketing campaigns are e.g. the Plants of the Month approach in the tree nursery sector.
Campaigns focusing on pot plants are the Dutch Verrassend Buiten, and the European marketing campaign Cyclamen Colour Europe or Stars for Europe, which is the European poinsettia campaign. The goal of the marketing campaign for Cyclamen is to promote the outdoor use of Cyclamen. The goal of the poinsettia campaign is to change the old fashioned image and link the Poinsettia more strongly to Christmas as a time to spend extensively on decoration.
The present paper focuses on how to set up a cooperative marketing campaign, discusses the budgets necessary to do so, and lastly considers the effects of such campaigns.
Publication
Authors
S. Lux
Keywords
cooperative marketing, public relations, flowers and plants, European wide marketing campaign
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