Weight Watcher's Marketing Strategy

As learned in the first chapter of our textbook, marketing stresses a need to deliver real value in the offerings of goods, services, and even ideas to customers (Kerin & Hartley, 2018). Serving buyers and sellers, marketing departments must be prepared to be shaped by, as well as shape their relationship with both internal and external groups. This causes a need to be strategic in how needs are discovered (from both the buyers and sellers) and how to satisfy those needs.
Strategy itself is a basic marketing concept. Marketing strategies help organizations focus and direct their efforts in business. Kerin and Hartley cover the definition of strategy in the second chapter of the book as being an organization’s long-term, course of action designed to deliver a unique customer experience while achieving the company’s goals (2018). One such example of strategy is in early 2018 when Weight Watcher’s International (WWI) announced their strategic goals, which included strengthening the WWI reputation, better defining and growing their impact, and expanding the business (“Weight Watchers Announces Strategic Vision,” 2018).

Thankfully, this broader wellness business view for WWI is unlike the example of Professor Theodore Levitt in the book, which shared the disastrous effects of not recognizing that 20th-century American railroads were actually in the transportation business, not just the railroad business. WWI target consumers would need to realize a brand perception shift from viewing WWI as just a diet company, to perceiving it as the wellness company that promotes healthier, more active