Assessment and Feedback:

Student ID Number(s): 2279192 Rui Kang

Programme: MSc International Business
Module: International Marketing
Name of Tutor: Dr Alun Epps
Assignment Title:
Critical discuss how institutions can influence and determine
Multinational Enterprises’ choices of international operations and their
locations.

Date and Time of Submission: 16h Dec 2021

Actual Word Count: 1124
Extension: Y
I do wish my assignment to be considered for including as an exemplar
in the School Bank of Assessed Work.

By submitting your work online you are confirming that your work is your
own and that you understand and have read the University’s rules
regarding plagiarism and the consequences that will arise should you
submit plagiarized work.
The Marketing Mix of Talabat

Introduction

Talabat is an online food ordering service company started in 2004

in Kuwait. Decades later, it has become the market leader in the

Middle East, expanding its business territories to 7 countries such

as UAE, Qatar, Jordan, with more than 3 million users on the app,

serve more than 50,000 partners, counted more than 200 million

app downloads, and home to more than 200 engineers. It is a

platform for customers to pick their favorite food from an abundance

of choices just at their fingertips, for restaurants to reduce their costs

of operation and generate more sales, for delivery drivers to find

more flexible jobs. Talabat also is the most user-friendly with the

fastest delivery (Locke, 2014).

The Covid-19 pandemic has further changed people’s daily lives.

They are more likely to order food and grocery delivery to their

homes instead of going shopping; Talabat also seized the

opportunity and expanded its business to grocery, pharmacy, florists,

and all sorts of life services.

However, there are many challenges that Talabat has to face. In this

essay, we will evaluate Talabat’s marketing strategies using the 4Ps

marketing mix, I aim to explore how well Talabat has done so far

and how it can improve in the future.

Product/Service

Talabat is an online food delivery service platform that is beneficial

to both customers and restaurants and delivery drivers, especially

when it comes to information accessibility and accuracy.

Its app offers customers higher accessibility of information about

restaurants. Customers rely on the platform for restaurant’s

customer review before choosing and ordering their desired food at

their fingertips (Kang and Namkung, 2019). Lee, Sung, and Jeon,

(2019) also showed that the perceived quality of information plays a

key role when the customers decide to use an online food ordering

app. Customers will only use it when they think it is more valuable

than ordering via phone.

As for the restaurants can get orders more easily by reaching more

potential customers and saving money on marketing by using a

third-party delivery system. With the help of Talabat, the restaurants

do not have to hire their own delivery team nor design their own

delivery apps at its own costs. Studies have shown that the

increased revenue of restaurants after partnering with an online

ordering platform could be 3-35% in Los Angeles (Cho, Bonn, and

Li, 2019).

What is more, in order to expand Talabat’s market presence, to

make it easily recognizable, the company has changed its logo and

brand image from a hybrid of Arabic and English spelling to pure

English spelling when acquired by German e-commerce company

Rocket Internet (Kadhem, 2018). The rebranding made Talabat

more of a global rather than a regional brand. Being part of a global

giant, but being also GCC grown, gave Talabat the unique position

to balance local experiences and global learning. For

example ,when it entered Egyptian market, it chose to rebrand the

local brand Otlob, which is the first food order platform of Egypt.

Price

Price is an essential factor to consider when the company is

implementing its marketing strategies. According to Ahn and Kwon

(2021), among various factors that affect the customer-brand

relationship, the economic exchange has a positive effect on brand

equity. In other words, customers are more satisfied when they

receive good services at reasonably low costs.

Talabat generates its income by taking 15-25% commissions on

orders placed through their platform, but if the restaurants are

exclusively on Talabat, the commission will be reduced to 5-10%.

This strategy increases the number of restaurants available to

customers and reduces the level of competition from other platforms.

Talabat does not have minimum charges, but the charge will

decrease when the size of the order increases. This strategy will

increase the average order size. They also team up with different

restaurants to provide special discounts to their customers. Getting

revenues mostly from the restaurants, not from the customers, could

give customers the impression that they are better off using the

services than ordering it offline.

Place

Customers can order food and grocery easily from Talabat’s website,

mobile apps for both iOS and Android systems, as well as track their

orders and make payments online.

Talabat has been working closely with Huawei to operate its app

smoothly in Huawei’s devices to increase user experience

(EgyptToday, 2021).

Talabat also opened its own cloud kitchen in Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa

City, UAE in 2020, then quickly expanded to seven kitchens (The

Sustainabilist.ae, 2020). It will help restaurants to reduce the cost

of operations, as well as the time it takes to complete orders, which

in turn will lead to more orders and more revenues for the

restaurants. This move shows Talabat’s ambitions to create more

opportunities to serve restaurants and to expand its business.

Talabat’s confidence in the GCC region is obvious. The urbanization

rate in the greater GCC exceeds 87%. (Middle East - EN, 2021)

Promotion (250)

Talabat uses direct promotion barter, search engines, and business

tie-ups to attract new customers. For example, Talabat is the official

food delivery sponsor for Dubai’s Expo 2020; with Expo’s global

influences, Talabat is sure to make a presence among visitors.

Talabat also uses social media channels to promote its services. It

used Apple search to increase app visibility within the GCC region;

app in Arabic also improved attractiveness to Talabat’s target

audience (Apple Search Ads, n.d.). According to SocialPeta monitor,

Talabat’s network impressions are placed most at Instagram and

Facebook; the proportions are 29.99% and 29.95%, respectively.

(socialpeta.com, n.d.)

All of these above strategies are used to build a more trustworthy

brand imagine, but Talabat did not stop there.

To make its customers more loyal to Talabat, it has teamed up with

Booking.com; customers can get 8% cashback on their Talabat

wallet from their hotel booking. This is the first partnership initiative

to promote Talabat’s regional lifestyle benefits to their

customers(Gulfnews.com, n.d.). Customers may feel more bonded

to the loyalty program.

As showed in a research by Pan and Ha( 2021), customers are

more sensitive to price discounts than free delivery, it suggests that

Talabat could implement more discounts on price to attract new

customers.

Conclusion (150)

Talabat is not the only online food ordering platform that emerged

during the pandemic; it faces fierce competition in both local markets

and global markets.

To have more competitive advantages, Talabat should attract new

customers, at the mean time to maintain existing customers. By

working closely with partnered restaurants and delivery teams,

Talabat can make contributions to the local communities so as to

provide more cost-efficient services and build tighter bonds with its

customers. Talabat could also increase the accuracy of its review

scores on restaurants, it will provide customers more accurate

information to choose restaurants.

Reference list
Ahn, J. and Kwon, J. (2021). Examining the relative influence of multidimensional
customer service relationships in the food delivery application context. International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 33(3), pp.912–928.

Apple Search Ads. (n.d.). Talabat - Success Stories. [online] Available at:
https://searchads.apple.com/success-stories/talabat [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].

Cho, M., Bonn, M.A. and Li, J. (Justin) (2019). Differences in perceptions about food
delivery apps between single-person and multi-person households. International
Journal of Hospitality Management, 77, pp.108–116.

EgyptToday. (2021). How Huawei’s AppGallery and talabat have joined forces to
enhance user’s experience and unlock business opportunities. [online] Available at:
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/3/107871/How-Huawei [Accessed 16 Dec.
2021].

gulfnews.com. (n.d.). talabat announces new strategic partnership with Booking.com

to give customers 8 per cent cashback on bookings. [online] Available at:
https://gulfnews.com/business/corporate-news/talabat-announces-new-strategic-
partnership-with-bookingcom-to-give-customers-8-per-cent-cashback-on-bookings-
1.1602575985596 [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].

Kadhem, M. (2018). Disrupting An Industry In Five Steps - The Talabat Way. [online]
StartUp Bahrain. Available at: https://www.startupbahrain.com/features/disrupting-
an-industry-in-five-steps-the-talabat-way/.

Kang, J.-W. and Namkung, Y. (2019). The role of personalization on continuance

intention in food service mobile apps. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, 31(2), pp.734–752.

Lee, S.W., Sung, H.J. and Jeon, H.M. (2019). Determinants of Continuous Intention
on Food Delivery Apps: Extending UTAUT2 with Information
Quality. Sustainability, [online] 11(11), p.3141. Available at:
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3141/htm.

Li, L. and Wang, D. (2022). Do neighborhood food environments matter for eating
through online-to-offline food delivery services? Applied Geography, 138, p.102620.
Middle East - EN. (2021). Interview with Onur Elgun, VP Strategy, Talabat. [online]
Available at: https://www.bcg.com/en-mideast/publications/2021/interview-with-
onur-elgun-talabat [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].

Pan, H. and Ha, H.-Y. (2021). The moderating role of mobile promotion during
current and subsequent purchasing occasions: the case of restaurant delivery
services. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, ahead-of-
print(ahead-of-print).

socialpeta.com. (n.d.). talabat: Food & Grocery Delivery Competitive Intelligence｜

Ad Analysis by SocialPeta. [online] Available at: https://socialpeta.com/competitive-
intelligence/talabat-food-delivery.

thesustainabilist.ae. (2020). talabat launches its first Cloud Kitchen in UAE |

TheSustainabilist. [online] Available at: https://thesustainabilist.ae/talabat-launches-
its-first-cloud-kitchen-in-uae/ [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].