A major increase in sales between 2000 and 2006 has made Hotel Chocolat’s competitors eager to find the key to the company’s success, leaving the founders to face the challenge of how to protect the business from plagiarism. Trademarking its name and all its products, although a widely-used defence mechanism, is not a satisfying solution here; with 30% of its products replaced by another annually in order to meet the demands of its customers and continuous product range expansions, it would become a burden, adding administrative costs and bureaucracy. Now a luxury provider, the company started in 1980s supplying mints, before moving to chocolate and, finally, rebranding in 2003 as Hotel Chocolat. With own cocoa plantation, 11 retail shops in popular tourist locations, a call centre and an online store, Hotel Chocolat is now reaching customers in the UK, USA and in Europe, with aspirations to become one of the world’s top chocolate brands. Despite these developments, Hotel Chocolat is not interested in offering department store concessions or own-label goods and wants to keep the number of its high street shops to the minimum in order to retain its premium brand image and uniqueness as well as keeping full control over staff training and storing conditions of its products.
Internal Analysis & Vertical Integration J.M. Smucker was a leading company of manufacturing jams, jellies, and preserves in the early 21 century. It did not realize its weaknesses when the company started to feel the threat by other food industry giants. After anatomized the austere market situation, Smucker found out it was hard to compete with those giant retailers, because they had already started their acquisition early and already had much larger products diversities than Smucker’s. Therefore, the company determined its core developing strategy to retrieve its market position.
Diagnosis C&S wholesale grocers grew from a small company in 1918, to a multimillion dollar business through innovation and attention to customer service. Through this strategy they acquired large supermarket accounts, such as Big D and then later A&P. However the new accounts, put a lot of pressure on the business structure, and made Rick Cohen, the CEO, asses this business structure. Rick Cohen faced a dilemma of whether or not to restructure the company and adopt a new model of self managed teams. Cohen was also faced with the decision to adopt the model now with the holiday season approaching the busiest time for C&S or to wait after the holidays.
Decision To Be Made Foxy needs to decide on improving its distribution and pricing strategy. Should they continue selling at festivals and retailers at different prices or focus on a single distribution method and pricing strategy? Situation Analysis Overview of Background Foxy is a jewellery manufacturer selling exclusive hand-made necklaces at weekend festivals and to retailers located in southern Ontario. They offer two product lines: the Foxy Floating Necklace and the Berlin Bead Necklace. By the end of 1999, many retailers were getting upset that Foxy was selling at weekend festivals because the same product lines available in stores were being sold at low-end festivals could damage the retailers store’s image.
STAKEHOLDERS For this assignment I will identify and explain the external factors that affect two contrasting businesses which are McDonalds and NHS. TASK 1 - POLICITCAL FACTORS Political Political factors are the changes that take within the government and that’s how it affects businesses. The stability of the government can hugely affect businesses or what type of government is ruling, their ideas such dictatorship, capitalism and others. The economic and trade policy makes it difficult for businesses. Credit crunch and recession are great examples of external factors influencing the business.
The weakness of Kudler Fine Foods is that an IPO (Initial Public Offering) has many inherent and potential weaknesses that must be examined prior to selection as a means for expansion. An IPO is the first sale of stock by a company. There are many advantages and disadvantages for the Kudler Fine Foods to go public through the IPO. The advantages include generating more capital needed to expand their three locations The IPOs are very expensive undertaking, and a large portion of any capital acquired will be lost to this cost. Because the company must produce all financial information to the SEC many businesses find it to be very stressful and time consuming which takes time and money away from a company that is thriving like Kudler Fine Foods.
Marketing Kudler Fine Foods Nanette Chambers MKT/421 July 8, 2013 Marketing Kudler Fine Foods In the current retail food industry there are numerous competitors struggling for the same dollar. It is vital for each business to recognize their target market, recognize their competitors and then put together their marketing plan. The information below will detail Kudler Fine Foods marketing strategies which consist of increasing its services, improving its effectiveness of the business and increase consumer purchase cycle. This paper will also talk about areas where Kudler Fine Foods needs to expand their market research. Kudler fine food is a store that markets fine foods and needs to bring about increasing their goods to the
Threats encumber an organization from realizing its objectives. The main risk facing Bolthouse Farm is the fierce competition from other local juice stores. With the increasing advent of bars, people prefer these smoothies, which are customized according to their preference. The impact poses a significant threat to Bolthouse farms since their smoothies are standardized. In 2011, bars/cafes grew by 4% in terms of current value to reach sales of 4.7 billion dollars of which 15% is revenue from smoothies sold in Canada bars.
Defend your strategy to successfully compete against market leaders in your segment. Hints: For example, in the soft drink market, it is intimidating to try to compete against Coke and Pepsi. Newcomers in mature markets typically must pursue niche markets or even create new market categories, as Red Bull did with energy drinks. c. Defend your plan to differentiate yourself from the competition using the information detailed on the worksheet in the text (p. 131 | Market Share Distribution). Hints: Every business faces competition and the non-alcoholic beverage market is an especially crowded market.
The steady rise of obesity rates in the United States is most definitely something Americans should be concerned with. This modern epidemic is causing people young and old to fear what they consume. Who to blame for this epidemic is still undecided. The many fast food chains spending billions of dollars in advertising yearly is certainly a problem, but they are not fully to blame either. So who is at fault?