Activity 2.4: Research

Visit the website of a similar type of company to your chosen company. Read through the mission statements, press releases and look at existing communication media produced. Include a bibliography in MLA style.

Website: http://www.gnc.com/ 

• What does the company do (What is the mandate/mission)?
• GNC provides products that provides people with health and nutrition products such as vitamins/supplements, protein, creatine, energy drinks, etc. and other stuff to contribute to health and nutrition.
• How does the company operate? What methods does the company use 
• Operates through company-owned retail stores, domestic and international franchise activities, third party contract manufacturing, e-commerce and corporate partnerships.
• Where is the company primarily based?
• GNC is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based American commercial enterprise
• Where and on what scale do they operate? (Globally, North America etc...)
• They are a franchise, so they operate on an international level with a total of 8,800 stores worldwide 
•  What are the current fundraising and communications strategies?
• There's no current insight on GNC having fundraisers, but GNC's communication strategies involve a wide range of social networks that they use to communicate to the public, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, RSS Feed, Instagram, and Pinterest.
•  How effective is the company at disseminating its core message to the public?
• The company is pretty effective at disseminating its core message to the public, their official slogan is "Live Well", which can be thought as a business that provides any kind of product that let's you live well, like Diet/Nutrition supplements, workout equipment, etc.
• 
  
• How could communication to the public be improved?
• I think so far there is nothing to be improved, all communications with the public are all pretty good, they have fully available customer service and also a Live Chat with one of their own agents if there is any issues or questions. 
• As said before, they use a wide range of social networks to communicate in every way possible, they post videos on YouTube, post Images on Instagram and Pinterest, or they can do all of that on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
• What demographic does the company target? What demographic will you target?
• "GNC targets a lifestyle demographic of consumers who are athletic, aspire to live a healthier lifestyle and are goal-oriented. GNC consumers engage in fitness routines more than the average US supplement buyer and tend to use multiple products. The distribution is skewed toward a younger demographic, with 35% of customers under the age of 35 and 80% under the age of 50."

• I would target a demographic of people that would either be young adults or the elderly. This is because my product is designed and is supposed to function differently for both the young and the elderly. I would also target this more to the wealthy people, as wealthy people are more subjectable to buying this as poor people tend to be less concerned about anti-aging and all those other fancy things. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

•  "GNC (store)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.
• "GNC Holdings Inc." 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://uoinvestmentgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/GNC.pdf>.
• "Shop - GNC." GNC. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.gnc.com/>.