Essay: Upper Echelons Theory & Market Orientation: A Discussion.

What GrainCorp is about

Discuss About The Upper Echelons Theory Market Orientation?

It’s with the help of marketing management that has seen GrainCorp grow, develop, rise, and survive for the last one hundred and one years.  As Dr. Anh says, marketing also begins and ends with customers. Last year 2016, GrainCorp was celebrating it’s a hundredth birthday. Started in the year 1916 as New South Wales bulk grain to being a global Grain handler: both producing and supplying and being a supplier of Malt even to The United States as Great Western Malting, to Canada as Canada Malting Limited and The United Kingdom as Bairds Malt Limited, their drive all through has been the customer is always right and whatever we do, we do it for the customer (Beeson, 2014).

GrainCorp does accumulation, storage, marketing, transport, shipping and processing their products whether raw or finished. GrainCorp is in the Agribusiness industry basically dealing with grains as their product. GrainCorp has a mission of being the leading international agribusiness, as our clients most trusted and preferred partner. GrainCorp Strategy is to focus on and strengthen their main business including pursuing of development chances with worthiness fruit leaping from their investments, growing their grain original source and standardizing their efficiency and proficiency of their services (Bosworth & Cutbush, 2014).

GrainCorp is valued for its commitment to the safety of their employees, contractors, their site visitors and the surrounding community. This company proactively makes sure that the individuals, the colleagues are solemnly responsible for their safety as much as they are concerned with the safety of others. As Dr. Anh, GrainCorp too believes that the heart of every business is the clients or the customers. GrainCorp puts the customers either selfish or dies needs first before everything else.

This is supposed to mean that GrainCorp ensures a great product with standard or high-quality products of value. GrainCorp believes that the product should not only be of standard quality but also be fulfilling the needs of the customers. They achieved this by basically listening and eventually implementing the well-mannered and honest suggestions of their customers (Wo? & Gawlik, 2015).

According to GrainCorp, there are two main orientations of marketing; product orientation, and market Orientation. Product orientation is viewed as an approach of the company to concentrate on the acquiring of the seeds, growth of the grains, storage of the grains and other necessary processes required to be of high standards in order to produce a standard quality grain.  Market orientation is about how the product will sell, how get customers, maintain the existing customers and get more and more customers while maintaining a certain level of profits on their side, satisfy customers and fuel the business and keep it up and running.

Market orientation of GrainCorp

GrainCorp has had several slogans all operating at the different nonspecific and different intervals. Some of the health and safety slogans are as listed below to help employees work in the best interest of the company.

• Zero Harm
• Safe at home
• Safe at work
• Safe for life

The New South Wales Grain Elevators Board later in 1992 privatized and renamed GrainCorp was established by the New South Wales Department of Agriculture in 1916 to use modern strategies to handle the grains in Australia. By then, the grains were still being produced and stored manually in hessian sacks which made the process expensive in a then growing economy that did not need old expensive strategies for its growth and development. The actual grains dealt with are wheat, barley, and canola. The company has four reporting segments as follows

• Storage & Logistics
• Malt
• Marketing
• Oils

 They had to find better and efficient ways of handling the grains. Today, GrainCorp operates one hundred and eighty elevators in over three thousand kilometers from Queensland, through New South Wales to Portland holding over twenty million tones. In 1996, GrainCorp became the first bulk dealer to sell and buy grains in Australia.

Today, GrainCorp Marketing is known in all regions of Australia growing grains while international trade is done via global offices in North America, China, the UK, Singapore and Europe.

GrainCorp world’s top position as one of the four maltsters began when they acquired United Malt Holdings back in 2009.This Company continued to grow and opening up of GrainCorp Oils in 2012.  GrainCorp has basically been focusing on partnerships and expansion, key resources being customers and the grains. However, they were limited by the infrastructure.

Customers remain at the heart of every strategy and any plan for this company. So every laid out strategy is for the good of the customer. GrainCorp started serving Australians with Grains for their farms and from the farms of their fellow Eastern Australians. GrainCorp has operations in Australia, U.SA, Canada and the U.K for grains and malt we can simply note that GrainCorp is a global supplier.

 The business is good for them as their service delivery and expertise is sought by craft distiller sectors and global beer brewers. GrainCorp simply serves the whole world they customers being of diversified backgrounds and from different countries with different tastes and expectations of the grains and malt. It’s therefore evident how GrainCorp has built a strong relationship with its customers [GrainCorp webpage]. It’s not easy to satisfy a diversified culture with diversified products.

GrainCorp Company Slogan

GrainCorp has several subsidiaries as listed below

• GrainCorp malt
• GrainCorp Holdings USA
• Norton organic Grain Limited
• Midley Australia
• Ridley Grain Limited
• Allied Mills Pty Limited
• Brewers Select Limited
• Grain Corp services Limited
• GrainCorp commodity management
• Heinrich Merchandise Pty Limited
• National grower Registry Pty Limited
• GrainCorp Oils Holding Limited
• Hunter Grain Pty Limited
• GrainCorp management Limited
• Grainco Australia Pty Limited

GrainCorp Malt is known for producing and supplying malt useful in the brewing, distillation, and with food industries in the United States, Asia, Canada, South America, and globally. Formerly known as United Malt Holdings it changed its name to GrainCorp Malt in the year 2009 in the Month of November after it was bought by GrainCorp Ltd, GrainCorp Malt was founded in 2006 and is based in Vancouver, Washington and is operating in Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. As of November 13, 2009, GrainCorp Malt operates as a subsidiary of GrainCorp. Ltd.

GrainCorp Holdings U.SA was formed in 2009 and deals withholding and/ or owning securities of organizations but not banks.

Grainco Australia Pty Limited functions to store and distribute wheat and barley. The company was bought in 1995 and is based in Brisbane, Australia. As of October 8, 2003, Grainco Australia Pty Limited operates as a subsidiary of GrainCorp. Ltd.

Allied Mills is known for distributing food ingredients products like flour, cereals, bran, frozen products, batters, culinary mixes and provision for product development, supply chain management, ingredient cleaning and media support services.

Hunter Grain Pty Ltd. is known for distributing imported protein materials and provision of transportation and trading services. Hunter Grain also provides bulk imports for both grain and protein meal imports, exports and third country trade with bulk custom storage and the associated bulk handling services, including bagging, fumigation, palliating, grading, weigh bridging and container loading/unloading. Also, it offers logistics services. Hunter Grain Pty Ltd. was founded in 1975 and is based in Lane Cove, Australia. As of November 30, 2007, Hunter Grain Pty Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of GrainCorp (Venkatesh, 2008).

Heinrich Merchandise Pty Ltd. offers storage and handling of commodities, merchandising, and logistics services mainly to the grain industry. Heinrich Merchandise Pty Ltd. is found in Horsham, Australia.  From January 16, 2007, Heinrich Merchandise Pty Ltd. is a subsidiary of GrainCorp. Ltd.

Competition is vital for the growth of an industry. GrainCorp is an Australian Giant operating and handling sixty percent of the region’s wheat canola and barley, chickpea, and sorghum crops. The close competitor; The Archer Daniels Midland Company is an American international food processing and commodities trading corporation with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois (Swilley, 2014).

GrainCorp Company being a worldwide producer makes it have other factors that affect its operations as it is situated in different countries altogether. The various factors that affect the company are political factors, technological factors, and much more factors.

The five c's of GrainCorp

This then examines the current and likely influence from the available influence of the political scene. The governments of various countries in which GrainCorp Company operates can have a role in influencing its operations. The government has the powers to put fines to companies that do not meet their required standards. The government also has the power to affect the pricing of commodities in the particular country. This can either make it cheaper for the people or even more expensive (Jones, 2017).

When it comes to the agribusiness industry, technology has a very big role to play in this.  It is true to say that actually, the art of producing and distributing grains on its own is actually a low technology business. According to GrainCorp company technology has played an important role in its widespread activities. Technology has made the company to be able to introduce online buying and ordering across the world.  This then makes it possible for the company to introduce new products like malt and oil (O'Keeffe, 2017).

The company collects information from the feedback from the customers mostly. This shows what the customers want. It also shows the company’s competitor as customers will name their immediate preferences. The other way in which the company obtains information is through conducting research on the sales in different parts of the world (Negi & Anand, 2017).

The company collects information from the feedback from the customers mostly. This shows what the customers want. It also shows the company’s competitor as customers will name their immediate preferences. The other way in which the company obtains information is through conducting research on the sales in different parts of the world.

GrainCorp Company has intelligently kept itself in the worldwide grain market (Faisal, 2016). Based on the fact that they operate in thirty different countries around the world means that they have to choose on whether to standardize their product for global advantages. The market strategies include:-

• Going global- this the company goes through the fact that it standardizes its products and ensures that integration of its many services.
• GrainCorp takes accountability for their decisions and actions and they own the consequences of their decisions and accept results.
• Constantly changing the product design- This is basically a move to target the youth. The new design makes it look like they produce a new thing daily and the youth really love such things.
• GrainCorp has the courage to embrace change.
• GrainCorp actively engages customers in decision-making and they keep their commitments.
• GrainCorp aims high, achieves results, celebrates success and they learn from their mistakes and do the necessary corrections

The company has done a lot in terms of marketing and this has really helped it become popular in the market.

The GrainCorp Company has plans of how to market as required by each and every Company. The company has a marketing plan that outlines the various ways in which the company does its marketing activities (Hannigan, 2012). The plan is made to cover a period of one year. The plan has all the set of marketing activities of the organization. It covers the current position of the company and where it wants to be in future

Customers

Conclusions

The type of marketing strategy and the marketing plan that GrainCorp applies has made it be on the frontline in the production and supply of grains. With the world, there is constant advice on consumption of grains. As much as a lot of consumption of wheat is discouraged small amounts of consumption are good for your health, this is not the case with consumption of other grains. Customers love consumption of grains and since almost all grains are sweet and one would like to consume more and more units of the products of grains. This is however discouraged by nutritionists as it may lead to obesity. This may decrease the sales of the grains and would negatively impact the income of the company, it's, therefore, better if the company provides fat-free grains which are actually good for the customer's health

The GrainCorp Company should always and has always strived to produce their products of quality standards and according to the market demand. GrainCorp should always strive to produce fat-free grains that doctors and nutritionists do not discourage frequent consumption of the products. GrainCorp should also strive to pay the grain owners in time, pay them what the seeds are worth and make follow-ups for the growing of the grains to ensure the quality of the growth and development of the grains is met.

References

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Bosworth, M, & Cutbush, G 2014, 'Trading Nation: Advancing Australia's Interests in World Markets', Economic Record, 90, 290, pp. 409-414, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 28 September 2017.

Faisal, A. (2016). Marketing Strategies in Online/Digital Marketing. Account and Financial Management Journal. doi:10.18535/afmj/v1i8.01

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Venkatesh, U 2008, 'The case for organized agri-retail--the Indian imperative', Journal of Services Research, 1, p. 91, Business Insights: Essentials, EBSCOhost, viewed 28 September 2017.

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