An investigation into the marketing strategies of micro café, coffee shop and tearoom enterprises in the Cardiff and Rhondda Cynon Taff areas

Abstract

Visiting independent coffee shops, cafes and tea houses has become a popular social experience for people within the UK. This trend is continuing to expand and in turn so are the numbers of these venues. The marketing strategies and activities of these businesses have yet to be researched in detail. The aim of this project is, using the SWOT model, to investigate the current marketing strategies and activities being undertaken by micro café, coffee shop and tea house enterprises in Cardiff and RCT areas to formulate recommendations of best practice. The researcher will identify best practice of their current marketing activities via semi-structured interviews, and from this research, formulate valid recommendations. The research was gathered through semi-structured interviews with 9 micro enterprise café, coffee shop or tea houses within the RCT and Cardiff areas to enable the researcher to gather rich detail to be analyzed and from this generate valid recommendations. The key findings from this research are that the industry is highly competitive and so micro enterprises should take time to plan and implement their marketing activities to gain competitive advantage.