Marketing Plan: Company Overview and Market Research
Company Overview
Application of different marketing strategies by local and global, public and private, profit and non-profit enterprises have been understood as the core business model constituent important for successful existence on the markets with high competition rate. The market conditions of the foodstuff markets in developing countries of Africa can be characterized as complicated with poor governmental and international support, low level of privatization and private business sponsoring (Mbithi, Muturi, & Rambo, 2015). Nevertheless, the companies strive to adopt the most convenient market strategies to survive and develop. The case study refers to designing a market plan for sugar industry company in Kenya - Cane Sugar Ltd. Cane Sugar Ltd. is a small private company located in Western Kenya. The production cycle of the company engages 60 employees and includes growing cane, sugar extraction (cane milling and juice processing), and transporting to distributors. The yearly production volume amounts to 30 000 tons comprising 8% of the Kenyan market share, however, the company has resources to increase production and technological line consumption. The final product of the company is free flowing white granular sugar. The company deals with distributors who have appropriate storing facilities and sell sugar to local retailers and sugar-based goods producers (Kennedy, 2016). Cane Sugar Ltd. competes with local public and private sugar producers and importers from Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Market Research Strategies
Marketing strategy can be characterized as a specific course of a company development that assigns a set of resources for gaining competitiveness, enter new markets, or increase sales. According to Jemaiyo (2013) marketing strategy is flexible and interactive and consists of planned and unplanned phases. Marketing strategy serves as a basement for solid and efficient marketing plan, which compiles a range of actions to be performed for successful implementation of marketing strategy. One of the paramount preceding actions of the marketing plan is marketing research, which core target is to gather comprehensive information to make quick and productive strategic decisions. The scale of the research should be adjusted according to the company size, the persistent problems, and affordable resources to conduct and report the research.
Cane Sugar Ltd. refers to small private businesses operating on the local market. The vital business issues of the company that requires additional information from marketing research are small market share, single market segment, and limited geography. The information that is necessary for the improvement of marketing strategy should be obtained from the marketing research activities. The theoretical ground of the marketing research approach diversities is based on the input parameters of the market player and market conditions (Mukerjee, 2016). The input parameters of the Cane Sugar Ltd. for research tools selection include: developing economy, foodstuff industry, agricultural industry, local presence, small private business category, and production volume increasing potentials.
Taking into account the vital issues and initial parameters it is suggested that Cane Sugar Ltd. should apply exploratory research so that to get a better understanding of the market environment, customer perceptions and intentions, …
