Essay: Essay on West Bridge Foods / PESTEL

1.0 Introduction:
The assignment requires designing a marketing plan for the new launch of a food product that is based keeping the UK market as a target. In designing the plan, the researcher would perform a proper PESTEL analysis to analyse the current market scenario for the industry, highlighting the key issues the company is currently facing. This is to be followed by the development of the marketing strategy with a thought about the segmentation, targeting and positioning the growth and long-term strategic direction of the product in the market. The strategy chosen will be critically evaluated to identify how the strategy would be successful in the market. A strategic recommendation of the basis on which the product would be chosen for the market, the sort of pricing strategy that would be applied keeping in mind the target audience and the kind of distribution channels that would be used to promote the product and the brand.
For the present assignment, the existing food company West Bridge Foods has been chosen. The company’s brief background would be provided in order to understand the kind of products it already deals with. The new product that the company is set to launch is a line of baby food drink, with less sugar percentage and one that has more of vital nutrients especially required for a growing child from 1 year to 6 years of age. The product is called ‘Milkowiz’ and is made up of milk extracted from soya, so has much less fat content than any other dairy product.
2.0 Background of the food company (West Bridge Foods):
The company happens to be the largest in the poultry food products in terms of the revenues it earns annually. The company includes food products like raw, part or fully, coated cooked proteins and many food items. The current sales happen to be listed at ??175 million per annum, supplying solutions and products having a focused portfolio with that of key customer partners. There are full ownership of operations in Malvern, Haydock, Thailand, Bangkok and Qingdao China. They are included in global sales and sourcing, trading, dedicated into ensuring selling of legal and safe products, R&D of food products, contingency planning etc. (Westbridgefoods.com, 2014).
Figure 1: Logo of West bridge Foods (Source: Westbridgefoods.com, 2014)
2.1 Macro-environmental Analysis of the product (PESTEL):
PESTEL Analysis Key Factors
Political Well balanced political system of monarchy and parliamentary governance helps in getting better business standards
Economic Keeping the recession in mind, West bridge Foods needs to increase its line of productivity offering at lower cost and enable more job opportunities for the local population (Williams, 2011).
Social
As majority of the UK population is aged between 15 and 64, West bridge Foods could introduce new line of health benefitting food products in cereals, protein bars, or chocolates and cater to these audiences.
Technological Having high technological advantage and with West bridge Foods’s R&D being really strong, it could enhance upon its technological advancement and R&D without fearing to incur high costs and finding adaptable consumers (Alocilja and Radke, 2003).
Environmental UK government lays its industries to be highly environment friendly. West bridge Foods would need to be extremely environmentally compatible, including green as well as correct processes of manufacturing.
Legal In order to operate with the UK, West bridge Foods would not only require to align to legal processes, but also their organizational culture and management style and report no cases of discrimination, harassment, fair employee treatment and products adhering to safety and health standards.
Table1: PESTEL Analysis of West bridge Foods
Political- England happens to be a senior member with the United Nations and also a member of European Union. As the country happens to be a part of two political blocks which are big, there is the freedom of trading efficiently in both domestic and international markets. In spite of running both a parliamentary and democratic government, a common law gets practices and the system remains in well balance. West Bridge Foods, a Swedish company, which is also a part of the European Union maintains a very good relationship with Great Britain’s government (Blake, 2000).
Economic- Following Germany and then France, UK happens to be third largest economic function in Europe. However, there was a mild slipping into recession for the UK in 2012, according to the predictions of the Economists of UK market. As the economy is currently low, it gets very essential for West Bridge Foods to understand market and to design products as well as processes where it can continue providing high standards expected from it from its products at a lower cost. UK was hit by recession sometime earlier in 2007 where there was a great amount in job loss. Keeping this aspect in mind, if West Bridge Foods could come up with more of production plans and took to hiring local people, it would add to its value creation contribution (Cook and Macaulay et al., 2004).
Social- The average of 66.2% UK’s population is aged between 15 and 64. This makes a large amount of labour force available, although a big chunk of the population is also aging. West Bridge Foods could take this as an opportunity by introducing a product line that have compatibility with the competitor’s products like in cereals or protein bars. Having a large line of young generation, it could introduce some newer flavours in chocolates having added benefits of health.
Technological- UK being technologically advanced having a high focus on its R&D as well as computed designs and simulations, brings a positive situation for West Bridge Foods as R&D happens to be competitive advantage the company is in. With an environment that is technologically friendly, West Bridge Foods can find options in the introduction of newer technology and conduct better research without fearing to incur too high cost or a difficulty for the consumers to adapt (Dess and Miller, 1993).
Environmental- The UK government stresses on environment friendly measures to be adopted by the companies operating within it. Remaining in the food and nutrition sector, it becomes imperative for West Bridge Foods to cater to environmental compliance. This would bring in green and correct processes of manufacturing for the company, along with ensuring that the health standards are met according to set government standards.
Legal- Complying with the legal situation at the UK, West Bridge Foods would have to pay attention towards the different legislatives existing. These would include health as well as safety laws, discrimination laws, employee laws and consumer laws (Ebitu and Mbum and et al., 2012). To operate within UK, the essentiality is not only in aligning their processes along the lines of governmental legal standing but also the organizational culture and management style to make sure all its employees are receiving fair and equal treatment, there should not be any reported harassment case and the products should have safety and health assurance, forging which the company stands liable to get sued.
3.0 West Bridge Foods’ marketing Strategy in launching Milkowiz:
The strategies in marketing for any company seem like the prominent most factors in order to get to the market. For West Bridge Foods the process that seems like playing one of the evident and prominent roles is the STP.
Figure 2: STP process for West Bridge Foods’ marketing strategy (Source: Process and Process, 2014).
3.1 Market Segmentation:
Before the launch of Milkowiz, West bridge Foods needs to target its buyers. It is for this reason segmentation of market exactly is required to be performed. For Milkowiz, the children’s segment between the age group of 1 and 6 years needs to be targeted. The markets could be segment in the following way:
Figure 3: Market segmentation of West bridge Foods’ new food product (Source: wiseGEEK, 2014)
Geographic Segmentation
The location of these targeted customers of Milkowiz happens to be vital. According to the customer section West Bridge Foods has chosen, it has to market the products thus. A proper set of market strategy and planning has to be brought about keeping the geography in mind. The management at West bridge Foods needs to remain active in the targeting of the people chosen under the geographic sections (Alocilja and Radke, 2003).
Behavioural Segmentation
The behavioural pattern of the child is although very hard to understand, but that of their family members; especially the mothers need to be studied. What becomes instantly favourite with one individual might not get accepted by another. Hence the company needs to arrange for all things needed for different types of people. In this section, behavioural segmentation would work much more effective (Goyat, 2011).
Psychographic Segmentation
The cost of product has to depend upon the buying capability of the customers, something that directly relates with the style of living and the financial status of the population. By doing psychographic segmentation, West Bridge Foods can get good assistance towards making good business of its new launch (Johnson and Gardiner et al., 1999).
Demographic Segmentation
For milk extracted out of soya and tinned as dry milk, West Bridge Foods could further segment its product according to age groups, social condition and that of different ethnic groups. Segmenting the product into such categories and bringing in some varieties in the same line of product according to the demographic criteria can help in better market penetration and growth (McMellon and James, 2012).
3.2 Targeting market
For soya-milk, a very exact target of the existing market can be developed if the market has the following features:
3.2.1 Purchasing Power
The price that the item is going to have should be within the capacity of the customer to buy. The management, while targeting the market, needs to find out the price that is liable. As soya-milk is a new product in the market and especially because West Bridge Foods is introducing baby milk food for the first time, the company initially needs to target a small market and keep building its long term goals in order to capitalize a much broader and wider market in the UK (Natter and Mild et al., 2008).
3.2.2 Profit and Potentiality
Since the market of the company is very new and it has to face a lot of competition in the industry, the company has to really play seriously in order to prove its potential and make good margins of profit in the product.
3.2.3 Serving market segmentation properly
The management of West Bridge Foods has to think about which section of the market it would target, they have to do a proper survey of which areas in the UK the product would bring more benefits. This implies that they need to find out the target area of population which will buy their product more and such in large amount. This would result in the generation of maximum amount of profit for the company (Perner and others, 2009).
3.2.4 Matching up of marketing capability
In order to judge the capability of the market, a proper and thorough market research has to be verified. If the soya-milk can create a good impression in the market, the demand for the product will automatically increase. Maintaining the rising demand of the product will be the job of the company (Sadler, 2003).
3.3 Market’s position
Westbridge Foods needs to find out how many exactly how many competitors are there in this market of baby food and where it actually stands amongst the competitors in the industry. The company needs to decide about the measures it would undertake to meet and match the required demands that the market would produce (Szmedra and Wetzstein et al., 1987). The positioning of this product or any, for that matter, would involve the knowledge of the company as to how it would handle the product and ensure that the demand of the product is not getting denounced. The use of a proper and specific tagline used for this product may help in attracting the customers and making the item stand apart from its competitors.
4.0 Critical evaluation of the market strategy:
In order to acquire as well as develop the market in UK, there are certain strategies that West Bridge Foods needs to follow. Along with this, in order to assess about the needs of the market, the company needs to make some proper survey of the market conditions. The company would need to follow the seven P’s that the market runs with (Verdin and Williamson, 1997):
Product
The company needs to be making proper survey of the market and then decide upon which factors seem prominently in requirement in the market. Through STP process, the market segmentation, target market and the positioning is found. After they have decided about the product they are going to launch, West Bridge Foods has to take upon product development and the strategies of such to be more successful in the market than their existing competitors. The company needs to make decision which product is going to bring maximum benefits and this is very adequately served by the steps taken in the STP marketing process (Williams, 2011).
Price
It is the price of the item on which the decision of whether the company makes profit through this new launch or fails would actually depend. West Bridge has to target really fast, which section of the market economy and social structure they are going to target. After the section has been chosen, a proper survey of the section needs to be done to finalize the price that would go well with the product quality and manufacture costs (Alocilja and Radke, 2003). If the cost of the product reaches beyond the cost of the buying capacity of its target audience, then the product will fail to make a market. There has to be a trade-over where neither the customer is rendered incapable of buying the product, nor are the companies suffering the cost of its production (Blake, 2000).
Place
The target place is also equally important. The company has to decide where the product will be strategically placed so that the item is readily visible to the target customer. The place they set up for the promotion as in advertisement of their product is also equally important, as they have to time it and locate in those specific channels and programmes which are surely to be watched by the target audience. There has to be proper maintenance of inventory by the West Bridge Foods for its products (Cook and Macaulay et al., 2004).
People
Doing a thorough market survey, West bridge has to find out what kind of people they have targeted and how to best serve their tastes. Going by the demands by these people, they would have to remain ready to make changes in their product which their customers deem necessary. There has to be hiring of extremely experienced and good R&D team of people and if needed provide necessary training to the employees for their right blend and mix (Dess and Miller, 1993).
Process
An automatically ready process needs to be sufficed by the company, which moves in the supply process demand to be maintained. To meet the demands of their customers, there has to efficient as well as active participation from the management. If they are able to satisfy their people with this item, it would lead to customers opting for this product again and include more customers to come buy this product. This however requires the maintenance of a proper marketing strategy (Ebitu and Mbum et al., 2012).
Physical evidences
There has to be certain centres like that of customer care centre, social media networks etc. where people can easily place their feedbacks about the product. Simultaneously, this could be a medium of interaction between the company and its end products, the customers. There could be suggestions on what else can make the product better in taste, look or other features (Foodexport.org, 2014).
4.1 Rationale behind choosing the strategy:
The STP process of marketing takes into account all the possible factors that are carefully needed to be studied in order to launch a product into the market and to ensure its successful marketing and sales. This process encompasses all the intrinsic factors needed to be monitored by a company in order to come up with a product that will not fail into the market because of incomplete market study and product research (Goyat, 2011). This model takes into account the various different dimensions of the market and studies these dimensions carefully. It happens to be one of the most tested processes which has been adopted by major brand names in the industry and have made their success stories with the help of STP process (Johnson and Gardiner et al., 1999).
5.0 Recommendation relating to market offering for target audience:
The team responsible for production in West bridge Foods needs to remain focussed in using and manipulating the entire market with the help of its products. As can be evident from the trends, the UK market is a volatile one and never is stable, the company has to take different marketing strategies into account with the continuously changing of the market. In applying the new technologies and innovative ideas, would help the company in making good margin of profit and would also enable them to reach to more people. To hold the market in a steady balance, they also need to take care of their supply chain management and logistics carefully. West Bridge Foods can acquire tie ups with different transport and logistics vendors like Blue Dart, DHL and so on to work on this aspect. They would require keeping an observation followed by survey of the market status at close quarters of time.
6.0 Conclusion:
West Bridge Foods, has taken a paradigm shift in the food market announcing the launch of this soya-milk product for kids between age group of 1 and 6 years. From poultry food products to baby food items, which are tinned and powdered, that too with soya-milk, a vegetable very few brands have tried to work on, West bridge Foods is taking a lot of challenge in setting itself meeting the success of the company. Whether the company would fail in its efforts or come out a major success all depends on the implementation of the marketing strategy they have chosen and the processes, hence, they would have to undergo.
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