Strategic Marketing Plan For Tassal - Improving Sustainability And Competitiveness

Discuss about the case study Marketing Management for Marketing Situation and Structured Process.

 

 

A potential marketing plan is considered as a structured process of analysing a marketing situation, which helps the firm to attain its long term goals. Fava Neves (2007) stated that marketing plan ensures efficient utilisation of the resources and responds against the unexpected business changes. In this regards, Holds et al. (2008) identified that ‘strategic fit’ with the business environment is central to the effective marketing plan maintained by the organisations. Considering the fact, the present study attempts to develop a strategic marketing plan to improve the overall sustainability of the business, considering the case study of an Atlantic salmon producer Tassal. At the outset of the survey, a situation analysis of the firm has been conducted, followed by the strength and weakness analysis. Depending on the outcome a suitable marketing strategy has been recommended to enhance the current competitiveness and brand sustainability of the Tassal.

Marketing Goals and objectives

The management of Tassal leads the market with the innovative marketing and the product range. According to Lima et al. (2015), the dual local and import supply chain strategy is one of the risk management strategies of the firm.  The marketing objective of the firm is to capture the major segments of the domestic market and to be the leader the processed food market.

The current Tassal’s strategy is to focus primarily on the domestic market. Therefore, special effeorts are taken to improve its supply chain system. In the opinion of Fisher (2013), Tassal is an amalgamation of Tasmania and Salmon that makes the firm one of the largest Salmon business unit in the market of Australia.

Review of current and anticipated organisational resources Needed for the task Under review

The company employs almost 700 people at its six marine farms, two hatcheries and the three processing facilities. The core retail and wholesale markets of  Tassal has uplifted by 22.1% and 17.4% respectively (www.tassal.com.au, 2016). Tassal has increased its investment volume because of the big wholesale market like shop, food shop, in Australia. The firm has employed the required resources to sell the products in every corner of the Australia.

Present and potential customers:

 

The most of the target customers of Tassel are the female seafood users. The age range is about 25-49 years old (www.tassal.com.au, 2016). Solér (2012) also stated that the most of the customers are married and prefers to buy on behalf of the whole family.

 

Atlantic salmon is mostly used by the buyers.

 

The actual purchasers are married women and are not individual customer.

 

The kids and other family members influence the women to purchase the seafood products. However, the bill is paid by the sole purchaser of the product.

 

 

The company produces a range of seafood products according to the current need of the customers.

 

Tassel provides healthy seafood products, and the packaging is more informative than the current rival like Huon. Thus, the trustworthiness is increasing among the customers.

 

The increased pricing issue can become significant reasons for losing the current customer base. Sipahi (2010) stated that an adequate brand pricing of the competitor could significantly create a purchase issue for the customers.

 

This could affect both the long term and short term exchange process on each purchase.

 

 

The non-customer has become more aware regarding the pricing policy of the products, which is not being met by the current firm.

 

It has been identified that due to the financial issue, the company is unable to maintain an adequate distribution and pricing scheme to attract a large group of professional customers. Thus, the brand recall has been found lesser as compared to the competitors.

 

Proper brand promotion and an introduction of various ready to cook products could help the firm converting non-customers into the existing customer base.

External Environment:

Element	Description
Competition	Huon is the major competitors of the brand
	The production, distribution, pricing and the promotion of Huon is better than the Tassal
	Selling a basket of seafood with the salmon fish is the core business value of Huon (Fisher, 2013).
Economic growth and stability	The disposable income across all regions has been increased (including Melbourne).
	The increased competition among the rivals might reduce the brand attractiveness of the firm.
Political trends	According to the Consumer Act of 2010, the firm needs to renew its industrial pricing under the surveillance of the federal government (www.aspecthuntley.com.au, 2016).
	The taxation and the legal norms implemented by the government and  customer advocacy groups can also impact on the operational effectiveness.
Legal and regulatory issues	A flat corporate tax rate of 30% on net earnings beside the goods tax could reduce the profitability of the business.
	The trade law could also affect the employment of new product lines within the business.
Technological Advancement	The technology used by the firm helps to provide flexible and smart work culture among the  employees.
	The firm does not use acoustic harassment devices (AHD) that frightens the marine animals and the mammals (Stormoen et al. 2012).
	Tassal used the digital age of the business operation and used the technology to afford best growing conditions for the salmon by reducing the environmental impact.
Socio-cultural Trends	Fostering the well organised culture within the firm supports the transparent work culture for all of the employees.
	Regular Community engagement activity helps the organisation to receive the support of the stakeholder.
	Salmon fish farming waste impacts on the seaside area and the marine lives of Tasmanian salmon fishing industry.

Strength

The annual report of 2016 of Tassal configures that the management has ensured a sustainable long term scrutiny to its products (www.asx.com.au, 2016). The customers are highly satisfied with the ethical norms and the value created by the enterprise. According to Böhm et al. (2013), Tassal has optimised its supply chain system with the scale support of national coordination, procurement and distribution process. The management has introduced several product diversities in salmon and seafood segment to improve the customer proposition value. The skilled workforce is the major strength of the brand, which has entrusted the business with additional benefits of utilising the employee expertise in the sales operation. The management has primarily focused on taping the significant segment of the market (www.asx.com.au, 2016). The efficacy of the operation process facilitated the enterprise to reduce the procurement cost and complexities, which turned into a beneficial aspect to increase its distribution measures in the domestic market. The particular action led Tassal to increase its net profit after tax by 15% and the total dividend by 21.4%.

Weakness

In the background of the existing context, Fine (2009) determined that the domestic and the global supply of the salmon segment is resulting in the dramatic price fall in the Australian market. The existing report display that the enterprise is experiencing the cash liquidity issue, which enforced the management to become a ‘price taker’ than the ‘price maker’ (Benderly, 2013). In the similar instance, Bergfjord (2007) specified that the overcapitalisation processing system leads the company towards the unsustainable level of debts. According to Böhm et al. (2013), the major weakness of the enterprise is its lack of coordination in the cycle production process. The particular issue has led Tassal towards a high stock loss and the insufficient stock prohibited the company from meeting its sales demand. The above action left an adverse impact on the customers’ contract scenario and simultaneously on its goodwill.

Opportunity

The previous reports of Tassal reflect that its marketing strategy continues to deliver long term sustainable returns due to the high per capita consumption rate in the salmon segment (Creswell, 2016).  In the similar section, Bergfjord (2007) denoted that Tassal has enabled to lift up its revenue and the profit margin due to the strong salmon consumption and demand rate in the Australian market. The increasing demand rate facilitated Tassal to increase its net profit by 20%. Accessing the previous figure, Böhm et al. (2013) find a prospective opportunity for the enterprise in the future through its persistent focuses on the salmon division.

Threats

The growing competition and the lower profitability rate have been the major threat of Tassal. Bergfjord (2007) claimed that the Australian governing authority is in the process of changing its tax policies. The concrete action creates an adverse impact on the financial aspects of Tassal. Since, the liquidity margin of the brand is limited, therefore, a continuous tax change policy affects on the brand’s financial projection procedure (www.tassal.com.au, 2016). Moreover, the increasing rate of interest in the financial institutions has increased the threat measure of Tassal.

Lima et al. (2015) figured out that despite of the discrepancies, Tassal has managed to maintain a sales consistency in the salmon division. However, emphasizing exclusively on the single product might lead the brand towards a product saturation margin, therefore, the marketing goal and objectives of the brand require being upselling the different segments of products along with the salmon item to increase the product ranges.

The financial downturn has been the major constraints of Tassal, which prohibits the management from enhancing the promotional measures of its new products (Bergfjord, 2007). However, the Australian market has an emerging demand rate in the salmon products. Therefore, Tassal can easily provide its franchisees to the popular franchisee agents that can take the initiative of promoting its new product by maintaining a consistent sales margin of the salmon segments. Franchisee would be a cost effective effort that can help the firm to generate revenue and simultaneously to promote its products before targeted audience without any investment.

A persistent scrutiny would be required to investigate the approach of the franchisee firms. Any sort of discrepancies would damper the good of Tassal, which might impact on the demand rate of the salmon segments (Sipahi, 2010). Thus, once a week the control unit needs examine on the franchisees’ efforts.

The current study reflects that the firm has a major emphasis on the domestic market  and committed to the growing per capita consumption of salmon. While conducting the research it has been speculated that the current marketing research strategy of the firm has reduced the sales and volume of the firm. Hence, the firm would need to keep focus on the market penetration policy with attracting a new product range. The research associate has provided a strategic recommendation like collaboration with some other franchises for improving the performance.

(No Date) Available at: https://www.aspecthuntley.com.au/ (Accessed: 8 August 2016).

Agency, D. (2009) Tassal Tasmanian salmon. Available at: https://www.tassal.com.au/ (Accessed: 8 August 2016).

Benderly, B.L. (2013) ‘“Fishing is good”’, Science, 2(1), pp. 122–124.

Bergfjord, O.J. (2007) ‘IS THERE A FUTURE FOR SALMON FUTURES? AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROSPECTS OF A POTENTIAL FUTURES MARKET FOR SALMON’, Aquaculture Economics & Management, 11(2), pp. 113–132.

Böhm, A., Hm, A.B. and Bohm, A. (2013) The SWOT analysis. Germany: GRIN Verlag.

Creswell, A. (2016) Tassal group limited 1H16 results mark A Ryan, managing director & CEO. Available at: https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20160211/pdf/434zf608rd8rql.pdf (Accessed: 8 August 2016).

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Sipahi, S. (2010). Expanding Operations in Fast-Food Industry under Uncertain Market Conditions, International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, 1(1), pp.74-79.

Solér, C. (2012). Conceptualizing Sustainably Produced Food for Promotional Purposes: A Sustainable Marketing Approach. Sustainability, 4(12), pp.294-340

Stormoen, M., Skjerve, E. and Aunsmo, A. (2012) ‘Modelling salmon lice, Lepeophtheirus salmonis , reproduction on farmed Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L’, Journal of Fish Diseases, 36(1), pp. 25–33.