course material

1. FBLU050 Marketing
Answers:
Introduction
Gousto is a UK meal kit service company that was founded in 2012 and is currently all
across the UK as one of the best meal kit service companies. The company was initially
recognized as one of the best start-up companies in the UK in 2015. Currently, the company
provides an endless number of recipes for its customers with an average of 60 recipes every
week (Gousto, 2022). The company has been hugely focusing on variety, quality, and
simplicity to attract more customers across the UK. The company runs a subscription-based
model which provides meals to its customers on weekly basis and the customers have the
freedom to cancel the subscription, whenever they want. The main competitor of Gousto is
HelloFresh which holds the maximum market share in the meal kit service industry across
Europe (Vardi et al. 2020). This report aims to apply, assess and recommend the marketing
communication strategy that Gousto needs to implement to increase its brand awareness
and market share, also obtaining competitive advantage.
Discussion
Gousto has started operating in the UK market in 2012 with a promise to deliver beast meal
kits made from fresh ingredients to its target customers (Gousto Blog, 2022). Its main
competitor HelloFresh was already present in the market before Gousto and has been
serving its customers all across the UK and has the highest market share. Therefore, Gousto
started promoting itself on different media like TV and OOH platforms to increase its brand
awareness (Sutton 2017). The campaign name was Unbox Possibility and it showcased
various types of recipes that were available for the customers. The brand-building
promotional strategy did not work as expected because of its poor strategies which mainly
focused on providing limited offers and offer codes to the customers. In, 2018, the company
implemented direct marketing strategies but the results were not satisfactory and
compared to its competitors, the campaigns were outdated. It questioned their brand
loyalty and people continued to switch brands. Gousto was sitting at only 17 percent of
market awareness compared to HelloFresh which was having 32% brand awareness in the
market. The growth rate was slow and HelloFresh was still the market leader. The market
share of Gousto was 22 percent compared to HelloFresh which was 28 percent. Thus,

2. Gousto needs to plan a proper communication strategy that would help its market growth
and brand awareness along with increasing its market share.
Marketing Communication Theory
Marketing communication can be defined as the process which is adopted by the company
to deliver its messages regarding its products or services and its brands for selling, through
direct or indirect channels to the customers (Todorova 2015). The objective of the
communication process is to persuade the target customers to purchase their products or
services. The marketing communication process includes advertising, sales promotion,
events, public relations, direct marketing, interactive marketing, word of mouth marketing,
and personal selling (Kitchen and Burgmann 2015).
Gousto implemented certain market communication strategies to reach its target customers
and to increase its brand awareness. In market communication, the target audience is the
most important element as it determines the fate of the product. For Gousto, the target
audience is the ambitious jugglers who are the young families or professional couples
between the age of 25 to 55 years. To build a better brand and promote itself to the target
market, Gousto has to change its brand positioning from being just a food delivery brand to
an attitude brand that offers enthusiasm. Therefore, the company came up with the “Give it
Some” campaign that was focused on creating a better positioning of the brand by raising
awareness. The initial objective is to make the target audience aware of the brand and
convert the interested customers into final customers. In 2019, the company implemented
both online and offline communication strategies to reach out to its customers. The tv
advertisement schedule was changed into peak time to reach out to the maximum of its
audience. The advertisement was released on the online platform YouTube to promote its
products and services to the customers as a brand building and brand awareness activity
(Chen and Yuan 2020). Further, the posters of the brand were implemented in the London
underground for brand promotion. These marketing campaigns were done to increase
word-of-mouth marketing and improve brand awareness. The online influencers were also
used to market the brand to the customers. The overall marketing campaign was based on
Nudge communication which was focused on targeting the behaviour or changes to
determine the choices of the audience (Dianoux et al. 2019). The overall communication
strategy was focused on repositioning the brand from delivery to attitude brand as well as
building the brand better to acquire more loyal customers. Special offers were presented as
a sales promotion to the subscribers which includes discounts and coupons for the service.
Performance Of Marketing Communication Activities
The efforts of the marketing communication activities were quite successful for Gousto. By
February 2020, Gousto achieved incredible market growth more than 5 times than its
competitor HelloFresh. The company achieved a huge customer base with a subscription
rate of 67 % compared to its target which was 50%. The marketing activities helped Gousto

3. to achieve huge brand awareness. Previously it was standing at 17 % which got increased to
40%, overall, the awareness 67 % of the target audience recognize this brand over its
competitors. The sales promotion strategies also proved to be a success through the first
box discount at which drove almost 75% of the subscription growth. Compared to 2019, the
marketing strategies have performed very well and the subscription rates have highly
increased but the cost of advertising also remains high. Moreover, the online marketing and
influencers have performed well contributing 25% to brand awareness and 16% in brand
consideration. The overall marketing communication strategy has been successful for
Gousto.
Recommendation To Improve Marketing Communication
With a successful marketing strategy, Gousto has been able to become the highest growing
meal kit company across the UK. The market share has also increased from 22 % to 31%
which is impressive for the company. The brand awareness has also increased drastically
along with the subscription. Despite the success, the marketing spending of the company is
increasing compared to its signups due to aggressive marketing strategies. Television,
events, and OOH marketing took the maximum cost of promotion compared to online
marketing or influencer marketing. Now that the company has gained pace in market
growth and share, there are certain improvements that the company needs to implement
regarding marketing communication strategy. The essential recommendations include –
The company needs to focus mainly on customer retention to increase and improve its
customer base (Alkitbi et al., 2020). This can be achieved through brand loyalty and hence
the company needs to implement better brand loyalty strategies like discounts, food
coupons, extra meal boxes for encouraging referrals. Public relation is one of the most
effective strategies for customer retention as it builds a relationship between the company
and its customers for mutual benefits (Johnston and Sheehan 2020).
Gousto should invest more in Internet Marketing influencer marketing, and other BTL
activities rather than OOH to reduce marketing costs. Internet marketing provides better
facilities for choosing the target market as well as offering better insights about the market
at a low price (Grubor and Jakša 2018). Social media marketing, email marketing is some of
the important marketing strategies that Gousto should focus on.
Lastly, Gousto should conduct a market audit and properly build a marketing budget before
implementing any marketing strategy. The marketing budget will provide a better idea
about the expenses regarding all the marketing campaigns which includes content creation,
social media ads, email marketing cost, print media cost, SEO efforts, and other processes.
This will provide an overall insight into the marketing budget and hence the company will
be able to strategize better (Ilina and Nikitenko 2015).
Conclusion
Gousto has been able to successfully present itself through its out-of-the-box strategy and
hence, achieved greater results in the UK market. From the above report, it can be

4. concluded that Gusto’s marketing strategy has been successful and has been able to
successfully compete with HelloFresh, but the cost of marketing is higher compared to its
output. So, the company needs to highly focus on customer retention and brand loyalty and
also on reducing its marketing cost. By following the recommendation provided, Gousto will
be able to successfully retain its customers and market share, becoming the most famous
meal kit company across the UK.
References
Alkitbi, S.S., Alshurideh, M., Al Kurdi, B. and Salloum, S.A., 2020, October. Factors affect
customer retention: A systematic review. In International Conference on Advanced
Intelligent Systems and Informatics (pp. 656-667). Springer, Cham.
Chen, Z. and Yuan, M., 2020. Psychology of word of mouth marketing. Current opinion in
psychology, 31, pp.7-10.
Dianoux, C., Heitz-Spahn, S., Siadou-Martin, B., Thevenot, G. and Yildiz, H., 2019. Nudge: A
relevant communication tool adapted for agile innovation. Journal of Innovation Economics
Management, (1), pp.7-27.
Gousto Blog, 2022. About Gousto | Gousto Blog. [online] Gousto Blog. Available at:
[Accessed 8 January 2022].
Gousto, 2022. Gousto. [online] Gousto. Available at: [Accessed 8 January 2022].
Grubor, A. and Jakša, O., 2018. Internet marketing as a business necessity. Interdisciplinary
Description of Complex Systems: INDECS, 16(2), pp.265-274.
Ilina, O. and Nikitenko, O., 2015. Marketing audit and its use in practice of companies.
Johnston, J. and Sheehan, M. eds., 2020. Public relations: Theory and practice. Routledge.
Kitchen, P.J. and Burgmann, I., 2015. Integrated marketing communication: Making it work
at a strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy
Sutton, P., 2017. The Use of Scent in Out Of Home (OOH) advertising. In Designing with
Smell (pp. 132-139). Routledge.
Todorova, G., 2015. Marketing communication mix. Trakia Journal of sciences, 13(1),
pp.368-374.
Vardi, S., Rosenthal, S., Woods, N., Levy, J. and Tanner, D., 2020. Hello Fresh.