1.

0 Introduction
In our written assignment, we aim to find out the marketing activities of Gardenia Bakeries
(KL) Sdn. Bhd (Gardenia) in the consumer market. Although Gardenia launch a lot of
products in Far East and South East Asia, but we will only focus on products and marketing
activities done by Gardenia in Penisular Malaysia in this written assignment. We are going to
analysis and contrast a marketing report for Gardenia such as how Gardenia does it market
segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP). STP helps Gardenia to find out which
area/segment should the company concentrates in. Besides, we also look for its marketing
environment that plays an important role in implementing marketing activities. Next,
marketing mix or 4Ps which are place, product, price and promotion are also the core and
most important element in our written assignment. By doing this written assignment, we will
able to know more about how Gardenia does its marketing activities to overcome the highly
competitive environment and remains as the strongest bakery or breads manufacturer among
its competitor such as Massimo and Appolo. The aim of doing this written assignment is to
help us to find out what actually is marketing and how Gardenia manages to remain as the
strongest brand in the highly competitive environment and to be different among all other
competitors with different strategies, plans and ideas.
2.0 Company background
Gardenia Bakeries (KL) Sdn. Bhd (Gardenia) is a multinational company that founded in
Malaysia on year 1969 at East Malaysia. Gardenia was founded by an American named
Horatio Sye Slocumm, an employee of International Executive Service Corps. Mr. Slocumm
who had 35 years of baking experience together with Americas leading chain of bakeries,
Gardenia was born successfully. After 45 years of hardship, Gardenia now has become a
Malaysia leading brand of breads manufacturer. Gardenia produced the first loaf of bread in
year 1986. Gardenia became the leader in the bakery market with an outstanding 99% brand
recall rate and 80% top-of-mind recall within 4 years. Gardenias multiply its products chain
through the years, which slowly become better and soon best. Leveraging on its brand
strength, Gardenia now supply a lot of breads to fulfil consumers demands. Gardenia Food
Industries is a group of franchise related companies incorporated in East Malaysia (Sabah &
Sarawak), Brunei-Darussalam and the Republic of Indonesia established for the

manufacturing, packaging, and trade-distribution of Gardenia Brand bakery ices and

creamery products.
S. E. Asias Gardenia Breads and Creameries
In 1969, Gardenia Food Industries production of Gardenia bakery ices and creameries foods
was first established in Kota-Kinabalu Sabah Malaysia by its founder (Datuk) Wong Tze Fatt,
with North American bakery technical knowhow provided by Mr Scy Slocum of Atlanta USA
and creamery technical knowhow provided by Mr Jim Humphries of California USA.
Gardenia International Pty Ltd (Singapore) was subsequently set up in the Republic of
Singapore as (Datuk) Wong Tze Fatts franchise development arm to promote his Gardenia
Brand throughout the Far East and South East Asia.
3.0 Segmentation, targeting and positioning
According to Higley (2010), STP also known as strategic marketing, it include determine a
suitable segment to market your goods or services, identifying the correct target market and
positioning the respective goods or services to create maximum profits. The core part of STP
is to find out exactly what advantages your goods or services give and who will get the most
benefits. STP is the most common strategy used by marketers in today world. This is because
STP can help them to analyse which target market should they enter and concentrate in.
Besides, STP is one of the most accurate tools to help marketer to set their marketing plans.
Furthermore, STP is the basic concept to understand the market needs and develop marketing
strategies.
Segmentation: Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into meaningful,
relatively similar, and identifiable segments or groups (Mcdaniel and Lamb et al., 2011). The
purpose of market segmentation is to enable the marketer to tailor marketing mix to meet the
needs of one or more specific segments. Gardenia had segmented their consumers into two
main categories, Psychographic and Demographic. Psychographic factors are known as a
factor that divides customers into several sectors according to their basis of personality,
motives or lifestyles, how they carry out their daily lives, or their behavior. First of all,
Gardenia focuses on the psychographic factor in separating the Gardenia markets, which is
lifestyle. Therefore, Gardenia focuses on customer who demands for freshness, convenience,
variety and uncompromising taste. Customers nowadays demand for not just a simple loaf of
bread, they also looking forward for a fresh and convenience bread that they can consume at
low health risk and can get it easily. To fulfil the demands, Gardenia had did its very best to
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provide daily baked bread to their customers and have more delivery channel such as
supermarket, grocery shop or even hawker along the road.
Besides, are the demographic factors which illustrate how marketer will divide the market
into categories such as age, gender, income, and ethnic background. Gardenia focuses on age
factor. Gardenia segments their consumer into teenagers, adults and senior citizen. In doing
that, Gardenia provides variety of products to fulfil all needs. Teenagers which are very
energetic will require some source to fight their hunger and in the same time they are more
likely to consume products with sweet taste. So, Gardenia had come out with the new Waffle
products to meet their demands. Not forgetting adults and senior citizens that demand for a
healthy diet, Gardenia launch Whole wheat fiber bread and the latest Gardenia Breakthru that
contain a high level of vitamins and fiber.
Targeting: After Gardenia segment the market according to the segments, Gardenia will need
to find out its target market. There is no a strategy that suits all consumer groups, so Gardenia
must able to develop specific strategies for its target markets to achieve maximum profits in
least costs. The targeting strategy used by Gardenia is differentiated marketing or mass
marketing. Using a differentiated marketing strategy, a firm might decide to target several
market segments and designs separate offers for each (Armstrong and Kotler, 2013).
Gardenia targets its consumer market by offering variety of breads and offering. By offering
product and marketing variations to customers. Gardenia hope for higher sales and a stronger
position within each market segment. The disadvantage of using this strategy is Gardenia will
face difficulty in develops and produce new products because it requires extra research based
on each segment it serves. Example of differentiated marketing strategy did by Gardenia are
post advertisement about Gardenia whole wheat bread in newspaper to target senior citizens
and do online advertisement for Gardenia waffle products that aim mainly teenagers.
Positioning: A product positioning is the way a product is defined by consumers on
important attributes-the place the product occupies in consumers mind in relative to
competing products (Armstrong and Kotler, 2013). Gardenia has positioned their products
strongly against competitors products in the consumers minds. For example, Gardenia has
its own song to make consumers remember its bread which is So good...You can even eat it
on its own. By listening to the song, people will think of the convenience of Gardenia bread
that it can be consume directly without any side dishes. Besides, Gardenia also positions
itself as a healthy, fresh and high quality product in consumers minds. By developing a
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stronger position within segments, Gardenia will be able to create more sales and attract more
business opportunity.
4.0 Marketing environment
A marketing plan usually will be affected by some internal or external factors that are closely
related or indirectly related in the business. Those factors are known as marketing
environment. Marketing environment is the actors or forces outside marketing that affect
marketing decisions (Armstrong and Kotler, 2013). Marketer need to be highly sensitive
about these factors which will affect their plans and make they more competitive.
Competitive factors
In Malaysia, there are 3 main bakeries, which are Gardenia Bakeries (KL) Sdn Bhd , Stanson
Bakeries Sdn Bhd (High 5) and The Italian Baker Sdn Bhd (Massimo). The Malaysian bread
industry are mostly governed or dominated by these 3 bakeries. They compete with each
other through prices, quality, variety types of products, products characteristics and so on. For
example, the white bread selling by Gardenia was selling at RM 2.10, High 5 selling at
RM2.80 and Massimo selling at RM2.50, although Gardenia is selling at the lowest price
among these 3 bakeries, but consumers will choose according to the quality they perceive for
each bakery, for an example, if consumers perceive Gardenias quality is not as good as
Massimo, they might choose Massimo although the price is higher.
Economic factors
Economics factors are factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns
(Kotler and Armstrong 2013, p.104). Consumers with different occupations will have
different income levels and thus they will have different spending patterns. For instance, high
and middle income level consumers will demand for a better standard of living, they demand
for good quality products, same goes to foods like bread, although it is a daily basic need, but
for high and middle income level consumers, they will likely or tend to choose a high quality
and features products. Example, consumers with higher income will choose those breads
which are more expensive such as toastem (one of Gardenia products) that offers special
features like raisin oatmeal. On the contrary, for low income level consumers, when they are
making decisions to purchase something, they will try to reduce the expenses incurred, so
they may just buy a classics white bread to fulfill their daily basic need. Hence, a companys
marketing plans might be influenced by this economic force.

Political and Legal factors

The political environment contains of laws, government agencies and pressure groups that
influence and limit various organizations and individuals in a given society (Kotler and
Armstrong 2013, p.108). Developments in the political and legal environment will definitely
affect marketing decisions (Goh, 2014). A special Halal Committee is formed at Gardenia to
supervise all aspect of Halal regulations. Officer from JAKIM will conduct a regular factory
inspection to monitor and assure that the overall operations are compliance the guidelines set
by them. Besides, an Independent Syariah Advisor had been appointed by Gardenia to
safeguard their Halal status and refer to in syariah related matters.
Technological Forces
Technology are improving rapidly in this modernization era, technology brings to mind
scientific advances such as information technology which is having resulted in the Internet,
cell phone and so on.(Armstrong& Kotler 2013) To improve the producing speed and bigger
market, Gardenia force to upgrade the technology in the factory. In the year 1986, Gardenia
produces about 3,000 loaf of bread a day without machine. In the year 1991, Gardenia can
construct about 6,000 loaves an hour capacity with using bread maker machine. In the year
1994, the technology upgrade, Gardenias machine also upgrade and can produce 10,000
loaves. Now a day, each of the Gardenias factories with six fully automated bread lines, each
of the factories can produce more than 900,000 fresh loaves a day. Now Gardenia is the
largest bread producer in Southeast Asia.
Sociocultural Forces
Sociocultural Forces will influences in society and culture that bring about peoples beliefs,
customs, life styles and so on. For bigger market and more profit, Gardenia force to produce a
HALAL to the Malay customer. Due to the reason of Malay peoples culture is cannot eat
pork. So Gardenia put the HALAL logo on every product. Malay customer saw the HALAL
logo then will buy for breakfast. With the market of Malay people, Gardenia can earn more
profit and plan for future market.

5.0 Marketing mix

The term marketing mix was first introduced by Neil Borden, the president of the American
Marketing Association in year 1953. The marketing mix contain of 7Ps which are products,
places, prices, promotions, physical evidence, people and partners. In this written assignment,
we will only cover the 4Ps that are more familiar and most used by marketer which are
products, places, prices and promotions. The main function of this 4Ps is to form a right
combination to meets customers wants and needs.
Product
Product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or
consumption that might satisfy a want or need (Armstrong and Kotler etal. , 2005). There are
2 type of product in general, consumer products and industrial products. Consumer product is
product bought for personal consumption such as convenient product while industrial product
is product that bought for further processing use such as raw materials. Products sold by
Gardenia are under consumer products category.
Gardenia provides variety goods to suit different age group based on their market
segmentation. Gardenia produced variety of breads such as the Breakthru, Waffle, Twiggies
and many others. Every product has its own special features and tastes to suit different age
group as segmented by Gardenia in the early stage. For example, Gardenia produces
Squiggles, Twiggies, Toastem, Fluffy Buns and Quick bites (refer to figure 1) that mainly
aim for child and teenagers market because of their sweet taste and use mainly chocolate,
vanilla and others sweet taste ingredient. Besides that, Gardenia also produce Delicia (refer to
figure 2) and white bread (refer to figure 3) that target mainly adults market. In doing that,
Gardenia offer those product with lower price and use mainly wheat as main material so that
adults will feel worth buying because those products can fill their hunger. Not forgetting
senior citizens, Gardenia came out with European Cottage Style Bread (refer to figure 4),
Gardenia low fat fibremeal (refer to figure 5) and the latest Gardenia Breakthru (refer to
figure 6) that are made as healthy products. Those breads contain Beta Glucan which aids to
lower cholesterol level.
Referring to the product level, the core advantage show what the customer is really buying.
For Gardenia, it provides an experience to its customers that they are not only consuming the
breads but also a healthy diet. For example, the latest Gardenia Breakthru breads contain low
Adipose Tissue Fat-Storing Capacity that assists us in having better control over obesity. It is

also Diabetic Friendly which aids to keep stable blood sugar level that typically follows a
meal. All the breads of Gardenia have no artificial and preservative.
Gardenia values its quality by providing convenience for customers; they offer affordable
price for customers without abandon the quality. Gardenia products are aimed mainly people
who need more conveniences and also looking for a saving plan. As for safety assurance,
Gardenia ensures that the breads are all baked daily and are distribute immediately
throughout Malaysia. Gardenia always store bread in cool dry place and sent their staffs to
attend training at American Institute of Baking and other professional institutions around the
world.
In packaging, labelling and branding its products, Gardenia purposely make its products
packages in a colourful ways to attract teenagers and children. The entire prices are clearly
stated on the package to ease customers make decisions while purchasing Gardenia breads.
Besides, Gardenia has its own brand logo (refer to figure 7) printed clearly on the package.
By doing that, customers can easily identify Gardenia product even it is a new product.
Therefore, Gardenia did a very good effort in creating a strong brand in customers minds.
List of gardenia products available in Penisular Malaysia are European Cottage Style Bread,
Gardenia low fat fibremeal, Delicia, Squiggles, Twiggies, Toastem, Fluffy Buns, Quick bites,
Gardenia Breakthru, and Gardenia original classic white bread. Meanwhile in East Malaysia,
Gardenia launches a lot of products that not related to bakery such as soft drinks, ice cream
and creameries.
To meet customers expectations, Gardenia always ensure that they produce the best and most
quality bread daily. Gardenia is well-known of its breads qualities, which are preservative
free, no unnatural artificial coloring added and baked daily and are to send right after
packaging. Besides, to fulfil the increasing demands for not just freshness but healthy as well,
Gardenia is trying its best to increase the nutrient level contain in the breads. According to a
scientific investigation, an intake of 4 slices of Gardenia white breads is equal to a cup of
fresh milk. Furthermore, Gardenia products also are the ground-breaking Low Glycaemic
Index which contains a lot of proteins and fiber with lower carbohydrate and caloric
attributes.

Place
Place also called Distribution Decisions. It is developing product that can satisfy customers,
but not enough guarantee to successful marketing strategies (Draft 2011). Now a days, people
in Malaysia can find Gardenias product in any mini-market, supermarket (e.g:7-Eleven),
hypermarket (e.g: Tesco, Giant) in any corner of Malaysia.
According the research, all of the supermarket and hypermarket did not have any specialist to
promote it. It is because Gardenias product is the most of the people like to buy without any
hesitation such like thinking which bread the customer will buy. Gardenias product is any
age of the people such as Gardenia white bread is for any age of the people, because all
people such as low income and high income also will choose to buy gardenia because they
want convenience and swift breakfast and will not late for work. Squiggles and Twiggies are
for children and Gardenia Wholemeal bread is for senior-citizen. Gardenia sells their product
directly to the reseller such as mini-market and supermarket.
According to the survey, Gardenia will have a catalog to their customer such like the boss of
the mini-market to book Gardenias product. Some primary school also will send a catalog to
Gardenia to book bread to students. Some of the place that hard to find supermarket or a
mini-market such as village, how Gardenia sells the product into village? In the village, got
some people ride motorcycle and sell many kind of Gardenias bread (refer figure 8), they go
to find the boss of the shop and ask for the help for booking Gardenias bread to sell to his all
resident in village.
The Gardenias factory is at Shah Alam, Selangor. They produce the bread at night until 4 am
they will start to send their products to all mini-market, supermarket, hypermarket and so on
in Selangor. Mini-market such as TSK segar in Puchong, supermarket such as KK speedmart,
7-Eleven, hypermarket such as Tesco, Giant, AEON Big always receive Gardenias products
in 8am without delay. So the final buyers can buy the fresh Gardenias product and feel
satisfy.
Actually, Gardenia success in manufacturing products and making them available to final
customers requires building and managing a continuously evolving value delivery network.
Delivery network is a network that made up of the company, suppliers, distributors, and
ultimately customers who work together with each other to improve the performance of the
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entire system. This network consists of both upstream and downstream partners. Upstream
partners are the set of firms that supply the raw materials, components, parts, information and
finances in order to create a product.
Most of the convenience stores, which is selling necessary stuff for customer such as snacks,
beverages, shampoo and so on in Malaysia are selling Gardenias product. The convenience
stores are place at every corner of shops. For example, every resident place have many of
shops, in those shops sure got a convenience store, in the shop can buy Gardenias product as
the customers like to buy. The convenience store can call as Reseller.
Most of the people who ride motorcycle to sell Gardenias product always park in front of the
primary school to sell Gardenias product when after school. Most of the children like
Gardenias product such as choc-a-lot, squiggles, twiggies and so on. The school canteen also
selling Gardenias product when the break time of study.
The hypermarket, which is target to the many kind of segmentation such as age and so on got
a department to sell breads, many housewife like to buy bread because bread is cheap and
economical, Gardenias aim this case then sell their products at the hypermarket. Due to the
reason is most of the housewives have no time to enjoy breakfast because some of their kids
go to school early in the morning such as 7.30 am, so bread is the most easy and convenience
for family. Apart from that, most of the householder rush to work early in the morning. Now
a day, most of the roads in Malaysia always traffic jam early in the morning, so they can
having bread in the car and wont feel boring when facing traffic jam.
Their competitors such as Massimo Hi-5 of Gardenia try to reduce the price of their product
to compete with Gardenia. In this case, I learned how to solve the competition with
competitor. Gardenia should have an advertisement about the quality of their product such
like their bread is fresher than other competitors product, this can make Gardenias market
bigger.
Price
Price is a value that when you purchase a product and services. Four elements of marketing
mix, price is a only element to produces revenue. Price is an essential element for buyer

choice. It also have important role in a firm market share and profitability. Besides that, it
also can building the customer relationship and creating the customer value.
Gardenia Bakeries is using competition-based pricing when setting price of bread.
Competition-based pricing involve setting price based on competitors cost, price, strategic
and marketing offerings (Armstrong and Kotler, 2011, p291). Gardenia Bakeries when setting
the price for a kind of bread such as the latest-one Butterscotch, Breakthru, Delicia, Twiggies
and so on. Gardenia will be comparing the product value with price of product. The price
setting must be set between the price ceiling and floor. Gardenia also has been considering
the several of environment when setting prices. Gardenia has set the species price for the
reseller and gives the fair profit, encourage their support and help them to sell the product
effectively.
This is because if the consumers perceive the price of bread is higher than the product value
so that Gardenia will lose its customer. You can even eat it on its own is slogan of Gardenia
Bakeries Sdn. Bhd. Its mean the bread of Gardenia is healthy, fresh and convenience. The
laws of material of bread are healthy and no add any preservation. The ingredients of bread
are import from foreign country. For example, the milk from Europe has the highest calcium.
The Gardenias price is controlled by government this is because the main ingredient of bread
such as flour which is the one of the product that controls under government in Malaysia. The
producer cannot change the price as they like and they must follow the price given by
government. Gardenia when setting price will considers a few important aspects. First, they
must take consider about the product cost. They also want to consider the price set is giving
the profitable for company and in the same time also want to maximize the customer
satisfaction.
Besides that, they also consider about the market demand and market strategic. The price
must be acceptable by everyone and it also must be understand where the location the bread
sold in Malaysia. According in a website survey, the customers of Gardenia are very sensitive
about their product price. Past years, Gardenia has adjusted the price of bread because of
increasing price of flour. The responses of customer are shown the product price of gardenia
are quiet important in their daily life. Some customer says the increasing of bread will burden
in their life. This is because many customer of Gardenia custom eat the bread in the morning.

However, the increasing of price no affects the customer run off. The customers fast increase
because the quality of bread still constant.
The price of Gardenias products is cheaper than theirs competitors such as Hi-5 and
Massimo. Gardenia use psychological pricing to attractive the customer. The psychological
pricing is reference prices, prices that buyer carry in their mind and refer to when looking at a
given product. The reference of price might be formed by nothing current prices, assessing
the buying situation or remember the past price (Craven and Piercy,2007, p.302). For
example, the price set at RM2.35 and RM2.40 for Gardenia bread. However the price is
difference 5sen, but the study found that the psychological difference was much greater.
Gardenia Bakeries also have giving the discount for any mini-market, supermarket (e.g:7Eleven), hypermarket (e.g: Tesco, Giant) in any corner of Malaysia. Gardenia is giving the
discount for attractive this middle man. Every day, lorry of gardenia will be sent the fresh
bread on time to the minimarket; supermarket and hypermarket for make sure the quality of
bread. This action make sure all the final buyer everyday can eat fresh Gardenias product.
When the recession economy, Gardenia careful adjusting the price of bread because
adjustment will affect their demand and burden the household. Gardenia trying to find the
one ways benefits for both that company and consumer. Past a few years, the increasing of
raw of material forced Gardenia adjusts the price because the increasing cost of product.
However that adjustment of price got some comment by customer but the customer also can
accept because compact with another competitor of Gardenia the price of Gardenia is lower
than other.
Promotion
Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target
customers to buy it (Kotler and Armstrong 2006, p.48).A good promotion is very important
for the growth of the company (Liza, 2013). There are a lot of ways to promote a product.
One of the ways that Gardenia had used to promote their products is advertising. Gardenia
advertises their products through various media like television, radio and newspaper.
Television advertising was usually by Gardenia to promote their new products as television
advertising offers a good mass-marketing coverage. Radio was also used by Gardenia to
remind existing customers about their products as it is low cost. Besides, newspaper is also an

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effective way to promote or advertise their new products as it offers good local market
coverage and it is able to reach specific target market.
Gardenia also advertises their products through various social media like YouTube, Facebook
Fans Page, Corporate Blog and official website. Nowadays, most of the people own a
smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop and so on, they can easily access to these social media via
the Internet by simply tapping on their smartphone. YouTube was used by Gardenia to
broadcast its existing and new products through videos (Refer to figure 9). By doing so, it
makes consumers know more about Gardenia products and maybe it helps in getting their
interest for buying or purchasing their products. Moreover, a Facebook Fans Page had been
created by Gardenia (Refer to figure 10). By doing so, it helps Gardenia to increase their
brand and online visibility this is because when a user Likes or comment on your post, this
action or information will be automatically posted to the particular users Facebook feed, and
in the end, it helps to spread the brand to the users friends or even more.
Next, Gardenia had set up corporate blog (Refer to figure 11) to promote their products,
corporate blog is a blog that is published and used by an organization, corporation and so on
to reach its organizational goals (Steven, 2014). Gardenia used blog to provide information
on their products, promote their products since it is free-of-charge and it allows Gardenia to
connect with their customers and exchange feedback which may improve their products
quality and so on.
Furthermore, Gardenia also had been set up their own official website (Refer to figure 12),
and their website contains information like contact number, company background, products
information and so on, through website, consumer can look or find the products that they like
or favor among the variety types of products that Gardenia offers.
Sales promotion is also a way that gardenia used to promote their products. In October 2003,
a campaign was organized by Gardenia which customers are required to collect 4 empty
packaging of the Gardenia original classics white bread to redeem one free load of Gardenia
original classics white bread. Eventually, this campaign was very successful in creating
awareness for the public and this result a significant increase in the sales of Gardenia.

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Lastly, Gardenia also used the public relation to promote their products and make their
brand more visible. Public relation meaning building good relations with the companys
various publics by obtaining favorable publicity and building up a good corporate image
(Armstrong and Kotler 2013, p.385). Gardenia had been actively involved in charitable event.
For example, Gardenia donates their bread to flood victims in Kuala Terengganu on 12
December 2013 (Refer to figure 13) and during special events, Gardenia also contributes free
Twiggies to schoolchildren (Refer to figure 14). By doing so, it helps Gardenia getting wellknown and gains their reputation.
Another example is that since 1991, Gardenia has opened their doors to the public for visiting
them in order to share their journey, aspirations and progress with customers (Refer to figure
15). Currently, Gardenia had been welcome over 26,000 visitors annually and take them on a
personal tour of Gardenia bread factory which is free of charge. The visitors will be given
free sample of bread during the factory tour. Gardenia also delivers their fresh bread to over
45 charitable organizations like old folks homes, orphanages, and center for the disabled
each day these charitable organizations have been on Gardenias delivery list since 1991.
Gardenia also helps a lot in fighting the obesity epidemic in Malaysia. It is working closely
with the National Diabetes Institute (NADI) on the Fight Against Diabetes program, which
brings public awareness on the prevention of diabetes and management of diabetes. This
program is very useful and helpful for those people who face or confront the disease of
diabetes. By doing so, Gardenia is not only helping the public but they are also getting their
reputation and getting well-known too.

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