Introduction
As international markets are emerging, new prospects are opening up for business organizations to grow within foreign landscapes. However, it is imperative for businesses to acquire thorough operational knowledge regarding the accessibility and feasibility of their business in international market while embarking upon the decision of expansion. This paper considers the business prospects of ‘The Organic Coup’ to enter into Middle Eastern Market initially by commencing its operations in Kuwait. ‘The Organic Coup’ has optimistic opportunities in the food industry of Kuwait as the organic food industry of Kuwait is highly flourishing and attractive in relation to profitability and business stability. This paper renders the synopsis of ‘The Organic Coup’ as a brand, its domestic and foreign competition, STP, related environmental facts, foreign market trends, the product mix of ‘The Organic Coup' in Kuwait, and its related ethical considerations.
The Organic Coup & Its Four Utilities of Customer Value
The Organic Coup is the first USDA certified organic fast food restaurant in the United States of America. The brand has been recently launched by a former Costco Executive, Erica Welton who served the business for 14 years. The Organic Coup is casual style eatery that serves in a counter-serve cafe. The brand currently offers a limited but engrossed menu that incorporates certified organic chicken recipes, salads, and desserts. The Organic Coup targets to address the organic eating needs of health conscious customers and below mentioned are the four utilities of customer value that it aims to offer to its highly valuable customers (The Organic Coup, 2016).
Form
The Organic Coup products would be completely cooked, ready to eat and delectable organic food servings. This would offer the customers nutritious and healthier consumption of food items that they like to add in their daily lives as a substitute to other unhealthy market offerings. The Organic Coup would offer high product value to its customer at relatively lower cost (Hollensen & Opresnik, 2015).
Place
The offerings of The Organic Coup would be easily accessible to the potential customers and can be easily purchased from the customized food outlets at all the prime locations of Kuwait. The locations will be chosen after considering the ease of access and convenience of the target audience.
Time
While considering the time utility, the products will be timely available to the customers. A potential customer would be encouraged to buy their customized sandwiches and wraps anytime from their nearest outlet of ‘The Organic Coup’.
Possession
Talking about the possession, having healthy organic offerings from ‘The Organic Coup’ would drive the consumers to satisfy their hunger with a product that is not only lip-smacking and scrumptious but also prepared from the finest organic ingredients, which offers the highest value for their health. In other words, ‘The Organic Coup’ will offer many health benefits (The Organic Coup, 2016).
The Organic Coup Target Market
The target market for ‘The Organic Coup’ are the individuals that are progressively embracing the healthy eating habits. The targeted market segment of ‘The Organic Coup’ is from 6-70 years of age. This appears to be an enormous market size but since approximately half of Kuwait’s population is obese, ‘The Organic Coup’ will endeavor to conceal the demand to an extent. The Organic Coup’s organic food products will be for children, young adults, adults and aged people as well. Psychographically, it will target the individual who are gradually preferring healthy lifestyles, people with health restrictions, athletes, diet conscious people, and those who just want to eat delectably healthy meals. The Organic Coup’s target would address the healthy eating requirements of the lower middle class, middle class, as well as, high class as its products would be reasonably affordable for people with average to high income (Hollensen & Opresnik, 2015).
Domestic & Foreign Competition
The organic food is flourishing globally like never before. People are even more conscious about that factors such as what are they eating, what are the ingredients used within, who are the producers and what will be the health consequences of consuming a particular food product. This has caused the organization to be more thoughtful and considerate while deciding over their market offerings. This is one of the biggest factors that there are relatively limited market players within the industry as compared to fast food industry. Yet there are a lot of them to compete. As far as the Organic Coup’s competition is concerned, there are plenty of direct and indirect domestically. In the United States, it has to compete with hundreds of them ranging from globally recognized labels such as KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, etc. to small local food restaurants. However, the biggest competitor of ‘The Organic Coup’ is Chipotle that is famous for its healthy and organic offerings. However, the situation is quite different in Kuwait. As the industry have just started to flourish, there are just few direct competitors. But fortunately, all of them are the local or international eateries that offer healthy entrees in their menus as side options. So this is luckily an open ground for ‘The Organic Coup’ to play with the ultimate freedom and become pioneer in this area by setting its desired benchmarks, product positioning, and price. It is the utmost opportunity for ‘The Organic Coup’ to own the state with its healthy offerings, amazing taste, matchless quality, and reasonable prices (Hollensen & Opresnik, 2015).
STP (Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning) Approach
Segmentation
In terms of segmentation, of ‘The Organic Coup’ has categorized its Kuwait’s market into 2 clusters based on the demographics. This will help to determine the demands, sales volume, and purchasing behavior. ‘The Organic Coup’ has determined that its buyers would either be regular buyers or irregular aspirational buyers. As mentioned above, the potential buyers would be males and females of 6 to 70 years in age with medium to high-income level and would descend anywhere from lower middle class to high class. Considering the behavior, the customers of ‘The Organic Coup' would be those who are encountering obesity issues and are increasingly lopsided towards organic food offerings and obviously those who are conscious about their health and diet.
Targeting
The target market of ‘The Organic Coup’ is sufficient in size considering the operational cost. It also have a considerable growth rate in upcoming ten years. Furthermore, it is dense or swamped so that there would brighter chances of predictability and growth. ‘The Organic Coup’ would also consider the factor that its target market is easily accessible and the landscape offers sufficient resources to deliver business. Targeting will be done in accordance with the vision and core business strategy of ‘The Organic Coup’ (Illukpitiya & Khanal, 2016).
Positioning
‘The Organic Coup’ would position its products as food offerings that will address the healthy eating needs of the customers and helping them to eradicate unhealthy intakes through scrumptious and lip-smacking organic food substitutes. Its products will be marked as a healthy lifestyle statement that is equally vigorous for children, young, and adults. This will lead to a positive product positioning as it will fulfill the basic needs of the customers of having healthy food and enough nutrition (Cravens & Piercy, 2014).
Environmental Facts & Foreign Trends
The organic food industry is thriving across the globe, and the Middle Eastern region is obviously not an exception. The trends have amplified as one of the outcomes of the wide spreading of obesity. Obesity is epidemic across the globe and after Western countries like the United States and Europe, Middle Eastern Market is the largest landscape that is being hit by it. Within the region, Kuwait unluckily has the highest rate of obesity i.e. 42% of its population is fat/obese. This offers a great opportunity to ‘The Organic Coup’ to exploit the openings in this emerging market (Dailymail, 2016). ‘The Organic Coup’ has great selling prospects in Kuwait as the organic food market is booming with promising growth rate and revenues. Due to the higher rate of obesity, the population is increasingly lopsided towards adopting a healthy lifestyle. Kuwaiti population is progressively embracing healthy eating habits while focusing on buying products that are free from preservatives, GMOs, and excessive chemicals etc (Dias et. al, 2016). The Green Eating or Organic Eating trends have become more popular since the global population has been encountering health issues related to obesity. Therefore, people are becoming more responsive towards consuming natural ingredients while avoiding artificially processed food. At one side, it is hurting the profitability of processed food manufacturers. However, on the other hand, it has provided an opportunity to the local farmers and producers to get a better value for their produce while producing material that is healthy, affordable, and completely organic in nature.
Apart from the eating preferences, the eating style has also been altered. In a modern day routine, people increasingly prefer food options that take them least time to wait and served super fresh at the most reasonable price. ‘The Organic Coup' is a perfect blend of all these features. It delivers the best value at the best price in casual counter serving style. In short, ‘The Organic Coup’ is satisfying the current needs of the customers i.e. revolutionary organic food with quick serving (Dias et.al, 2016).
Product Campaign (4Ps)
Product
The product range of ‘The Organic Coup’ includes the Sandwiches, Wraps, and Organic Bowls with numerous organic side options such as dips, salads, and sauces. The products are prepared from highly organic ingredients prepared to deliver the wholesome nutrition and nutritious value (Cravens & Piercy, 2014).
Place
‘The Organic Coup’ would consider the prime commercial locations for opening its counter-serve outlets. Initially, 3 outlets would be opened at all the premium food streets and commercial areas to enhance the brand visibility and to compete efficiently. The Organic Coup’s outlets would be fabricated in contemporary counter serve cafe style that will allow the customers to dine-in casually or take away their favorite meal.
Promotion
Initially, the promotional efforts would be focused towards enhancing the brand visibility and to develop better product positioning. ‘The Organic Coup’ would use an integrated promotional mix including viral marketing, promotional discounts, social media marketing, radio and media airplay, and couponing (Chernev, 2015).
Price
Initially ‘The Organic Coup’ would adopt the penetrating pricing strategy to build a secure customer base. Under this approach, it would offer relatively lowered market price as compared to its direct and indirect competitors. This will help customers to develop the perception that they are attaining greater value at relatively lower prices. However, later the price would be set as per the competition in order to maximize profit and to cover operational cost.
Domestic & International Ethical Considerations
‘The Organic Coup’ has been entitled as the first USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) certified organic restaurant, as it meets the defined criteria of being an organic eatery. According to USDA, in order to get certified, an organic restaurant is required to meet the defined criteria that are set for its suppliers, ingredients, kitchenette, serving etc. ‘The Organic Coup’ has a considerable array of local farmers and suppliers that offers them pure organic produce that is certified to be consumed. For instance, the chicken that is being used by ‘The Organic Coup’ is free from the ‘Estrogen Injections’ that helps to increase the size and quality of meat unnaturally. However, while entering into a foreign country, especially into an Islamic region, ‘The Organic Coup’ needs to be exceedingly thoughtful about the ethical considerations. as failing to do so may cause the business to suffer (Illukpitiya & Khanal, 2016). Likewise, while operating in Kuwait, ‘The Organic Coup’ is required to meet the regulatory requirements of the country in accordance with its prevailing jurisdictions and government provisions. For instance being an Islamic Country, the ingredient use by ‘The Organic Coup’ should be ‘Halal’, Chicken should be slaughtered as per the Islamic provisions or else it would be considered inedible.
Similarly, it needs to follow the requirements set by the highest food regulatory authorities such as Kuwait Drug & Food Control Administration, Kuwait Food, & Agricultural Import Regulation and Ministry of Food & Agriculture Kuwait. It is imperative for the business to follow such demarcated regulations and ethics in order to avoid any legal allegation. Additionally, it will help them to attain an improved reputation among customers (Chernev, 2015).
Conclusion
The report indicates that ‘The Organic Coup’ has great business prospects in the emerging organic food industry of Kuwait. The landscape is exceedingly suitable for business operations as it offers considerable product demand, constructive environmental factors, amplifying product preference, and favorable regulatory conditions that would turn out to be profitable for the business. However, ‘The Organic Coup’ should carry out a thorough financial planning, resource analysis, and risk assessment before capitalization. Otherwise, the conditions seem to be favorable as the state of Kuwait has got a huge demand for organic food, as well as, flourishing industry with substantial growth prospects and proficient revenues. It can be concluded that selling ‘The Organic Coup’ would bring about increasing profits and prosperity to the business.
References
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Cravens, D. W., & Piercy, N. (2014). Strategic marketing (Vol. 7). New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved From http://www.cdacollege.com/business-studies-ll/files-upload/MAR402%20Course%20Outline_F2010-11.pdf on March 20, 2016
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Dias, V. D. V., Schuster, M. D. S., Talamini, E., & Révillion, J. P. (2016). Scale of consumer loyalty for organic food. British Food Journal, 118(3). Retrieved From http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/BFJ-09-2015-0332 on March 20, 2016
Hollensen, S., & Opresnik, M. O. (2015). 5.1 Organizing and Implementing the Marketing Plan. In Marketing (pp. 398-428). Retrieved From http://elibrary.vahlen.de/10.15358/9783800649297-398/5-1-organizing-and-implementing-the-marketing-plan on March 20, 2016
Illukpitiya, P., & Khanal, P. (2016). Consumer Perception of Organic Food and Product Marketing. In Organic Farming for Sustainable Agriculture (pp. 315-324). Springer International Publishing. Retrieved From http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-26803-3_14 on March 20, 2016
The Organic Coup. Official Website (2016) Retrieved From http://theorganiccoup.com/ on March 20, 2016
