With Thomas the 

“DISCLAIMER: This entire website including all linked pages has been submitted as partial fulfilment for the degree of BA(Hons) in International Tourism Management at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston, UK. Specifically, this website has been submitted to module code TL2008 as an assessed undergraduate project within the Division of Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management. This website is not related to any specific organisation/product/service but is meant to demonstrate my understanding of visitor economy marketing in a real-world environment. No intention is made to any specific organisation, product, service and/or person. Any similarity to real-world organisations, including branding, images, and/or product and services are purely coincidental. Copyright of images remains with the original copyright owner”.

 

The marketing mix is a four-P framework which has been described by many, Kotler et al. (2010, pp. 10) notes that the framework includes price, product, place and promotion. Jobber (2007, pp.18) also describes the framework as ‘the four key decision areas that managers must manage so that they satisfy or exceed customer needs better than competition’. Through the evolvement of business and technology the importance of the customer has emphasised the development to a more customer focused 4C’s framework - Kotler and Armstrong (1999 pp. 111) state as customer value, cost, communication and convenience. Also a 7 C framework has been developed on web design elements including context, commerce, connection, communication, content, community and customisation. These elements should be taken into consideration when creating a website for commerce and sales use (Novak, ND). The follow commentary will discuss the marketing mix and the 7C’s in relation to the design of the Tonks Town website.The website is a hypothetical creation of a children’s theme park attraction called Tonks Town. The attraction is one inside the main ‘Manor Theme Park’ which has its own website, however admission is as one whole which is mentioned in the pricing page.

 

A challenge which can be highlighted is getting the balance of being attractive enough for the target market, which is young children, and also being professional and practical for parents to navigate around the site in order to book tickets and explore the site. This leads on to the context of the site. The colour scheme was chosen as a bright and energetic approach to display a fun style using colours such as red, green, yellow and blue. As these are the colours of the main attraction this overall presents itself well to its primary target market of young children engaging with the bright colours and pictures, however the white back ground and mostly black text allows easy readability. The pages display a professional layout to the website's primary users which are parents as they will need to navigate ticket prices and other information. In addition, the toolbar at the top of the page is present on every page to allow easy navigation around the site allowing a degree of simplicity to be portrayed. Another aspect being presented within the context is the useful information page which displays useful idetails for a family before visiting; each page displays a ‘back’ button, again leading to being able to navigate efficiently around the site.

 

There is a degree of commerce on the site as the ‘ticket & prices’ page highlights the importance of booking online and saving money. If the website was real a padlock would be portrayed when booking tickets as the customers would need to be reassured that their details were safe and secure. Also the prices are only a standard range as for a theme park attraction there are many vouchers and discounted ticket types which could not all be shown on the website as it would clutter the page and potentially cause confusion among customers.

 

The ‘Where to Stay’ and social media emphasis provide the main source on connection and linking away from the actual site. The links away provide customers with a range of different accommodation types closely linked with being family friendly. However, the notice customers pay to these may be questioned as customers may prefer or may have already done their own search of accommodation types specially catering for their own requirements.

 

The communication of the site is mainly done through the Contact Us page where email addresses, contact numbers and address are displayed. The social media aspect of Facebook allows another way of customers being able to contact Tonks Town.

 

This leads onto the content of the website, which has been discussed previously, with links to colour scheme and layout, but more concentrating on the gallery page which displays pictures of the rides and attractions. This is laid out so parents can show children what the rides look like, they are there just to look at and can be enlarged, hence there is no description on the pictures for children will pay notice to pictures not words.

 

Community allows customers to chat and liaise with each other, with there being no live message board or other communication device on the website. However, it has social network links to Facebook which then allows customers to have private chats.

 

Many sites may have a degree of customisation where layouts or colour schemes may be changed, however on this website none of this is enabled as already it portrays the image it needs to for its primary target market of young children, also language should not be considered an issue as the main target market are English speaking and based in the UK.

 

The overall aim of the website has been to create an exciting and colourful site for young children to been attracted to, yet still remain informative and professional for parents to have easy navigation around the site. If the website was real, more emphasis would be required on the payments page to demonstrate a secure payment system was in operation and also more communication with the customers to ensure the needs of the target market were being met.

 

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