\ Two years ago, Gulf Hospital set up a charity shop to raise funds to provide equipment for

‘chill-out’ areas for teenagers who have to stay in the hospital. It decided to open the shop in
the town centre near to where the hospital is located. 
The charity shop is staffed by a paid manager and a number of unpaid part-time volunteers.
The volunteers often do not have all of the skills needed to be good shop workers. For this
reason the shop and the window display are often not very well laid out. Also, many
volunteers stay only for a few weeks as they are often unclear about what needs to be done
and do not feel valued by the manager. 
 

 
 
The charity shop only sells clothes. The stock room is untidy as it is full of poor quality clothes
that are not selling very quickly. The manager is thinking about also selling books and CDs. 
The manager thinks that the charity shop does not make as much money as it could. 
 
1. Explain the different parts of the Marketing Mix. 
2. Recommend how he could use the marketing mix to improve the sales at the shop 
 
 
Two years ago, the Gulf Hospital set up a charity shop to raise funds to provide equipment for
'chill-out' areas for teenagers, who are staying in the hospital. The charity shop was opened in
the town center near the hospital.

A strategy that could be implemented to improve the sales of the charity shop is the marketing
mix. The marketing mix consists of 4 components, these are known as the 4 p’s; price,
promotion, place and product. Price is the price the costumer is paying to buy the product,
there are 4 different pricing strategies. This includes, cost-plus, adds percentage of cost to the
goods, premium, where the product is priced up to make the costumer believe it is a premium
product , economy, which attracts people on a budget and competitive where stores match
prices of other stores. The place aspect of the marketing mix covers the location of the store.
Promotion is the promoting of the product, through flyers and advertising. Then finally the
actual product, this is the goods or service sold to the costumer.

Furthermore, the products sold at the store are low quality and not selling quickly. This is the
product aspect, to improve sales the shop should invest in more quality clothes, to be able to
make more sales. Costumers would be more appealed to buy something if it was of higher
quality. The manager should start selling books and CD’s as it would broaden the target
audience and bring in more costumers looking for things to buy. In addition to improving the
product, the promotion of the charity shop could significantly improve too. The charity shop is
mentioned to have badly laid out window displays; this affects the sales of the charity shop
negatively. Since people walking by do not feel attracted to the store and appealed to go
inside and have a look at the products. If the window displays were laid out more properly it
would improve the income of the charity shop. To be able to create more aesthetic window
displays, the manager should start valuing the volunteers more and give them clear
instructions. Providing clear instructions could help improve the productivity of the store,
since many volunteers are confused about what needs to be done. Improving the happiness of
the volunteers would boost the sales of the charity shop and make volunteers want to stay
longer at the store for longer than a couple of weeks. Another part of the promotion would be
hanging up flyers and promoting the store. The purpose of the store should be made clear,
which is to raise funds to provide a ‘chill out’ spot for teenagers in the hospital. Highlighting
this purpose could potentially increase sales as people would be more willing to enter the
shop and invest in the products sold, to help teenagers in the hospital.

The place of the charity store is ideal, as it is close to the hospital for which it is raising funds.
To improve the place aspect there could be a mere direct link to the distributer, this would
diminish possible costs when products are bought from a wholesaler and resold. The price of
the products sold in the store, contributes to the overall sales. The best pricing strategy for the
charity shop is cost-plus pricing. Since the charity shop is aiming to gather funds for the
hospital. Cost-plus pricing would be more fitting than pricing strategies such as premium
pricing and competitive, since the charity shop is attempting to raise funds and not compete
with other stores for costumers or make the products sold seem of high quality and superior
to other products.

Overall, all aspects of the market mix could be highly beneficial to the sales of the charity shop
and the overall happiness of the volunteers, who volunteer to help at the charity shop.