Product Strategy And Chocolates Management Analysis - Haigh's Chocolate Company Essay.

Analysis and Evaluation of brand (SWOT Analysis)

Discuss about the Product Strategy and Chocolates Management.

Haigh’s Chocolate Company is known as the largest brand in Australia as it produces the varieties of chocolates and also flavours of chocolates. It also has largest store in Australia. Haigh’s Chocolates is founded by Alfred Haigh who has small ice cream and dessert shop in 20^th Century. Now, it is a family business along with constant management style nada their business are associated strategically. This chocolate brand is mostly famous and successful brand in South Australia as it is made up of handmade chocolates. This company is famous for its long term relationship and strong maintained relationship with its loyal customers and target customers. This company is considered as the fourth generation chocolate producer where raw cocoa beans are poured in the German machine for the purpose of using it in Festive season.

Here, the researcher will make a report about the competitive advantages and positioning of Haigh’s Chocolate Company, along with this; it will also describe the strength and weakness of the company through applying SWOT analysis. The paper will show the marketing objectives and target market of the firm, by showing all the designs and posters used by the company, the report will show how Haigh’s Chocolate uses its promotion and product strategy to gain its objectives.

The main competitors of the firm include Cadbury, Mayfield Chocolates and Nestle with the entire firms that operates in a highly competition food producing industries. These are the known competitors of the firm that are framed while the market is meeting the demands and requirements and also the management if supply chain works with the perception for making much greater competition in the market.  Haigh’s chocolate is the mere chocolate producer which delivers high standard and branded chocolates. The company aims to regulate the quality of chocolate successfully (Njuguna, 2009). Competitors of the company deal with the development and also it signifies for adopting the corporate behaviour for long term surviving. The requirement for attracting the customer and employees and also innovation along with a respect to right type of talent establishes high level of development (Njuguna, 2009). The company also maintains standard quality as well as introduces new trendy products and goods each and every year which maintains the culture of its family successfully.

The company’s competitors such as Nestle, produces wide ranges of products like breakfast cereals, packaged water, chocolate drinks and also baby foods while Haigh’s functions only with varieties of chocolates. The company is functioning successfully and owns a brand image as high quality products are provided by the company. The firm gives the customer delight through giving a huge varieties of chocolates in many different flavours such as milk chocolate, liquor chocolate etc (Njuguna, 2009). The company operates towards strong interaction that establishes along with the public by visiting to the factory in order to observe the manufacturing procedures. The firm even sales through online, as well as e-commerce on the basis of platforms that provides opportunity for expanding the sales to new markets. The firm also develops the shares of the market through expanding in the global markets.

Competitive Advantage and Positioning

When the Haigh’s is considered as the integrated producer then with it the retailers are able to make control where the delivery is made on the design of the standard forum of return then there is created the phenomenon of the distribution packaging (Haigh, 2017). The procedure is utilized for the purpose to represent the goods and commodities which are to be made distributed in a random manner. The action which has been executed is for the five years that covers the years from 2011- 2016. The main marketing objectives of Haigh’s Chocolate are to manage the brand awareness and also featuring goods from dark decadence range and varieties as a first step to sign loyalty (Njuguna, 2009). The company even has short term objectives under which it targets to work closely along with joint ventures for advertising brand. This chocolate industry has long term objectives under which it creates brand awareness and set this as a benchmark that is to be accomplished in each and every new market.

The company use joint venture that is TV advertising campaigns. The firm has the objective for compiling with competition and consumer Act 2010. The industry aims at increasing the shares of the market of cocoa delight gourmet chocolate by 18% in each and every Australian capital city (Baker and Hart, 2011). It also has the aims to comply with vision of dominance in the market as it targets to establish market. The company also has the objective for developing markets that will allocate 20% advertising cost for the brand awareness and along with this 30% of sales of machine made chocolates which will signifies the new markets that are on track for achieving the target of sales.

A target market is the group of people whose needs and preferences are examined by organisations to match the product range of them. Determining an appropriate target market is great approach for benefit for a company. Determining a target market helps in creating a specific marketing campaign, enhance sales and also in decreasing the number of competitors in the market. Having a well-defined target market is now very much important for the companies (Januszewska, Viaene and Verbeke, 2001). The target market that Haighs plays is the targeting customers who are seeking high quality premium chocolates (Santich and McAllister, n.d.). The company is among the few providers of premium chocolates but the quality of the brand ensures its dissimilarity from other chocolate brands. Here is the market segmentation for Haigh’s chocolate:

Marketing Objectives

Geographic segmentation: It is the first segmentation strategy. In average, an Australian consumes an average of 7kg of confectionary annually in which 77% of the confectionary sales are related to chocolates, which makes Australia a market of more than $2 billion (Santich and McAllister, n.d.). Haigh’s must use the nature of its country citizens and country’s climate to promote its brand.

Demographic segmentation: Demographic segmentation variable includes the age, gender, family size, income and many more (Januszewska, Viaene and Verbeke, 2001). Australia is among the richest countries around the globe and the citizens are always in hunt of luxury lifestyle. Haigh’s must use its premium chocolates to ensure that rich people of its country only buys its premium chocolate products.

Psychographic segmentation: This segments the target market according to their lifestyles. Its variable includes activities, opinions, attitudes and values. The lifestyle of Australians are quite luxury so Haigh’s will have no difficulty in selling costly products.

Behavioural Segmentation: this segmentation is based on customer actual behaviour towards the product. The brand loyalty of Haigh’s in chocolate is quite solid among its consumers.

Benefit segmentation: This segmentation requires marketers to divide the market based on the perceived benefit of the product or service. This form of segmentation is usually applied in all forms of industry (Baker and Hart, 2011). Some of the benefits that consumers expect from Haigh’s chocolate management are simple payment procedures, high quality premium chocolates, rewards and discounts in online shopping. Target market of the company looks out for high quality products, exclusive brand image, good service and helpful store staff.

Usage rate segmentation: This segmentation divides the consumers according to how much they consume the product. In average, an Australian consumes an average of 7kg of confectionary annually in which 77% of the confectionary sales are related to chocolates (Shekhar and Raveendran, 2013). Thus, Australians consumes a lot of chocolates which is helpful for Haigh’s to enhance its revenue.

The management of the company gets its technique of high quality premium chocolates from Swiss in the year 1950, and with it, it has managed to design its store and promotion successfully. By this way, the company has produced the basis of international chocolate brand for the chocolate of Haigh’s brand (Shekhar and Raveendran, 2013). The company aims in remaining attractive and operates under the model of high vertical supply chain model. The majority of the mass sold in the business are purchased as raw materials and most of them are sold from own network of stores (Shekhar and Raveendran, 2013). Its vertically integrates supply chain has excellent governance over the products and has high level of independence to promote superiority in reprocess of in-between packaging.

Target Market

In this packaging design, chocolates are placed in paper cups by hands rather than plastic melded trays. It is a bio plastics cardboard which is 100% biodegradable. The packaging of this form includes down-gauging cartons to reduce the material consumption and to increase the recycle content (Shekhar and Raveendran, 2013). It is done in this way to promote the fact that fibre in the carton board is sustainable. 

Haigh’s mainly develops collectable and reuse gifts pack from fabric bags, wooden containers and tinware to reduce the amount of disposable packaging (Sondhi and Chawla, 2016). This way, it also offers a unique range of ever-changing seasonal gifts. 

For having a unique product in its chocolate range, Haigh’s could invent a new chocolate bar with different fillings in it. This chocolate bar would have different fillings inside combining the different chocolate varieties from its premium chocolate range into a large chocolate bar. It could contain different types of truffles, dark chocolate, Turkish and Italian taste and many more into it.

Haigh’s Chocolate industry has fixed their price along with the classification of the products where the products are creating the use of it. They are fixed with the selection of the consumers as well as the law of supply and demand-chain is made applicable (Jovanov-Marjanova, 2012). The company believes that with the quality comes price. As the quality of the chocolates is quite high so it requires continuous marketing to be on the top and the price of the Haigh’s products is also much high in few cases, on the other hand it is quite reasonable (Baker and Hart, 2011). Products like, Haigh’s dark chocolates, milk chocolates and liquor chocolates give the taste of raw chocolates at reasonable price.

Haigh’s chocolates are considered to be premium brand of chocolates because of the positioning but still for the purpose of lower priced chocolates, it is even agreed around several target segments. Haigh’s chocolates have wide varieties of products in the chocolate segment as well, as the pricing of each chocolate is quite distinct on the basis of the kind of the customers and choice of the customers who can buy it (Blocher, 2007). In all these circumstances, the Haigh’s chocolates brand is the clear winner which is priced in high and also low variants; the brand has the position of gifting and also the selling sales volume highly at higher prices.

The products of Haigh’s chocolate operate under high vertical incorporated model of supply chain. The collection of products sold with the business with respect to raw materials with the number of stores. The small amount less than 5% is sold with the wholesale through the help of retailers which functions in niche market location and promotes as well as enhance the sales of the networking stores (Gabrielli and Baghi, 2014). The company is placed at Adelaide along with the factory as well as the visitors’ centre and it is available from Monday to Saturday for the tourists. The visitors and the tourists have the opportunity for dealing with the fresh quality of chocolates and also high premium chocolates after visits (Januszewska, Viaene and Verbeke, 2001). There are even particular places in Australia where all these chocolates doesn’t get advertise as well as fit the promotion of these products the places are selected in a way for maximizing the product capacity in various entire locations (Hatch and Schultz, 2008). Due to the channel distribution, the costs of Chocolates are quite high but still on the basis of the demand in the market, the cost are going to be high.

The Product of the company outlines a continuous communication with its customer’s on packaging and sustainability through promotions, social media and advertisements. Promotion is defined as the publication of a producer, organisation or venture in order to increase the sales or public and brand awareness (Hatch and Schultz, 2008). It is an activity that supports or encourages a cause or aim.  

Some of the tools that Haigh’s utilises are advertising, sales promotion, public relation and direct marketing. Company does the advertising through different types of media such as newspaper, television, direct mail, magazine and the internet (Sondhi and Chawla, 2016). It also uses the sales promotion activity top grab the attention of new customers, in order to reward the existing customers and also to increase the consumption of occasional customers (Hatch and Schultz, 2008). The promotion strategy of the company helps in attracting new customers and also in increasing the market share. It assists companies by enhancing the sales and by increasing the value to the customers.

Conclusion

From the above report the researcher has found that the main competitors of the firm include Cadbury, Mayfield Chocolates and Nestle with the entire firms that operates in a highly competition food producing industries. These are the known competitors of the firm that are framed while the market is meeting the demands and requirements and also the management if supply chain works with the perception for making much greater competition in the market. It has been also found that The firm even sales through online, as well as e-commerce on the basis of platforms that provides opportunity for expanding the sales to new markets. The firm also develops t5he shares of the market through expanding in the global markets.

The report has found that the Company use joint venture that is TV advertising campaigns. The firm has the objective for compiling with competition and consumer Act 2010. The industry aims at increasing the shares of the market of cocoa delight gourmet chocolate by 18% in each and every Australian capital city. It also has the aims to comply with vision of dominance in the market as it targets to establish market. The company believes that with the quality comes price. As the quality of the chocolates is quite high so it requires continuous marketing to be on the top and the price of the Haigh’s products is also much high in few cases, on the other hand it is quite reasonable. Products like, Haigh’s dark chocolates, milk chocolates and liquor chocolates give the taste of raw chocolates at reasonable price.

References

Baker, A. (2013). Teaching Quality Control with Chocolate Chip Cookies. Teaching Statistics, 36(1), pp.2-6.

Baker, M. and Hart, S. (2011). Product strategy and management. 1st ed. New Delhi: Pearson Education.

Blocher, M. (2007). „Market Testing“ und „Target Costing“. Verwaltung & Management, 13(4), pp.199-204.

Gabrielli, V. and Baghi, I. (2014). Online brand community within the integrated marketing communication system: When chocolate becomes seductive like a person. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(4), pp.385-402.

Haigh, S. (2017). HAIGH’S CHOCOLATES. [online] Available at: https://www.qad.com/documents/case-studies/haighs-case-study.pdf [Accessed 3 Apr. 2017].

Hatch, M. and Schultz, M. (2008). Taking brand initiative. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Januszewska, R., Viaene, J. and Verbeke, W. (2001). Market Segmentation for Chocolate in Belgium and Poland. Journal of Euromarketing, 9(3), pp.1-26.

Jovanov-Marjanova, T. (2012). Marketing research of the chocolate market in Macedonia. Marketing, 43(1), pp.62-76.

Njuguna, J. (2009). Strategic Positioning for Sustainable Competitive Advantage: An Organizational Learning Approach. KCA Journal of Business Management, 2(1).

Santich, B. and McAllister, P. (n.d.). Haigh's chocolates. 1st ed.

Shekhar, S. and Raveendran, P. (2013). Chocolate Packaging and Purchase Behaviour: A Cluster Analysis Approach. Indian Journal of Marketing, 43(6), p.5.

Sondhi, N. and Chawla, D. (2016). Segmenting and Profiling the Chocolate Consumer: An Emerging Market Perspective. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 23(2), pp.123-143.