Marketing Environmental Analysis For Donald’s Company

Buyer Behavior and Analysis

Discuss about the Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.

The marketing environmental analysis of the macro environment and the micro environment has always been considered to be the key of understanding the potential impact of any of the external national, international or local factors on a small business (De Villa, Rajwani & Lawton, 2015). All these factors tend to be outside the direct control of the business owner. However, this paper is going to elaborate on developing a marketing environmental analysis for Donald’s company. Donald B is a chocolate product market who owns two stores in Melbourne. The paper shall discuss about the buyer behaviour in relation to the chocolate products and would analyse the micro environment and the macro environmental factors that could possibly influence the company in its operation. The main objective of this report is to assist Donald in growing his business as well as capture high chuck of the chocolate manufacturing industry.

Customers or Buyer Behaviour- The consumer behaviour, particularly with respect to the purchase making of chocolates revolves around four basic questions and they are- where to buy, which brand to buy, why to buy and how much to buy (Testa et al., 2016). There is always a fluctuation in the buying preference of the customers in terms of trends, health and money. However, the company has always tried to maintain the product quality all through these years. The behaviour of the customers involves the following key parameters: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Suppliers- Suppliers have the ability to drive up the product and service prices (Elbatran et al., 2015). As Donald’s company is not dependent on any one particular supplier, therefore, the company could be influenced by number of different suppliers of the fundamental aspects of good or service. It is to note that the more a company depends on the suppliers, the more power those suppliers hold.

Public- This section includes the employees as well as the various different types of officers of the very company. They have a significant power to influence the overall business of the company because it is they who produce and sell the goods and services of a company. Therefore, the organisation should always look towards satisfying the human resources that are working in the organisation.

Competitors- The three major competitors for Donald’s company are Nestle, Hershey’s and Mars Incorporated (Loutskina & Shapovalov, 2017). The Marketing Mix analysis of the competitors are mentioned below:

	C1 (Nestle)	C2 (Hershey’s)	C3(Mars Incorporated)
·       Product	·       It has a wide range of products ranging from dairy products, chocolates, beverages, ready to cook foods etc. to suit various different target markets.	·       The company offers in its product quality, variety, sizes, brand name and design ·       It offers a wide range of product including milk chocolate, cookies n cream bar, chocolate syrup, milkshake, nuggets, dessert toppings, cocoa, candy and many more.	·       It is widely known for its chocolate products but beside this, it also has different segments of products including confectionaries, Pet care, Food, Drinks, Symbioscience and Wrigley. ·       There are 29 different brands in total which include Snickers, Dove, Galaxy, Twix candy, Mars etc.
·       Price	·       They set the price of the products in competition with its other rival companies (Muraro et al., 2017).	·       The pricing strategy that Hershey makes use of is maintaining the level of price at consistently hiked price and targeting basically the upper class people and the foreigners.	·       It follows the mid-premium pricing strategy. ·       The target market are the people belonging from upper middle class and upper class.
·       Place	·       The main revenues and sales for it come from the European countries, which is about 90% of the net sales. ·       They follow FMCG channel of distribution which involves “breaking the bulb”. ·       Customers could also buy the products of Nestle from retailers. ·       The company have also set up new sales offices in order to maximise the width and the penetration in rural areas as well.	·       Strong distribution channel ·       Available globally at drug stores, grocery stores, wholesale clubs, vending machines, hospitals, malls, gas stations and in the departmental stores. ·       It is also present online in Bigbasket, eBay and Amazon etc.	·       It has headquarters in many countries. It has different headquarters for different segment. ·       The chocolate segment of Mars is headquartered in the New Jersey of United States. ·       It has robust distribution channel as because of the fact that it has numerous manufacturing units all around the globe. ·       Distributors are the primary distribution channel of Mars. ·       It is partnered with Walmart in US, Lidl and Tesco in Europe along with Hypermarket and the Bigbazar in India.
·       Promotion	·       Direct marketing at the malls ·       Extensive Advertising ·       Joined hands with the Google ·       Strong product portfolio ·       Uses Facebook and Instagram for social media promotion	·       Television advertisements, Magazine advertisements, billboards, advertising campaigns like My Dad Ad. ·       Also, the kids could design their own candy ·       Uses Instagram, facebook and twitter for social network promotions	·       The chocolate of this company is positioned as “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.” ·       Uses many taglines and slogans for positioning its product ·       Offline (magazine, television, newspaper etc.) and online (website, facebook, Instagram) campaigns

Competition Analysis

Market Intermediaries- This section include the retailers, commission agents and the whole sellers (Han & Strange, 2015). It is the responsibility of Donald’s company to keep a check or to keep a track of these bodies who are working for them.

Financiers or investors- They include the government bodies of the country or the local Melbourne government. They help in funding for the company at the start-up or if it look forward to grow. Without the funds for building and expanding, one cannot operate a business. Hence, the company must take on the investors so as to share the risk of operating and for gaining expertise and support.

Strengths	Weaknesses
·       Quality products ·       It matches the popular trends in the food industry ·       Dairy free, gluten free and soy free products ·       Motivated and skilled employees	·       Growing competition in the local, national and international level ·       Market is getting saturated ·       Discouraging profit margins ·       Lack in marketing skills

Political- The government have changed to the Liberal democrat from the Labour party in Australia and this is bound to influence the operation of Donald’s company. The restriction on the entry of the skilled employees or workers from the other parts of the world could impact the employee hiring decision of the company in the near future. Also, there is an imposition of the taxes which would determine who this company manages its payment and investment to the shareholders. Like, the VAT (Value Added Tax) rose by 2.5 percent in the year 2010 and this has increased the price of the products and hence, reduced the sales (Frondel, Sommer & Vance, 2015).

Economic- The global economic downturn has affected the expansion plan of the company but still the sales of it gas remained more or less steady. Recession too did play its role as this company managed to hit the lower end of 4 to 6 percent revenue in the year 2010 (Hoffmann & Lemieux, 2016).

Social- It is a fact that must be mentioned in this context that the company of Donald B has been born as an outcome of the social factors. As the chocolates and the other related products of the company are sold more or less internationally and is planning to expand even more in the international level, the company has been on the verge of receiving a good range of controversies (Cumming et al., 2017). With the same, it is also to note that there are some growing concerns among the people of west work who are owing the rising cases of the issue of obesity, particularly among the children. Most of the nutritionists suggest to reduce the consumption of candy and chocolates and this is likely to affect the sales of Donald’s product.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Technological- Technology has changed the production of the products of this company as well as the process of packing over the years. The very recent moves in this context comprise of the use of pathogen testing systems and the filing patents for all the heat resistant chocolates.

Marketing in the current era has been drastically evolved and is one of the critical components of the business administration. The marketing plan design is fundamental to the business organisation. The main aim of this paper was to provide the business of Donald to apply effective marketing strategies in order to attain his goal of doing business globally. From the above discussion it is clear that Donald B is effectively operating its business in the recent years locally in Melbourne but in order to expand its business internationally, there are certain barriers that it must take into consideration and the most of it depends of the growing competition within the very industry and the political environment.

References

Cumming, D., Filatotchev, I., Knill, A., Reeb, D. M., & Senbet, L. (2017). Law, finance, and the international mobility of corporate governance.

De Villa, M. A., Rajwani, T., & Lawton, T. (2015). Market entry modes in a multipolar world: Untangling the moderating effect of the political environment. International Business Review, 24(3), 419-429.

Elbatran, A. H., Yaakob, O. B., Ahmed, Y. M., & Shabara, H. M. (2015). Operation, performance and economic analysis of low head micro-hydropower turbines for rural and remote areas: a review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 43, 40-50.

Frondel, M., Sommer, S., & Vance, C. (2015). The burden of Germany’s energy transition: An empirical analysis of distributional effects. Economic Analysis and Policy, 45, 89-99.

Han, L., & Strange, W. C. (2015). The microstructure of housing markets: Search, bargaining, and brokerage. In Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 5, pp. 813-886). Elsevier.

Hoffmann, F., & Lemieux, T. (2016). Unemployment in the Great Recession: a comparison of Germany, Canada, and the United States. Journal of Labor Economics, 34(S1), S95-S139.

Loutskina, E., & Shapovalov, G. (2017). Mars, Incorporated. Darden Business Publishing Cases, 1-22.

Muraro, A., Høst, A., Meyer, R., & Kuslys, M. (2017). Controversies on special products for managing cow’s milk protein allergy in infants: Saftey and sutability. EMJ Allergy Immunol, 2, 46-51.

Testa, F., Gusmerottia, N. M., Corsini, F., Passetti, E., & Iraldo, F. (2016). Factors affecting environmental management by small and micro firms: The importance of entrepreneurs’ attitudes and environmental investment. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 23(6), 373-385.