Week 4 - Part A - Defining Target Markets

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Branding and target marketing go hand-in-hand. When you know who you are marketing to, you can make better decisions on how you brand your company's products or service. Some companies have an obvious target market. For example if you're selling wheelchairs and walkers, you will be looking at injured or disabled people. Any market can be further defined by demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioral segmentation.

For this assignment we are looking at two nurseries, Armstrong Nursery Centers and Rancho Vista Nursery. Both sell beautiful plants. How are they alike? How do they differ? Read along and find out.

Armstrong Gardens Centers

Armstrong Gardens Centers has a long history in California. Originally known for roses, and eucalyptus, fruit and ornamental trees, Armstrong grew to a chain of 31 stores in California. In addition they merged with Pike Garden Centers in North Carolina and Georgia. Pike has 16 locations. After the merger they are the largest retail garden center in America with $120 million in sales (2011) Armstrong Garden Centers are retail stores selling indoor and outdoor plants, garden decor, succulents, trees and shrubs and more. They also offer landscape design, installation, and service. In addition they have classes and events and gardening advice. You can order online and have it delivered or pickup curbside.

Armstrong's website is professional and easy to navigate. Their branding is of a friendly next-door nursery eager to help you beautify your yard and garden. They have easy to read green fonts, reflecting their green plants. Beautiful plants and landscapes lure you in. You too can have an oasis in your backyard! Friendly, smiling employees appear in photos with messages asking you to ask for advice, shop online, and find a location near you. Their call-to-action buttons are obvious but unobtrusive. You feel like you are in good hands, and perhaps it's worth it to pay the higher prices to get taken care of.

Armstrong is a retail garden center vs a wholesale nursery. They target people who are homeowners (not contractors) in areas in close geographical proximity to their individual locations. Since they spend so much effort on classes, advice, and events, they are catering to the average consumer who may not know much about plants and are looking for the right ones to spruce up their yards. They target two types of people: The first would be people doing small scale projects where they will do the planting themselves. They may be hobbyists or just replacing holes in the vegetation. The second would be people who are mid to upper earners who can afford to have a whole landscape designed, plants delivered, and professionally installed. The very wealthy are not their target because they have probably hired a landscape architect and landscaping company that will take on the whole project. That last subset of people would be buying at a wholesale nursery. 

Rancho Vista Nursery

With its weathered wood background and rustic title font, Rancho Vista lets you know they are a local, hometown grower. The site is simple with only three pages, the home page, the farmstand page, and the FAQ page. The Farmstand is the section for retail purchases however it is closed due to COVID-19. The website still has their Christmas greeting up, so you get the feeling they may not have checked in for a while. Their only call to action is: "Let's grow something together!"

When diving in a bit you notice the following: "We're not just growers but curators of one of the largest collections of succulent plants in the world." They also have these branding words: "Rare, Exotic and beautiful. Who can resist succulent plants?" Those words excite the emotions. "Rare?" Yes, please! "Exotic!" Absolutely! By branding the succulents as rare, they can now create urgency and increased value in the purchaser's mind. Rancho Vista has carved out a niche in the category of very popular drought-tolerant succulents that are now all the rage.

The average consumer must go to a retail store to get their succulents because Rancho Vista is now closed to the public and open to only wholesale customers. Their main market is to resellers and contractors, and those contractors probably specialize in drought tolerant landscaping. Resellers could be anywhere succulents thrive, so they are quite possibly reaching all arid, or semi-arid areas of the country.

Outside of the pandemic, they seem warm and friendly and excited to share their niche with you. They invite you to their Insider Tours and to stop by the nursery and meet Gillian and Kayli. When their staff are mentioned by name, you get the feeling of a warm family farm with the backdoor unlocked so you can come on in and have tea and cookies. But with the pandemic, the doors are locked and you have to call ahead and knock.   

In conclusion, there is little crossover between the two types of nurseries. They both sell plants but their target market is very different. One is currently strictly wholesale and the other retail. One is general landscaping plants with great advice and customer service. The other is drought-tolerant succulents to the wholesale buyers who already know their products. It's quite possible that Armstrong gets their succulents from Rancho Vista for resale. They both want to share their love of plants with you though.