Marketing Plan World’s Biggest Garage Sale

Marketing Plan: World’s Biggest Garage Sale

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1. Situation Analysis

The World’s Biggest Garage Sale is a business that uses a unique model involving the reselling of up-cycled, re-furbished, and recycled products. The companies hopes that by tackling the issue of waste from a business angle, it would contribute to landfill diversion. The use of dormant goods in the circular economy is presented as an important resource recovery practice. The World’s Biggest Garage Sale intends to promote responsible consumerism and sustainability and offer employment opportunities to vulnerable community members (World’s Biggest Garage Sale, 2021). A lot of their products for resale come directly from the community while some are sourced from retail businesses. Without the intervention of the World’s Biggest Garage Sale, a lot of these products and commodities would end up as waste in landfills and other areas where they would create negative effects for the environment. Therefore, the company tackles the issue of the environment through social and economic initiatives.

1.1 Analysis of Social Trends

One of the most notable research finding is that Australian consumers are increasingly preferring sustainable brands. Nimri, Patiar, & Kensbock (2017) found that 90% of the Australian consumers tend to purchase sustainable and ethical products and 85% want brands and retailers to be transparent and accountable regarding the sustainability of the goods and services produced. Globally, there is a similar movement towards more sustainable products. Consumers are more purpose driven and have shown a tendency to select products or brands that align to the personal beliefs on green practices and sustainability. A research exploration by Tan, Johnstone, & Yang (2016) found that more than 33% of consumers in Australia would stop consuming and purchasing a brand if they lost trust on the basis of transparency, sustainability, and accountability relating to green approaches. World’s Biggest Garage Sale has an opportunity to appeal to a market that is already thinking sustainability. Another major social trend is the active participation of consumers towards protecting the environment through recycling, reducing waste, and stopping the consumption of single-use plastics. The attention of consumers to the environment has been heightened (Meyer et al. 2012), to a point where Moloney and Strengers (2014) found that some are willing to pay about 5% extra for products that are environmentally friendly. World’s Biggest Garage Sale can capitalize on this social trends by marketing their products to a wider audience.

1.2 Analysis of Technology

One of the best technology developments has been the popularity of social media and the digital media. Its availability for organizations has greatly boosted marketing abilities (Veldeman, Van Praet, & Mechant, 2017). World’s Biggest Garage Sale takes advantage of this technology trend with a community averaging more than 20,000 interactions per day on Facebook, which is the company’s main social media platform (Facebook, 2021). The company does not have a similar following on Instagram and Twitter, yet these two platforms are identified by Ghvanidze et al. (2019) as some of the most important avenues to reach the younger audience. It means that the company does not have an active plan to reach teenage audiences that are increasingly getting into the sustainability culture. Technology will be one of the best partnerships that World’s Biggest Garage Sale can have in relation to attracting and retaining more consumers in line with the organization’s sustainability agenda and the benefits of technological platforms.

2. Marketing Goal

World’s Biggest Garage Sale intends to increase brand awareness and market penetration through social media impressions for the teenage and young adult target audiences by 50% by the end of the current financial year through increased presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The Ansoff Matrix in figure 1 below summarizes this objective, showing World’s Biggest Garage Sale’s market penetration strategy for the Australian market.

Figure 1: Ansoff Matrix (Source: )

3. Marketing Strategy

3.1 Target Consumers

The segmentation analysis provided in Table 1 below shows how World’s Biggest Garage Sale will reach their targeted market. The table reveals that the company targets teenage consumers as part of developing a sustainability agenda and young adults who are the largest consumers of a majority of products in the Australian market.

Segmentation Approach Traits/Features Segment Description

Demographic Age 15-19 World’s Biggest Garage Sale will need to focus on teenage consumers. This category has a lot of influence in the consumption patterns, including the ability for the company to ensure a development of a sustainability culture.

25-40 In this age group, the use of social media is still heavy. The group also makes up a significant part of the Australian consumer. By targeting them, the company will ensure that brand awareness is raised and that the goals of the organization are spread across the country

Income Middle to high income earners Middle to high income earning classes are more likely to have disposable income, therefore engaging in the purchase of sustainability products even when the prices are higher than the alternatives in the market.

Geographic Australia World’s Biggest Garage Sale is an Australian brand that targets the national market as a way to push sustainable consumption and to contribute to the creation of environmental benefits through responsible consumption and business

Psychographic Lifestyle and values Environmental-conscious consumers This category is keen on spending on brands and products that aligned to the current sustainability and green production measures (Song, Qin, & Qin, 2020). World’s Biggest Garage Sale can target them based on the company’s value proposition

Behavioral Benefits sought Audiences looking for specific unique value proposition World’s Biggest Garage Sale can use quality of products, their contribution to a better environment, and additional benefits such as reliable pricing and an active role in making the environment better as selling point for this segment.

Table 1: Segmentation analysis

3.2 Value Proposition

In a society where consumers are increasingly looking to use environmentally friendly products, and the consumption patterns are changing towards this behavior, World’s Biggest Garage Sale believes in meeting these needs by uniquely allowing people to recycle and buy recycled products as well as other strategies that reduce the amount of waste disposed to the environment. As the company prepares to go global, the success and failures experienced in the Australian market will inform its strategies. In the Australian market alone, the company has a target to create value for more than $43 billion worth of underutilized products ( ). By partnering with households and corporates, the company has found a unique way to attach value to the process of protecting the environment (World’s Biggest Garage Sale, 2021). By using technology in the form of digital media and social media, the company makes use of dormant goods into the circular economy and creates an environment of helping communities through job creation. The ethos of operation for World’s Biggest Garage Sale is creating a positive impact for the environment, the people, and making profits with a purpose. Since the company started operations in 2013, has successfully championed the ethical principles of a working circular economy that sees dormant goods used up in other platforms to ease the effect on the environment. Sustainability and altruism are the backbone of the organization.

In line with the above, the positioning statement for World’s Biggest Garage Sale is using dormant and underutilized goods in the economy to cover the huge vacant space created through excess consumption and that has negative effects on the environment. The company targets such commodities, both from corporate entities and households, and then redistributes in a circular economic model to willing buyers with an intention of protecting the environment, creating jobs, and making a profit in a manner that does not harm any of the key pillars including the society, the economy, and the environment.

4. Marketing Tactics

4.1 Product

World’s Biggest Garage Sale products are inclusive of any commodities available for resale, re-use, re-furbishing, and any other element in ensuring that products go back to the market ( ). Due to an increase in environment-consciousness amongst consumers, World’s Biggest Garage Sale has a number of options in terms of products:

Redesigned products

Repurposed goods

Re-cycled products

Restored commodities

These goods are a part of the circular economy that intends to restore how people use or reuse basic items and in finding value all through the product life cycle (Zink & Geyer, 2017). The main selling point of the products is extending its length, preventing the over-production of waste, and concurrently creating new opportunities, revenue streams, and jobs, while minimizing the environmental impact. The proposed marketing strategy in terms of the product in creating a tagline for active participation in environmental conservation through consumption of redesigned, repurposed, recycled, and restored commodities. This will create more awareness amongst the target groups in order to cover the gap that exists in the social trend towards more environmental consciousness.

4.2 Pricing

The pricing strategy proposed to be used by World’s Biggest Garage Sale in targeting the segments suggested earlier is the bundle pricing strategy. To attain this strategy, the company will pair a number of products together, selling them for less that they would individually. The aim of a bundle pricing strategy is mentioned by Yan and Bandyopadhyay (2011) to include the need to move inventory quickly. For World’s Biggest Garage Sale, there is a problem of the competition which can avail newer goods at cheaper market prices. Therefore, moving more gods through a bundled pricing strategy would help in competition. The objective of the organization is to create brand awareness and show the benefits of repurposing underutilized and dormant commodities. Therefore, the pricing strategy would be appealing and help to create value and a positive image. The customers include teenagers and young adults, with the latter being the main target especially those in the middle to high income earning groups. Young adults in the said income class are less sensitive to pricing, but will be attracted through a bundled price strategy. For the teenage market, the aim is to create a culture of consuming repurposed goods.

4.3 Place

The products from World’s Biggest Garage Sale are high turnover and low margin goods. Therefore, an intense distribution approach is preferred. The distribution will be made through the various outlets all over the country and additionally via social media and digital platforms including the company website. The products will use a single-level distribution channel, moving directly from the organization to the distribution centres.

4.4 Promotion

World’s Biggest Garage Sale will use social media advertising as the main avenue to create awareness. The marketing and promotion goal for World’s Biggest Garage Sale is to increase brand awareness and market penetration through social media impressions for the teenage and young adult target audiences by 50% by the end of the current financial year through increased presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The company will focus its promotion budget on social media, through Facebook, Twitter, ad Instagram, because evidence from scholars show that social media has helped companies in the past to sell their value proposition (Asaad & Gomez, 2011). The benefits of social media advertising include brand awareness increase, more inbound traffic on the digital platforms, increased interactions with consumers and potential suppliers of the products used by the organization, improved search ranking, high conversion rates, improved customer satisfaction, better brand loyalty, and improved brand authority (Karimi & Naghibi, 2015). These advantages will create a larger platform for the organization, increase its reach, and lead to more sales.

Objectives Platform Cost to the company

World’s Biggest Garage Sale intends to increase brand awareness and market penetration through social media impressions for the teenage and young adult target audiences by 50% by the end of the current financial year through increased presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Facebook According to the Media Ant (2021), effective Facebook advertising will cost $25000 per month

Increase brand awareness and market penetration Instagram According to the Media Ant (2021), effective Instagram advertising will cost $20000 per month

Increase traffic, brand awareness, penetration, and overall number of mentions Twitter According to the Media Ant (2021), effective Twitter advertising will cost $5000 per month

Overall cost $50000

5. References

Assaad, W., & Gómez, J. M. (2011). Social network in marketing (social media marketing) opportunities and risks. International Journal of Managing Public Sector Information and Communication Technologies, 2(1), 13.

Facebook.com (2021). World’s Biggest Garage Sale profile. Available at https://www.facebook.com/worldsbiggestgaragesale/

Ghvanidze, S., Velikova, N., Dodd, T. H., & Oldewage-Theron, W. (2019). Are Sustainable consumers health conscious? A segmentation study of wine consumers. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 25(6), 690-711.

Karimi, S., & Naghibi, H. S. (2015). Social media marketing (SMM) strategies for small to medium enterprises (SMEs). International Journal of Information, Business and Management, 7(4), 86.

Meyer, S. B., Coveney, J., Henderson, J., Ward, P. R., & Taylor, A. W. (2012). Reconnecting Australian consumers and producers: identifying problems of distrust. Food Policy, 37(6), 634-640.

Moloney, S., & Strengers, Y. (2014). ‘Going green’?: the limitations of behaviour change programmes as a policy response to escalating resource consumption. Environmental Policy and Governance, 24(2), 94-107.

Nimri, R., Patiar, A., & Kensbock, S. (2017). A green step forward: Eliciting consumers’ purchasing decisions regarding green hotel accommodation in Australia. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 33, 43-50.

Song, Y., Qin, Z., & Qin, Z. (2020). Green Marketing to Gen Z Consumers in China: Examining the Mediating Factors of an Eco-Label–Informed Purchase. Sage Open, 10(4), 2158244020963573.

Tan, L. P., Johnstone, M. L., & Yang, L. (2016). Barriers to green consumption behaviours: The roles of consumers’ green perceptions. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 24(4), 288-299.

The Media Ant. (2021). Digital Advertising. Available at https://www.themediaant.com/digital

Veldeman, C., Van Praet, E., & Mechant, P. (2017). Social media adoption in business-to-business: IT and industrial companies compared. International Journal of Business Communication, 54(3), 283-305.

World’s Biggest Garage Sale. (2021). Activating dormant goods for good. Available at https://worldsbiggestgaragesale.com.au/

Yan, R., & Bandyopadhyay, S. (2011). The profit benefits of bundle pricing of complementary products. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 18(4), 355-361.

Zink, T., & Geyer, R. (2017). Circular economy rebound. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 21(3), 593-602.