This report is to examine the effectiveness of the marketing strategies that allow them to widely expand their business around Singapore and Malaysia. And also examine how they react to their competitors.
Introduction
What is Pet Lovers Centre?
Pet Lovers Centre (PLC) is Singapore’s biggest pet retail and service chain. It was open as a home hobby business in 1973. In 1995, the second generation of Ng family took over, and the business grew rapidly as they have expand their business not only Singapore and also Malaysia. PLC is well known for their ability to offer its customer “widest and freshest range, coupled with prompt and warm service”. They are the only pet chain being awarded for the “Trust SG certification for the year” and also an Associate member of Worldwide Pet Industry Association. In 2008, it became a franchise-able brand.
Background
Background of Pet Lovers Centre
In 1973, the two brothers, David Ng and Robert Ng, have the same passion for pets because they were brought up in a farm with all kinds of pets and animals. At the point of time, the pet ownership was not widespread as compare to today, pet shop hardly can be seen on the street, as leftover food were consider proper meal for pets. After that, the two brothers shared a common dream to open Singapore’s first shop that offered everything a pet should need. It started off with the wholesaling and after that change to retailing as the demand for pet related retail service was expand and there were lack of choice in the market. And this switching of business was a success.
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After much time and money being invested, they finally open their first shop at Shaw Centre along Scotts Road. They also decide to start their own Research & Development. Such as, “turning car cushions into cat basket, household carpet into scratch pad for cats”. This innovation allow the shop to be first in import dry dog food, first to sell anti flea and tick shampoo, first to sell nutritional supplement for pets and first to supply dry food to supply to Singapore’s police and army dog units.
Mission and Core Values
Pet Lovers Centre mission is to provide their quality care to their customer by showing their care and concern to their customer needs and also good accessibility. Pet Lovers Centre core values are Integrity, professionalism, effectiveness, teamwork, and service. The needs having this core values is to ensure that the staff being professional in their job, do their part and being honest, courteous, care and concern to their customer. “PLC is where pet lovers can shop with total confidence and peace of mind.” They ensure they did provide quality services and share their knowledge about pet and product to their customer.
Accolades
Pet lovers centre has received the Singapore Creative Circle Bronze award of the year of 2001, Retail Courtesy Gold Award of the year of 2002, Excellent Service Award of the year of 2002, Best Pet Shop Award 2004 & 2005, Largest Pet Store in Malaysia Book of Records 2003, Clubpets Readers Choice award of the year of 2003 to 2006, Singapore Prestige Brand Award in 2008, Trust SG Certification for the year of 2006 -2008 and Second Runner Up, Global Pets Forum Award 2010.
Pet Lover Foundation
Pet Lovers Centre has always giving charities to those animals. And last years, the foundation came out with a tagline”Pets, people and out planet” to animals. They donate food for animal shelter in Singapore. The foundation work with the animal shelters such as Noah’s Ark, SPCA and ASD. And last year when economic outlook is bleak, they organise “Dog Food Drive”. They actually collected over 2000kg of dog food for SPCA and Noah’s Ark. And recently, they organise and charity preview of the movie, “Hachiko – A dog’s story”, and raised sixteen thousand dollars for the ASD and Noah’s Ark. Currently, they are working on an eco project and working with Salvation Army to help the animal shelter. Furthermore, their stores had these house brand products “Burp!” and “Trustie” and their exclusive imports products, the sales of the products will be donate to Pet lovers foundation’s beneficiaries.
Services
Location of Stores
Pet lovers Centre has expand their business to Malaysia and Singapore. There are 32 stores in Singapore and 8 stores in Malaysia. In Singapore, the stores are located near the MRT station or shopping malls. This will allow customer to access to the destination easily. For example: VivoCity, Singapore’s largest retail and lifestyle destination, customer can actually take bus, MRT, Taxi or cars to the shopping mall. And they can even shop around the shopping mall after they have shop at the Pet Lovers Centre. So this allow the customer not only able to purchase their pet stuff, they also could purchase other things from other shops. And they won’t feel that trip was being wasted to travel down.
Grooming Centre
In Singapore, there are 5 Pet Lovers Centre’s outlet have the grooming facilities. They could bring their pets to the EastPoint mall, Holland village, Serangoon Gardens, Toa Payoh Central or Vivocity for hair grooming. And those groomers are high level of expertise proficiency and professionalism as they are being trained by the PLC Animal Arts Academy. They teach skills in a progressive manner which helps them to build up the foundation, learning basic skills of handling and grooming pets, gaining new techniques as they learn advance skills. Lately, they provide new services to the pet owner. It is the “just a bath” for dogs only. This is to allow the owners have an alternative choice to actually bring their pets for a shower rather than doing it themselves.
Veterinary Clinics
There are veterinary Clinics located at Vivocity and Holland Village. They also came out with a system for the owner to ask for an advice, opinion or suggestion through online. So owner can actually get into their website and consult the veterinary through online before bringing their pet to a vet. And they will reply the post as soon as possible to solve owner’s problem. This is to allow the owner get an idea whether their pets are behaving normally or it does really need a medical care. So this enables owners to save consultation cost if their pet were perfectly alright.
Dog Training
PLC does have dog training at their stores. They work together with the Waggie’s dog training school, Doggie Advance dog training school and Dog Listener consultancy. They would schedule their class at different venue of Singapore. And owners are given a choice to choose which classes they would like their dog to go for training. And the venue usually will be at Vivo city 3rd floor. Another way owner could do is consult the trainers through online on basic training. This would allow them to have better advice, opinion and suggestion from the trainer. So instead of bring dogs to training school, they could actually train their dogs themselves.
Home delivery
They also provide home delivery. So owner could purchase bulky item such as dog food, dog cage and more. Or owner could also online order goods. If goods are being purchase above $50, there is free of charge for delivery. The delivery takes 3 to 4 working days to process. There is a call receive from their Customer Service Officer to confirm the orders and time of delivery. So when goods arrive, goods can be exchanges within 7 working days from the date of purchase.
Marketing Strategies
Membership Card
They also provide membership card for those pet lovers to get benefit. For example, 15% discount on birthday month, 5% discount on regular-priced product, earns loyalty point to redeem items. To apply the free membership card, customer has to purchase above $100 in a single receipt. If not, customer has to pay $5 for application fees for minimum purchase of $50 single receipts or accumulated receipts in 4 weeks. And this membership could last for one year, subsequent year renewal of membership fees will be $2. Customer could check their point and redeem item through their website. With this membership, members will tend to visit their stores and purchase more items from them, so that they could accumulate point. With the point, members could actually redeem pet’s food, pet’s shampoo, pet’s remedy or supplement, accessories and gift vouchers.
Pricing
The price of the products was set at a reasonable and affordable price. And they do have brand of product that could not found in other pet stores. Even though there are some product that are sold higher price than other pet stores, but customer still choose to buy their product as the quality and service was that. They are willing to pay higher price as they wish to receive good quality of food.
S.W.O.T analysis
Strength
They provide the customer their best service with a smile of it. This shows that they valued each of their customers. They willingly to help customers and solved their problem. They want to gain the trust from the customer. So they allow exchange of products within 7 days. This will allow customer to have good impress of their business. They will constantly bringing latest product for customer. This is to prevent them from selling expired food and more variety to choose. They not only target people around town or city, they also target people who live at HDB. This allows them to people to travel to their stores conveniently. Every month, they do have promotion item, this is to attract more customer to buy their product.
Weakness
They have quite limited types of products compare to other pet shop. And not every store has the same products. As some of the shop size is small, so they could not actually bring in many different types of products. So, most of products will be available at the pet safari mega stores only.
Opportunities
Service and Quality of the product that Pet Lover Centre provides to each of their customer are useful. This would enable the customer have trust in their product and willing to visit the stores again. And this enables the customer to recommend more pet lovers to drop by their stores. They do organise outdoor event and pet contest. This also helps to promote responsible pet ownerships and also allow owner and pets to enjoy and have fun. And enable customer to know that all this event are actually organize by the Pet Lovers Centre.
Threats
There are a lot of pet shops in Singapore. They are actually Pet Lovers competitor. It is because they do sell pet products, and their products are being sold at lower price. And they do have their own home brand product. So they might lose out with customer because of that. As most of the people would not wish to pay too much on products, all they want is their pet eating healthy food.
Report
Interview of a Pet Owner
Name: Anonymous
Sex: Male
Comments: I prefer to buy pet’s product from Pet Lovers Centre. It is because their foods are fresh. As the date of expiry is either 1 or 2 year later. So I feel safe to allow my pet to eat their food and snack. There was once, I went to other Pet Shop to purchase pet food. I notice that the expiry date was just one or two month away. Not only that, tiny hole and insect can be found on the packaging which make me feel so unsafe and quality of food was kind of bad, which give me a bad impression of the stores. So from that moment, I prefer to buy products from Pet Lovers Centre. Even though the price was slightly expensive from other stores, it’s more worth it.
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Although the price of the product are slightly more expensive, but there is a lot of promotion going on throughout the year. So whenever there is promotion on the particular product that my pet loves it, I would like to purchase it bulk and there is a free delivery to my house. So it’s worth buying it and I do not need to carry those things all the way back home. By the way, Pet Lovers Centre can be found almost all the shopping malls and it’s located near MRT station too. It was as convenient as compare to other pet stores. So whenever I drop by to that shopping mall, I will always drop by the stores to check their promotion. And the service was excellent, their advice was very clear.
Being a member, there are so many benefits. During birthday months, there is 15% discount on the items. Sometime you could even receive free gift from them. Points are given to all members; I have tried to redeem items through online. It was great. They even deliver it to my house. What a good service they provide to all members. So Pet Lovers Centre is a good choice for all pet lovers.
Conclusion
Pets Lovers Centre has being showing their best in providing good service and good quality to their customer. Their marketing strategies was being proven and recognise, this allow them to expand in Singapore and Malaysia. They always keep the member updated with the latest information or promotion through email, E-zine or even the most popular social network, Facebook. This enables the member to visit to Pet Lovers Centre more often. This allow Pet Lovers Centre to be success and able to expand their business rapidly throughout the island.
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