Overview of Haigh’s Chocolates
Discuss About The Properties Appearance In Dark Chocolate.
Marketing planning is said to be a discipline and systematic exercise use to frame strategies of marketing (Australian Government, 2018). Haigh’s Chocolates is Australian based business of chocolate who need to frame its marketing plan in order to avoid future uncertainties, achieving objectives, along with this to get support in communicating and coordinating among different departments. This report is being prepared in order to frame the marketing plan for Haigh’s chocolate business by analyzing or evaluating its performance in the market with the help of SWOT Analysis. Besides this, it will foresee the potential problems that business can face while implementing the marketing plan.
Haigh’s chocolate is an Australian family owned business of chocolate which is based in South Australia (Haigh’s Chocolate, 2018). The business was established in 1915 by Alfred E. Haigh. In four states Haigh’s has retail outlets. They are expert in single origin and handmade chocolates all around the world. They are considered to be the oldest family-owned business of chocolate in Australia and they are now considering to grow alertness regionally and also in the whole world (Haigh’s Chocolate, 2018).
The company’s strength is united with the tough brand along with this it is performing effectively from 1912. The company has succeeded in establishing effective and tough brand equity with the standard quality commodities. The company has its presence in the locations such as New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Besides this, it possesses huge number of commodities to offer along with chocolates in huge quantity with luxurious packages (Government of South Australia, 2018). The variety of commodities that company offer is dark chocolates, milk chocolates as we as liquor chocolates. The big excursion of the workshop for the people is to perceive for the chocolate making commodities.
One of the weaknesses of the company is its incapability to expand the business operations which results in low market share.
In the market, there are various opportunities available for the business that can help it in increasing its revenue and market share. It can do enhancements and development in the gift offers as today in every corporate firm offering chocolates in the form of reward is a trend. Along with this, companies offer chocolates to their employees on various occasion and festival. The company can start its online services or e-commerce business and offer chocolates to the customers living at different locations.
Weaknesses
The major threat for Haigh’s Chocolate is the strong position of the competitors and other organizations in the market. It reacts to improve the health awareness among the target markets. To preserve and manage the best quality in the consumable goods category is the key challenge. The storing situation, along with whitening of the chocolate, also affects the company’s brand image (MBA Skool, 2018).
The key and strong competitors of Haigh’s Chocolate Company are Cadbury Chocolates, Mayfield, and Nestle. However, it is different from all these companies when compared. Haigh’s Chocolate is the only manufacturer of chocolates that offers high and standard quality of chocolates along with premium brand chocolates (Family Business Australia, 2014). It is focused towards maintaining the chocolate quality effectively. It is known as the competitive advantage of Haigh’s Chocolate which helped it in sustaining in the market for so long.
Moreover, the competitors of the company deal with the issues of growth which shows that they need to accept the corporate behavior in order to survive in the market for longer time duration. There is a requirement of attracting skilled employees because right type of skills in the organization creates high growth level (Luther, 2011). Haigh’s Chocolate keeps standard quality and introduces a new variety of goods yearly that also manage the family’s culture successfully.
The enhancing standard of living and increasing income of the Australian people has resulted in the formation of premium customer segment in the industry of chocolate and their indulgence in purchasing the chocolates for particular and special occasions and for the purpose of gifting. This reflects there are huge chances of the growth in the chocolate industry at 2.6% rate (Townsend and Tiang, 2015). The innovations in the product by adding new taste and flavor are a major concern for the success and to keep the customer loyalty towards the brand. Haigh’s chocolates are performing all these activities effectively; therefore, it is able to create high demand in the market by offering huge variations and great taste and variety of packaging options.
The customers of Haigh’s are couples, young generation, and adults who love to purchase chocolates for consumption and gift. According to a research Australian love to have chocolates on the yearly average of 6.7kg which makes confectionery the most demanded and famous food item. 77% of the confectionery sales are due to the Chocolate in Australia. 47% of the purchase is an impulse in confectionery. 50% of the buyer of chocolate falls under the age group of 25-49 year. Women are considered to purchase more chocolates as compared to men; however, they purchase it for their families and men buy from the age group of 35-49 purchase chocolates for their personal consumption.
Opportunities
Haigh’s Chocolate Company is fundamentally focused towards positioning itself as one of the most trusted chocolate making company of Australia which offers a high standard of chocolates with premium quality to the young people and families (Haigh’s Chocolcate, 2016). The company offers handmade chocolates with effective packaging which makes it best fit for gifting someone. It provides a wide range of chocolates and associated products by considering major occasions, gift, and celebration purposes. The products that company offer are made up of some techniques which were learned from Switzerland by Alfred who is the founder of the company and this is the reason the products are of good and high quality and thus it is functioning majorly in Australia with the owned reputation as an international brand.
At Adelaide, Haighs operates various stores and at the tourist center placed at park side which helps the company to introduce itself to various tourist and visitors as the maker of chocolate. It also offers freshly made chocolate to the tourist who can take it as one of Australia’s specialty. Various high standard selling products of the company are packed by utilizing very simple themes and utilize an environmentally friendly technique that is cellophane and extremely degradable type of material for packaging different from the use of poly polypropylene like other businesses of confectionery do. This also reflects that company takes care of the society and environment by establishing tourist center at the Parkside and by utilizing packaging which is eco-friendly and good for the company’s long-term survival.
Haighs Chocolates offer high quality and standard chocolates and associated products which are majorly targeted towards premium market segmentation. Therefore the prices of the company’s offering are higher as compared to other competing products. The company has adopted premium pricing strategy in order to keep their prices higher than the competitors in the market because it is the tendency of the customers that they perceive high price product as high quality product. The headquarters of the company general set and fix the prices of the products depending on the variety of products company offers to the consumers comprising liquor chocolates, milk variants, and dark chocolates. Along with this, it offers special gift packages to the family customers for special occasions such as Christmas and charge prices as per the demand and supply law. The company majorly targets teenagers and young couples on special days such as Friendship’s day and Valentine’s Day by using special pricing strategy, attractive offers and gift packing.
Threats
Haighs Chocolate Company functions through 14 different locations in Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne and works by a tough, strong and vertical supply chain. The company has its head office in Adelaide along with various stores at different tourist center in order to promote the sales of the company. The company has adopted a distribution channel strategy in which it involves various wholesalers who help company in transferring the good in the market and promoting the products. The company also manages its operations by stores which are self-owned managed stores. It is noted that company offers 5% of the total production to its wholesalers in order to supply products from specialist locations and destinations to influence sales and visibility of the brand (Australian Institute of Company Directors, 2010). The products of the company are majorly distributed to the consumers at Victoria, South Wales, and South Australia. At various tourist centers company offer fresh and good quality of the chocolates to the tourist and they can purchase those products and can take along with them to their home places as Australia’s specialty (Emmanuel, 2008). Therefore, the distribution of the products involves highly integrated model used majorly by Haighs where there is the very limited role of the distributors hence it operates with vertically integrated model and accepts the process of distribution on its own. Moreover, the company can advertise its offerings in other various markets by using online media in order to have an influence on the market share and rivalry with the competitors such as Cadbury and Nestle.
Haighs Chocolate Company interacts with its stakeholders and consumers by being a sustainable enterprise and focused towards the society and environment. It has adopted the strategy of representing itself as the company which offer eco-friendly products and promote itself with the help of social media platforms. It has highlighted its efforts towards using sustainability and eco-friendly material for the packaging of the products and its messages of promotion comprising advertisements (Prosser, 2018). For the promotion of the product and sustainable image, company use social media and make its efforts to create a responsible corporate citizen image. Besides this, Haighs make use of retail stores to promote its offering and tourist center to make the brand familiar in the eyes of the visitors. Moreover, some part of the company’s production is also offered to the wholesalers who give their efforts to promote the product and brand through stores at a niche or special market.
Competitive advantage and Positioning and Marketing objective
Marketing is comprised of various operations that need proper research and planning before any other promotions, public relations or advertising activities. While promoting or marketing the product Haigh’s Chocolates might face some of the challenges or potential issues such as:
One of the keys to success for the business is providing services and products which are demanded by the customers in the market. The issues that customers have should be resolved by the service or product that company offer in the market (Olenski, 2014). The solution needs to the most operative method that its advantages are not so hard to communicate. It is very difficult for companies like Haigh’s Chocolates to recognize the needs of a huge number of people available in the market.
Customers are inclined to buy the products by the messages of marketing transferred by media, comprising print media like magazines. Mostly humor is utilized in the commercial messages in order to get the attention of the customer. However, what is perceived as funny in one culture can be considered as insulting or confusing in another culture. Therefore, Haigh’s Chocolates need to create effective advertising that can help in accurately translating the message of promotion from one language to another language. This needs a thorough understanding of the customs, religions, culture, and morals that dominate in that particular location of the business. The things that motivate or influence customers differ from one country to another (Hill, 2018).
Executives of the business from various countries or locations can face various obstacles to effective communication due to differences in the language. The classic pace of business discussions can be different (Tischler, 2018).
In order to create quality content, there is need of skills and time. Lack of sufficient time is debatably one of the main obstacles to marketing a product. Another is lack of appropriate budget to promote the product in the market can result in losing a major part of the target market (Unger, 2018).
Haigh’s Chocolates Company deals with high competition in the market from companies like Cadbury and Nestle. Both of this company perform extremely well in promoting their product which is a barrier for the company as it has to work a lot on the research and development to identify the best possible promotional campaigns (Product Hub, 2015).
It is very important to know about the target market for the production company is aiming towards before planning any marketing activity (Kolowich, 2018).
Target market
Another main challenge the business can face while promoting the product is charging the appropriate price. This is the aspect that can help in gaining the highest gross profits depending on the margin of profit of every unit and total sales.
The location or place that is selected to sell the products can break or make the product as every channel of distribution offer variety of challenges (Edmunds, 2018).
Conclusion
From the above-specified marketing plan of Haigh’s Chocolates, it has been identified that manufacturers of the Haigh’s focuses on offering maximum quality to the customers along with standard and premium chocolates which make them quite famous in their market. Haigh’s Chocolate Company is a highly reliable brand of Australia because it manufactures the chocolate taste in different varieties. The key operations of the company are that it is known for offering family possessed a brand of chocolate associated with manufacturing and retailing. The unique selling proposition of the company is manufacturing chocolates of standard quality with the raw beans of cocoa and the product is categorized with the premium quality along with this it focuses on the young people and its target market purchase chocolates for their own utilization and for the purpose of presenting it as a gift. In the market, there are big competitors present such as Cadbury chocolates and Nestle. All the competitors of the company accumulate the anxieties in the marketing research, along with the firm’s supply chain administration is performed with the viewpoint to make the greater rivalries on the market. It has been assessed from the above analysis that Haigh’s Chocolate is a well-known simple producer of the chocolates who try to deliver satisfaction to the customer by offering standard quality chocolates along with chocolates with a premium brand.
This report has covered the analysis of the Haigh’s Chocolate and its marketing plan has been discussed. Along with this analysis of the products of chocolate in relation to its marketing strategies followed by SWOT Analysis has been performed. Besides this, a report has discussed the competitive advantage and positioning of the company’s product has been highlighted. The marketing strategies that have been discussed is marketing mix which involves four different aspects of the business such as product, price, place, and promotion. Moreover, in the end, a report has highlighted some of the potential issues and challenges that Haigh’s Chocolate can face in implementing marketing plan and promoting the product in the market.
References
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