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please mark my answer to a nine marker for gcse business Edexcel paper 1

from a specimen paper
pls do keep in mind I am a grade 9 business edexcel student, get 9s in tests and predicted 9s but just wanna see what this would get out of 9:

case study
Zoe Sugg, known to her fans as Zoella, is an entrepreneur and a star of YouTube. She has enjoyed success with her fashion and lifestyle vlog (video log) and has become a celebrity as well as an entrepreneur. After starting her lifestyle blog, 'Zoella, in 2009, she soon had thousands of followers. Zoe extended the blog to a YouTube channel and by 2015 had 75 million subscribers. In September 2014 Zoe launched her own brand bath and beauty range, called Zoella Reauty. The brand logo is shown in Figure 2. Zoella Beauty products are stocked by maior retailers, including Superdrug and Boots. The business also uses e-commerce to sell its product range. In 2014 Zoella Beauty earned revenue of £400 000. However, the competitive environment for beauty products aimed at younger females is becoming more crowded. Rivals include retailers such as Lush.

question: Zoella Beauty is considering two options to develop the marketing mix of its beauty product line:
Option 1: Increase promotion of the brand.
Option 2: Reduce prices to compete with rival products.
(c) Justify which one of these two options Zoella Beauty should choose. (9 MARKER)

My answer:

I believe Zoella Beauty should choose option 2 to develop the marketing mix of its beauty product line. This is because it would attract more customers to buy Zoella Beauty’s bath and beauty products. The case study mentions “the competitive environment aimed at young females” and this means Zoella Beauty’s target market may be young females which may not have sufficient levels of disposable income. In addition, by reducing prices to compete with rival products Zoella Beauty could attract more young females to her brand which would then mean Zoella Beauty could gain more sales and revenue. Additionally, lowering prices would allow Zoella Beauty to successfully compete with competitors such as Lush. This is because customers are always looking for the best deal and do not want to pay more one product when they get the same/ similar product for a cheaper price.

However, one drawback of choosing option 2 (reduce prices to compete with rival products) is that it would change customer perception of the brand. This is because some customers may view products with reduced prices to be bad quality. This means less customers may be attracted to buy Zoella Beauty’s bath and beauty products because they may think that if the products are on the low scale of pricing they may have problems with them. Therefore, customers may buy from competitors such as Lush - who may charge more for their products (some customers may value quality over price). Contrastingly, another drawback of choosing option 2 is that it may ruin Zoella Beauty’s brand image of an influencer brand (the case study mentions “Zoe Sugg started her lifeatyle blog Zoella in 2009 and Zoe extended her blog to a Youtube Channel and by 2015 had 7.5 million subscribers”). This is because some repeat customers in the target market may actually stop purchasing from Zoella because they may believe the quality has changed since the prices have decreased. Also, having millions of followers and a youtube channel is Zoe Sugg’s and Zoella Beauty USP and some customers may actually have been willing to pay higher prices because it is an influencer brand. In addition, reducing prices also mean lower profit margins and less revenue and this could mean Zoella Beauty may not be able to pay for fixed and variable costs and this could mean the business may shut down. Also, reduced prices may actually not actually be a customer need of her target market it may be quality.

In conclusion, I believe Zoella Beauty should choose option 2 (to reduce prices to compete with rival products) because it may attract more of Zoella beauty’s target market of young females to buy the brand’s bath and beauty range. In additon, it could be used as a competitive advantage and may also be a way of generating repeat purchase. However, option 2 may not be the best option because it would mean lower profit margins and less revenue which would then mean Zoella Beauty may not be able to pay for costs. In addition, some customers may view cheaper products to be of low quality. I suggest Zoella Beauty to carry out primary market research to find what customers want because some customers may actually want products of better quality. Also, I also suggest Zoella Beauty could also offer discount codes or bundles instead of reducing prices - this is because the prices would not be reduced in a way and it also enables customers to try the brand’s full bath and beauty range and this can generate repeat purchase.