Q. Segmentation and targeting analysis. Include within this a description of the target market for the current Paris Baguette bakeries operating in Paris, as well as your recommendations for other potential segments of the population in France that Paris Baguette bakeries could consider targeting. Provide evidence to justify your recommendations.

ABSTRACT Paris Baguette, the largest bakery-cafe chain in Korea, harbors global aspirations "to become to bread what McDonald's is to hamburgers" (Willsher, 2014). Paris Baguette is owned and operated by SPC Group whose founder and chairman, Hur Young-in, believes that Paris Baguette needs to succeed in France to grow globally. Newly promoted marketing executive Park Ki-Nam is determined to accelerate Paris Baguette's expansion in France where the company has so far opened only two bakeries. To develop a marketing strategy for the brand's success in France, Ki-Nam arrives in Paris for a week of "baguette immersion," where he begins to realize the challenges of marketing their Korea-based Paris Baguette outlets, in the birthplace of the baguette, as well as further afield. BACKGROUND Owned and operated by the Korean SPC Group, Paris Baguette was founded in 1988 in Seoul and has since become the largest bakery-caf chains in Korea with over 3,300 bakery outlets. More recently it has focused on global expansion, and has introduced the brand into China, the USA, Singapore, Vietnam and, as of 2014, France. As of 2018 Paris Baguette had 400 bakeries outside the country's borders (Lee, 2018), and was experiencing such global successes that the French government had made Hur Young-in, the founder of Paris Baguette and the chairman of SPC Group, an officer in the National Order of Merit and a knight in the Order of Agricultural *This company challenge is adapted from Sage Business Case: Paris Baguette from Korea (2020) by Maria Kniazeva Merit for his contributions to French cuisine (Cheng, 2014). France was especially important to Hur Young-in since he considered France to be the "spiritual home" of all his bakery products (Cheng, 2014). However, despite Young-in's belief that that in order to grow globally Paris Baguette needed to succeed in France, it had taken a full 24 years from the first Korean store opening to the first Paris Baguette bakery opening in France. Ki-Nam joined Paris Baguette in 2004, as the brand was beginning its international expansion process with a first bakery in Shanghai. As a new graduate he was assigned to work with the team that was developing Paris Baguette's entry into the USA. Along with his colleagues Ki-Nam helped open the first store in Los Angeles in 2005, and by early 2019 they had opened 77 more bakeries in the USA. Riding high on this success Ki-Nam earned a promotion and was charged with heading the division in charge of French operations for the brand. Determined to craft a successful marketing strategy, the new executive had excitedly left for Paris to immerse himself for a week in the French baguette business. Ki-Nam loved his job, and he found great pleasure in food. That pleasure was rooted in his childhood when his favorite meal was just a bowl of rice served to him after school. His memories of the thick, fragrant, and enveloping scent of steamed rice that seemed to fill his entire neighborhood and emanated from all the homes and street carts lining his way home were still strong. However for most of the last week he had spent his days sampling bread from the 1200 bakeries believed to be serving baguettes in Paris. Looking down he saw before him yet another sample. The baguette was between 55 and 70 cm long, 5-6 cm wide, 3-4 cm high, and weighed between 250 and 300 g. Ki-Nam knew these numbers by heart because this is how the traditional baguette (a baguette de tradition) is regulated in France by a 1993 government "bread decree." The decree established three conditions for a traditional baguette: it must be free of additives, naturally fermented, and never frozen. Only four ingredientswater, yeast, flour, and saltcan be used, and baguettes need to be made on site from fresh dough if the bakery wanted to be called a boulangerie. Today, these "traditional baguettes" make up about half of the baguettes sold in large French cities (Monaco, 2019). To become a boulanger, one needs to train for two years, though some French bakers claim that it takes at least 10 years to master the baguette-making craft. He learned that baguette literally means "stick" or "wand" and it is the most famous loaf in the bread-eating culture of France that goes back to the 1700s when bread provided almost all the daily calories. In one version of the bread's origin, it was Napoleon who invented the elongated shape to fit into a back pocket in his troops' uniform; in another version, the shape of the thin stick was a solution to bloody fights that broke out during the digging of the Paris metro *This company challenge is adapted from Sage Business Case: Paris Baguette from Korea (2020) by Maria Kniazeva between construction workers who always had their knives handy to slice lunch loaves. Hypothetically, the foremen asked nearby boulangeries to come up with a bread shape that didn't need cutting (Steavenson, 2019). Whatever the truth is, baguette seemed to connect with the history of a nation that also knew the "Flour War," prompted by a bread shortage in 1775, and even had a religious patron for bakers, named Saint Honore. In 1920, the baguette was "officially christened" in Paris (Druckerman, 2019), and up until the 1990s, bread was a protected staple food in France with prices controlled by the government. Ki-Nam was a little disappointed that he hadn't managed to time his business trip with either a national bread festival or one of the many breadmaking contests in Paris. In 2020 he should definitely come for the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, which is like the World Cup of baking and is held in Paris every four years. The last prize in 2016, by the way, went to the team from Korea (Russell, 2019). The annual Meilleure Baguette competition held each April had been running for 25 years. This is where the baguettes are judged using five criteria: appearance, baking, texture, smell, and taste. The winning chef receives a EUR 4,000 prize and the honor of supplying baguettes to the lyse Palace for a year; 10 finalists are permitted to emboss a gold laurel on their shop window, emblazoned with the year of the award and their ranking. THE OPPORTUNITY With its arrival in France the brand's stated intention was "to become to bread what McDonald's is to hamburgers" (Willsher, 2014). Ki-Nam's premier task was to "infiltrate" the birthplace of the baguette with his company's Paris Baguette outlets. The first Paris Baguette bakery had opened a few years before in 2014 in the Chatelet district of Paris, not far from the Louvre and Notre Dame cathedral. A year after, the bakery was joined by a second Parisian branch, which also boasted a prominent location, near the Opera subway station. Work was currently under way for a third Paris Baguette in Francethis time on the rocky island of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy - a spectacular location on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. Further adding to this, the company was also hoping to break new ground, by opening a bread factory in Normandy. Once completed, the expectation was for the bread factory to supply frozen dough to all the current and prospective European, U.S., Middle Eastern, and African markets of Paris Baguette. THE CHALLENGE When Ki-Nam arrived in Paris the, he started his "baguette immersion" by visiting his company's first Paris outlet, located in a central arrondissement near the Seine. Outside, there were chocolate-brown awnings, dark wicker chairs, and small round tables. The window *This company challenge is adapted from Sage Business Case: Paris Baguette from Korea (2020) by Maria Kniazeva displays were decorated with dry sheaves of wheat, woven baskets, wooden kitchen utensils, dessert containers with glass dome-shaped lids, bright silk flowers, and colored eggs scattered on what appeared to be green imitation grass. A big pink heart drawn on one window enveloped the words "Bonne Fete" with "artisan ptissier" in a smaller font above and "boulangerie" in a larger font. The brand's logo, Ki-Nam noticed, looked slightly different; while "Paris Baguette" and "boulangerie" framed the outer side of the circle, the usual image of the Eiffel Tower was absent, leaving a lonely "PB" inside the round logo. The logo itself appeared small and even hard to notice compared with the large and bold "boulangerie" signs on the corner facades of the building. Inside, there were at least seven choices of baguette, eight of round and brick-shape loaves of bread, and lots of trays that offered "oranais," "petit pain au fromage," "ficelle olives ou chorizo ou lardons," "baton aux fruits," "mini viennoiserie," "brioche," and "chausson aux pommes." On display, among sandwiches, there were also "hot dog," "pizza mozzarella," and "tarte fine aux lgumes." The separate refrigerated section invited customers, in English, to "Grab and Go" and "Help Yourself," and the menu on the wall had English translations. Behind the counter, a young man with short dark hair was dressed in a white shirt. Back home in Korea, and in the United States, Ki-Nam noted, the staff wore stripy Breton T-shirts and berets. Ki-Nam was aware that all staff were hired in France, that the chefs were local, and that the ingredients and bakery methods in use were traditionally French. It couldn't be otherwise because Paris Baguette had joined the local trade group Chambre Professionnelle des Artisans Boulangers-Patissiers, which requires all of its members to adhere to traditional baking standards. He also knew all the logistics that preceded the opening of the first outlet in Paris in 2014: it took six years to find a suitable location and meet all the regulatory city requirements, and then two more years to obtain approvals from local residents for everything, including the colors of the signboards. Ki-Nam expected to tackle similar logistical issues with the franchise's further expansion in France. However, this week in Paris had taken his thoughts in an unexpected direction. Looking at the shrinking row of bread sticks behind the bakery counter (the bakery was closing in 10 minutes), Ki-Nam suddenly felt the "weight" of his company's brand name. There was so much French culture and French heritage in the words "Paris Baguette" that it made him feel confused. Here he was, in a city that was a number one destination on the wish list of millions of travelers who lived with and worked for the dream of seeing the "City of Love" and "City of Lights." In 2018 alone, 30 million foreign visitors travelled to Paris, more than to any other city in the world, making France once again the most visited country on earth (The Local, 2019). *This company challenge is adapted from Sage Business Case: Paris Baguette from Korea (2020) by Maria Kniazeva Wasn't Paris a brand in itself? Was the baguette as well? According to the latest statistics, the French eat between 8 and 10 billion baguettes a year, and there is roughly one boulangerie for every 2,000 residents in the country (Druckerman, 2019). Thirty-three thousand independent bakeries in France employ 180,000 people, and baguettes make up 80% of all bread sold (Steavenson, 2019). Even toasters come with a metal baguette extension in France. In addition, the country has a scientific "Bread Observatory"the Observatoire du Pain (Monaco, 2019). No wonder, then, that the French have been lobbying for the traditional baguette to be officially recognized by UNESCO as part of its cultural heritage. "Just like we, Koreans, were fighting for the recognition of our kimchi until our preserved cabbage received the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity status in 2011," thought Ki-Nam. He recalled those special late fall days when, it seemed, his entire nation would stock up on spices and fermented seafood, shred veggies, prepare marinade, and ensure that every household would have enough home-made pungent and fiery kimchi until the new season came. He now realized how possessive Korea had been of kimchi in light of the fact that China had become the world's leader in its production (Hill, 2018). When Chinese-owned shops in Seoul began to sell kimchi at half the cost of their domestic brands, local farmers demanded higher tariffs (Gannon & Pillai, 2016). Don't Koreans own kimchi? But who owns the baguette? And shouldn't Ki-Nam then relate to those French bakers who can be heard claiming in the media, "We have to protect our product" (Willsher, 2014)? Ki-Nam was aware how threatened the French boulangers felt in 2011 when an entrepreneur in Paris introduced the baguette vending machine, filling it with semi-cooked sticks that would be fully baked when ordered; how they scorn the ordinary, mass-produced baguettes sold in supermarkets that do not meet the industry standards for the traditional baguette. Do these artisanal bakers know that Paris Baguette outlets outside Paris call themselves "a traditional French bakery" and that much of the dough and bread for Paris Baguette bakeries is made in South Korea, is frozen, and then dispatched around the globe? Do they care that outside France the Korean company's logo features the Eiffel Tower and its employees wear Breton stripes and berets, as if to strengthen "Frenchness?" Difficult questions seemed to attack Ki-Nam. Do the French boulangers seek protection from his baguettes as well? Are these baguettes "not French enough?" Is there room in a nation eating 10 billion baguettes a year for Paris Baguettes from Korea? Can Paris Baguette serve as the face of French-style baking around the world? And does Ki-Nam's Korean company add to the global fame of the French baguette or detract from the nation's sacred heritage? *This company challenge is adapted from Sage Business Case: Paris Baguette from Korea (2020) by Maria Kniazeva Ki-Nam's report was due in two days, and he was already scheduled to meet the chairman, Hur Young-in, upon his return in Seoul. Ki-Nam collected the bag with his unfinished "dinner" and slowly took off in the direction of the hotel. A sleepless night was waiting for him for sure; there could not be blank pages in his report to the chairman, Hur Young-in, by morning.