Marketing Case study – Kim Do Yi Ltd. (KDY)

Kim Do Yi Ltd. (KDY) established in 1995 by president and master instructor Rickie Chan Ka Ching is a martial arts firm based in Hong Kong. The organization specializes in the Korean martial arts of Taekwondo and Hapkido. It is affiliated to the World Taekwondo federation (the governing body for Olympic-style Taekwondo). KDY’s core target market is children of primary and secondary school age. KDY does not have its own kwans(training studios), preferring instead to hire venues in numerous locations throughout Hong Kong. KDY believes this approach makes access easier and cheaper for its customers.

(A) Outline why promotion is important to an organization such as KDY. (2 marks)

Since KDY operates in a highly competitive market, it is important for them to promote their product and define their USP to their customer so they develop brand loyalty. Since they wish to target a younger audience, they must compete with other firms seeking to take up teenage time so their competition extends farther than just other martial arts firms, they must compete with other firms from gyms to any other option available to the teenage audience in Hong Kong.

(B) Advise on a suitable promotional mix for KDY. (8 marks)

A suitable promotional mix for KDY would be personal selling. Personal selling is a type of below the line promotion and refers to the promotional techniques that rely on sales representatives directly helping and persuading potential and existing customers to make a purchase. Benefits of personal selling include:

Since KDY deals with teaching students for their, it would be important to get a trusting relationship with their customer. This especially effective when it comes to convincing consumers because they get to engage with the salesman in dialogue which gets feedback back to the firm without the costs of questionnaires. Since KDY is an educational firm, it will need to answer a lot of questions that the customer might have, and the best why to do that is using dialogue. Also the salesman can promote their product through providing a sort of “enthusiasm” in purchasing their product which will establish that brand loyalty that they are seeking.

Some problems with personal selling:

Personal selling has some problems. For one, the firm cannot grasp the attention of a huge audience so it may lose the number of consumers they would get through doing some above the line promotion. Moreover, sales representatives can be hard to hire as they come at expensive rates. This is because they are specialized in the product that they are working in. An example that applies to KDY is if they hire a martial arts master they must pay extra because he is an educated master in the martial arts. Another expense is training staff in order to gain a good understanding of the martial arts. This is also time-consuming so most of it lowers the rate at which profit is made.

In conclusion, KDY is a company that offers a service so basically it is important that they stick to personal selling so they can establish a good connection with their consumers because that brings in good profit.