Chef Vending Company is a small business which is started by a family and it deals mainly in buying from Germany commercial food, beverage equipment and vending machines. Our main aim is to penetrate the market by being creative and innovative in the vending industry as well as making vending machines of high quality (Burton 2002, pp.432). Our own vending routes will be established in both the Western and eastern part of the country. Our aim is also extended in participating in food and beverage industry by supplying good and innovative equipment.
Company Locations
Chef Vending have got an office together with a small warehouse in a multi-purpose area in the Northern part of Australia. We do also have a showroom, where we demonstrate to our customers our products. In the warehouse, we keep our inventory machines and supplies. Finally, we do also have an administration area where we handle the office works (Hitt 2009, pp.101).
The Products
In this company, we will have two product lines which serve different markets. The first line is our vending products which will include our new Sandwich machine, a machine which produces fresh orange juice and our dispenser which is multi-line (Hitt 2009, pp.33). The second line will include equipment which will be sold to restaurants such as toasters, machines used to make espresso and freezers of fresh juice. We enjoy the advantage of having most of our products such as Sandwich Express having high innovative and creativity values which make them to function more efficiently than the common vending machines (Burton 2002, pp.240). Thus this gives us a competitive advantage over our established competitors. We expect to expand our present operation lines in the near future. In order to establish our products in a larger area, we are working on supplier relationships with huge nationally-branded juice and sandwich producers. By so doing, we will be able to make national companies aware of our machines and this will allow them to brand our machines with their product lines.
Employees
Since Chef Vending Company is as mall family operated business, it has only 12 employees. We have the managing director who takes care of the managerial job in the entire company (Burton 2002, pp.234). The marketing manager oversees how sales is being taken care of in the company while the procurement officer ensures that all the products which are imported or manufactured by the company are of high standard and quality. The remaining nine employees work under the above three senior most people. Some of them are technical staffs who provide us with the support and service capabilities that we offer our customers. The rest forms a sales team who focuses on bringing in knowledgeable and experienced industry hands.
The key target market for the new product
We must admit that our company targets mostly high income earners such as big industries. This is so because the market segmentation information that we have, states that there are many companies in which Australia lacks these products (Hitt 2009, pp.32). Therefore we found it necessary to make them available in the country as well as a round the world.
Chef Vending has organized itself to cover three distinct market segments: End Users; these are operators who wish to expand their product selections because they have their own vending routes. In this category, we have large institutional food service companies which engage in vending operations as a business in order to make profit, Distributors; These are companies which intern supplies other companies with our machines and products for their operations and Branded Sandwich Manufacturers and Branded Juice Companies; These companies are given priorities because by working with them we will be able to make our machines to meet their specifications (Burton 2002, pp.222). They will also brand our machines with their products. They sell the machines to customers who later on will come back and buy the product of these machines from these companies. We do also have two markets for our equipment business line: Restaurants and Hotels; these are end users who mostly benefit from the equipment purchased and; Equipment Supply Companies-These companies offer large supply of our machines and products to the food & beverage industry.
SWOT analysis.
We have some of our own strengths in the international market such as introducing for the first time both sandwich and fresh orange juice making machines. This is because presently in the market we have sandwich machines that provide a sandwich, or other hot meals, that must be microwaved before eating (Burton 2002, pp.111). Consequently our products specifically on the machine line will enjoy a qualitative advantage over microwaved products.
The greatest weakness that we are encountering is that being that we are introducing new technology in the market for the first time; we are using a lot of resources to advertise these products. Also sometimes the production rate is very slow which make it difficult to meet the demand of the first increasing customers (Burton 2002, pp.221). Since we cover international markets, we encounter a lot of difficulties in terms of culture and beliefs. Some are not flexible to change since they are used to the old machines which floods the market now.
On the other hand, we also have a lot of opportunities in that we are the first people to invent these kinds of machines, we can put up companies in as many countries as we can. Our new machines are easy to operate and our products have high quality. This makes us better placed to conquer a larger segment of the market than other industries. Our products targets mostly the youths and we find that the youths form a larger population in the world. Therefore, we have got a large targeted group (Hitt 2009, pp.109).
We do not face a lot of threats while marketing our new products except that there are some refusals by some governments to accept us in their countries. This is because; they are protecting their local companies. We also face stiff competitions from other vending companies such as Trio vending company. This makes the prices to fluctuate each day.
The new product strategy
Major new product strategy of Chef Vending is the development alliances with other big companies. We have formed alliances with national sandwich makers and branded companies in order to create a bigger market possibility for Sandwich Express (Zimmere 2008, pp.76). Other companies which we have an alliance with other national juice brands to increase the market potential for our Fresh OJ machines. We give this a priority since these big companies use our machines to brand their products which are quite advantageous to us.
The pricing strategy for our new products in the national market
Chef Vending is practicing two distinct pricing strategies. Firstly, we price for instance our Sandwich Express and Fresh orange juice machines on the high prices which are being dictated by the market presently (Burton 2002, pp.211). In order to gain new customers and to maintain old customers, we are competing aggressively in our pricing strategies for the other machines. These pricing strategies are applying for both the wholesalers and retailers.
Placement and distribution of the new product in the national market
Since we are an aggressive and innovative company that provides the market with both new as well as high-quality products, we have used this advantage to position ourselves in the international market (Zimmere 2008, pp.341). We are currently positioned in NAMA trade shows, within industry publications, and the Internet, in order to be reached easily by our customers. Other methods which we employ include brochures, letterhead, and business correspondence.
Promotional strategy for the new product
Chef Vending is constantly participating each year in two trade shows which are sponsored by NAMA. We also regularly attend many local and regional trade shows and we have also opened distribution outlets to promote our product lines. Each and every year, we increase our advertising cost to give us high visibility and exposure on the trade publications. Most importantly, we are strategically positioned ourselves in the internet at www.hereweare.com.This gives our company greater exposure and easier communication with our customers (Hitt 2009, pp.120).
Societal marketing or social responsibility strategy
Chef Vending Company sells products such as pizza which majorly targets the youth; therefore in the society youths are majorly targeted. We majorly advertise our products through trade shows where we both have the youths and adults. In this case, we have the opportunity to explain even to the elderly about our products hence creating good image in the entire society.
Market entry modes
We have agreed to use export method as our mode of entry into the international market. The advantages of this method include minimal risk on investment as well as high speed of entry into the market (Hitt 2009, pp.122). It has got some disadvantages as the company is being viewed as an outsider, trade barriers and lack of full information in the foreign country.
International macro environment forces
There are a lot of political influences on trade in the international countries. For instance in the last American election, business on the wall street came to a halt for some hours until the elections were over. Another force is cultural differences and as we have mentioned earlier that different cultures respond different to any product (Zimmere 2008, pp.249). What you may considered as humor during advertisement may be considered nuisance for another culture. Therefore we are forced to translate and explain word by word any advertisement language we use.
Challenges in international marketing
Dilution of brand name power is one of the great challenges to us. It is a difficult task to convince consumers of a particular country to change to your product since they are used to their own products in their countries. There is also name distortion especially by the use of internet in high technology countries.
Another challenge is barrier to effective communication during advertisement due to language differences. People respond to information on in different ways and this has really hindered our effort to market our products internationally (Hitt 2009, pp.69). Others include cultural nuisance where by in any advertisement, there must be human to make the consumer pay attention. But we find that what is considered humor in one culture might be a nuisance in another culture. There is also difference in currency values which fluctuates every time. This has interferes with our plans.
Recommendations
We recommend that there should be clear translation of the advertisement language in order to avoid confusion. The culture of the native people should also be learned before making any advertisement to a void cultural nuisance (Burton 2002, pp.245). We should also learn very well the market trends internationally so that the issue of money value fluctuation is dealt with. We keep track on our brands regularly in order to avoid dilution of brand name. We should keep on reminding our customers on our brand name and any changes if there are.
Conclusion
Our company will be a success in the international market because as the National Restaurant Association report shows, revenues from restaurants are expected to hit about $321 billion. This constitutes a sizable area of our specialization and it will promote our business. Our machines are the first in the market and our statistics shows that people are responding positively. For instance; our company was first to market a fully automated line of toasters. Most of the toasters we find in the market presently are manually operated with manual monitoring of toasting process (Zimmere 2008, pp.89). This gives us confidence of prospering in the market.
Hitt, A., ed., 2009.Strategic Management Competitiveness and Globalization. London: Nelson Education Ltd.
Zimmerer, T. W & Scarborough, N., 2008.Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall,
McDonald, F.& Burton, F., 2002.International Business. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
