Business, Marketing

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After completing your MBA at SSU and acquiring experience in management in different companies, you decide to start your own business (as described in week 7)  that is environmentally friendly and working towards creating positive social impact.

During the first 6-months, you focus on developing a value proposal synthesizing it into a Business Plan. After this period the operations of your company formally start. The next 3-years you work very hard and you put all your time and energy toward growing your business and you are successful.  You take pride in what you have built, almost single-handedly.  Your choices to take the high road in terms of the environment have sometimes worked against you, but you feel good about the work your company does, feeling that you are “doing well while doing good.”

However, during your 4th year, you become frustrated. You’re experiencing difficulties as you cannot compete with larger companies and this is hurting your company, your employees, and your reach. In order to increase your competitiveness and to guarantee your long-term sustainability, you decide to involve other organizations and individuals to gain financial support. Obviously, this means turning over the sole control that you have had in your company.  Your investors become shareholders of your company with 75% of the shares, and they appoint you as CEO with the expectation of obtaining a level of profitability higher than 15% per year. If the company does not reach this figure, your shareholders will replace you (keeping you out of the general management of the company you started) and this will endanger its continuity.  While your shareholders have come aboard fully agreeing with the company’s mission and vision, you are aware that some feel profitability is most important and that you may be asked to sacrifice ideals for money at some point.  This is something you have not had to do prior to taking on shareholders.

As CEO of the company, your first order of business is outlining a strategic plan for the next 5-years. The approach that you need to take, to keep shareholders happy, is one that maximizes profitability. However, you firmly believe that your company should be environmentally friendly as well and promote a positive social impact. This other approach will create additional costs that put at risk the profitability required by the shareholders.  How would you/could you proactively manage this dilemma?

In 2-3 pages describe your process for creating the 5-year strategic plan, articulate the priorities of the plan and discuss how you would convince the shareholders that this is the best option. Be sure to identify the key performance goals that you would target.

SURNAME 2

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MARKETING

The business idea for this assignment will focus on the food business where I will focus on starting a bakery company. The company will begin as a small-scale business but grow with time. The bakery will specialize in edible arts where various designs of cakes will be produced to serve on special occasions that range from children’s birthdays to expensive weddings. 

The success of the bakery business will not only depend on the interest and enthusiasm I have for baking but also a good marketing strategy that is meant to target potential consumers. The products will be designed and innovated to fit the needs of consumers. Therefore, despite a website that will be colorfully designed to show consumers the product offered, the company will also provide a serving estimate of all available cakes to give consumers to estimate their budget beforehand.

The SWOT analysis framework can help to assess this company’s internal and external factors as well as current and future potential. However, for this company, swot analysis will be analyzed to develop its competitive position and to develop strategic planning. (Jyoo). Therefore, the framework will be as below; first, in terms of strength, the company’s strength lies in its unique innovative artistic work. This will attract more customers to try our cakes that will be artistically designed to meet the expectations of our different customers.

Secondly, in terms of weakness, the company’s main weakness will be the lack of capital to expand. This will reduce the company’s ability to expand and reach out to all target consumers. Thirdly, the opportunities for this business affiliate to the increasing demand for occasional cakes during the wedding ceremony, and birthday parties. Lastly, the threats to the business will be competition from other companies as well as the rising cost of wheat.

On the other hand, Ansoff’s matrix can be useful to the venture to help identify strategic risk measures by developing a growth strategy. To start with, Ansoff argues that market penetration is the least risky strategy for developing product growth. For the new bakery venture, we will consider investing in promotional activities to create awareness and brand. This strategy enables our new venture to beat our competitors. 

The second matrix of Ansoff’s matrix is product development. This strategy is associated with creating or developing a new product into an already existing market. Therefore, promotion and product come to terms making a riskier process. The process will help the new venture to identify the market of the product and create a new product that would match the needs of consumers. (Dawes). The next stage is market development strategy which involves taking the existing products into the new market. This process is riskier than the product development stage because it is difficult to meet the needs of new people. However, the stage is vital for the bakery especially in the future as the company will want to expand to new markets. The final stage is diversification which is creating new products for the new market. This is the riskiest and requires an understanding of the marketing mix in play.

Marketing mix refers to strategies and actions that a company uses to promote the product into the market. This is represented by 4ps which include, price, product, promotion, and place. Price is the value placed on the product. This new venture will use various pricing strategies to differentiate our products. Product on the other hand represents the item being sold. For our product to penetrate the market we aim to develop a delicious and safe product for consumption. The place is the point of sales and the new venture will be located in an urban center where consumers can have easy access to it. The last aspect in the marketing mix is the promotion and the new venture will use its website to attract customers.

To sum up, for our new venture which is starting a bakery, different marketing models that have been discussed above will give us more information and data that is required to promote and penetrate the market with the product. The marketing mix will enable the venture to position itself well to consumers while Ansoff’s mix will help in developing the product.

Work cited,

Jyoo, Hae-Young. “SWOT Analysis On The Competitive Strategies Of Herb Coffee”. Journal Of Convergence And Consilience, vol 2, no. 3, 2019, pp. 27-45. Korea Safety Culture Institute, doi:10.33090/ksci.2.3.3. 

Dawes, John. “The Ansoff Matrix: A Legendary Tool, But With Two Logical Problems”. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018. Elsevier BV, doi:10.2139/ssrn.3130530.