Marketing Strategy Engels & Bengels

1 Introduction

Bengel&Engel is a day-care facility, which was founded in Hambourg Germany in 2007. This institution offers three different services for parents and companies. The first one is a day-care facility for children from the age of 10 months to 3 years, which is called nursery section, and from 3 years to 6 years, which is called elementary section.

Since human beings are able to learn things easily and quickly during their childhood, it is at that time especially important to support children during their development of learning abilities and personality. Also these years prepare children for the challenges in school and also form their social competence. Education plays a central role within the institution, therefore the children are split into small groups of 12 each. As soon as the child is enrolled, linguistic competence and learning ability will be trained and these are skills children can internalize with only one year of age, which will later evidently affect their performance in school. It is very important for children to have a clear structure every day and people caring about them.

At Bengel&Engel one day is not like another day, because there are always different activities for example exercise time in the gym, cooking with a chef, playing instruments, singing with professional seniors, days in the forest. The thematic priority focus first on "Body, Movement and Health", but then later on "music", "fine arts" and "educational program" as well. Only well trained pedagogues, who really care about the children are allowed to work at this institution in order to maintain a high quality of service.

Usually life for a Chinese family is all about raising the child, therefore husband and wife don't spend time with each other anymore and they only bond through their shared feelings for the child. Nowadays women are more independent and want to have a fulfilled life with family, but also with love. This causes also that nowadays women do have the courage to leave their husbands after their child is grown up. The second service of Bengel&Engel is a private children hotel, where children from the age of 10 months to 12 years can enjoy a warm and comfortable night, when their parents are busy or on holidays. The team consists only of pedagogues with practical experience from the day care facility, so the children can build up trust and spend the night in a familiar environment. This facility can give a couple private time to reunite and discover their feelings for each other again.

Finally Bengel&Engel offers childcare within a company for children under the age of three, which is an amazing opportunity for companies to support families and takes a big step towards making women strive for top management positions without giving up the dream of having a family.

2 SWOT-Analysis: Bengel&Engel

3 The Potential of the Chinese Market

The Chinese market has grown to be the 2nd largest luxury market in the world and will be the world's top luxury market by 2015. There are over 100 mio. Chinese luxury goods consumers and around 115 US$-billionaires in 2007. Wealth is mainly concentrated in metropolitan regions as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Over 1.3 billion people live in China, but because of the one child policy China's total fertility rate (number of births per woman) is 1.7, which is much higher than slowly-declining Germany at 1.4. In 2009 around 18.294.000 children were born, however 347.000 children died before they reached the age of 5. In order to estimate the market potential a small calculation is shown below.

It is reckoned that there are around 18.000.000 children under 5 years old and there is an urban-rural ration of 50%-50%, one could assume that it is possible to divide 18.000.000 children against 2. However, the birth rate in rural China is much higher with around 2.0 and in urban areas 1.3, which means that there are approximately 10.800.000 (60%) births in rural areas and 7.200.000 (40%) births in urban areas.

Since Bengel&Engel is a luxury service product, only children and parents in urban areas are the main consumer target group in the beginning. If only 1% of 7.200.000 children are enrolled in Bengel&Engel facilities, there would be 72.000 children. Since one week of day-care facility from Monday to Friday, 7am-6pm cost 1000 Euros it would be possible to earn 45 weeks x 1000 Euros = 45000 Euros per child per year. A turnover of 72000 x 45000 Euros = 3.240.000.000 Euros can be achieved per year.

However there are a lot of costs to be expected, which are listed on the attached excel sheet.

3 Marketing Strategy

a) Competitive Strategy

The competitive strategy after Robert Kaplan and David Norton differs among three divers sources for competitive advantage. Bengel&Engel's strategy is either offering an extraordinary and attractive product, an extraordinary and efficient procedure or a superior customer relationship.

In this case the day-care facility and children hotel offer an extraordinary and attractive service to stressed out parents, who have to work every day or need some time for themselves to also enjoy their time as a couple. But besides this, the relationships between the pedalogists and the parents are unique and during the time an unimaginable strong bond is established, which creates a great benefit for the Bengel&Engel's reputation throughout the nation. Therefore Bengel&Engel will also stand out from the mass of existing day-care facilities due to the excellent education program, professional, but still warm-hearted attitude towards the children, great care and reputation. These are the competitive strategies to make the company become the strongest competitor on the Chinese market.

According to Michael Porter or competitive strategy focuses the aspects quality and service and specializing in a market niche.

b) Positioning Strategy and Target Group

One week of day-care facility costs around 1000 Euros, which make the service of Bengel&Engel a luxuy product. Our target group are parents, between the age of 30-45 who have at least one child from the age of 10 months to 6 years. Also their income should be higher than 600 000 RMB per year and they tend to have a very demanding and time intensive job. Usually these couples live