Situation Analysis
The Canadian coffee market is experiencing very fast growth as competition intensifies among the industry players. Each of the industry players is seeking to be established strategically within the market as a way of cementing their positions as retailers of the commodity.
Just Us! only operates within a smaller market area in Nova Scotia, yet it requires to expand the market outreach to effectively beat the growing competition from other players. Competition is mainly based on the fair trade coffee concept, which is more than a mere product brand.
Objectives
The unique business ideology, the focus on retail and wholesale business, as well as the specialised market approach will enable Just Us! to penetrate into newer markets other than the traditional Nova Scotia market. Just Us! will effectively break into the entire Canadian market in 2015.
Company Analysis
Just Us! has its goals focused on achieving significant viability and sustaining progressive Fair Trade business that serves the workers, the society, and takes into account the aspect of environmental sustainability.
The company’s culture is rooted in the idea of returning value, especially to the community of producers who often are taken advantage of by the middlemen.
The unique Just Us! cafe experience is set to attract more coffee consumers just to share in the experience. The unique cafes have revolutionised the coffee business as they offer buyers with an all new experience that varies greatly from the traditional shopping experience.
More buyers are likely to embrace and appreciate this new model, resulting in the company making huge sales and revenues in return.
Opportunities
Exclusive coffee shops and cafes have strongly grown and become embraced fully by the market.
People have integrated this practise into their lifestyles, thereby providing a rising demand for the commodity and related services. In turn, this offers Just Us! a lucrative and highly promising market to serve.
Competitive Advantage Sources
Just Us! is a strong enterprise that has expanded its product line to include a variety of products, including sugar, tea, and chocolate. These wide ranges of products are organically manufactured. This helps the company to attract a significant number of customers.
Additionally, Just Us! has strategically established its coffee cafes within the compounds of various university institutions. This is a critically strong area for the company because most of the university students are concerned about fair trade and organic commodities.
The main weakness for Just Us! is its small market area within which it operates. The venture has failed to establish a significant market presence outside Canada’s Maritime Provinces, despite having begun operating in 1996.
The company equally lacks a more elaborate system of distribution compared to some of its market rivals like Kraft Foods and Nestle.
The market share for Just Us! is comparatively small because of the company’s limited business performance. Lack of experience in management has seen the company’s advertisement done dismally. This has limited the extent of its market penetration efforts.
Customer Analysis
Just Us! serves an elaborate customer base that includes wholesale buyers, offices, individuals, and coffee cafe buyers. Several selling points have been established by the company to ensure that customers benefit from the unique selling points.
The office customers mainly entail employees and employers who take coffee as they continue with their jobs at their places of work. The wholesale buyers, on the other hand, acquire the coffee in bulk for purposes of selling to small scale buyers.
Individual buyers purchase the commodity either from the cafes where they consume it on the spot or buy from the coffee shops for home consumption.
The business model value creation focuses on organic, as well as fair trade product certification. The certification reassures buyers that the products they acquire meet the highest quality standards, thereby enhancing return buying.
Just Us! products also rely on an elaborate distribution network that includes grocery chains, institutions of higher education, health food stores, specialised coffee shops, and restaurants.
This ensures strategic positioning, which allows buyers to gain access to the coffee easily even while undergoing their daily chores and career roles.
Buyers’ decision process depends on the health related implications of consuming coffee. Health concerns are a significant aspect among commodity consumers, thus any revelations indicating negative health implications are likely to affect the buying decision.
The degree with which product marketing is conducted equally influences purchase decisions made by buyers. Low advertising results in low purchase decisions, while high advertising transforms to high purchase decisions.
Competition Analysis
Just Us! faces intense competition in the market. This has affected its market position compared to its significant rivals. The competitors have worked towards establishing loyal customer bases in Nova Scotia where Just Us! has a strong market presence and share.
Additionally, well established chains have a presence in the market and they use their strong brand equity and financial base to tap into the ‘fair trade’ market concept.
Some of the competitors boast of well established and renowned brand names, such as Starbucks. These major brands have gradually expanded into Just Us!’s traditional Nova Scotia market region, thus enhancing their chances of eclipsing the latter in its own market.
Apart from selling coffee, most of the rival players have an expanded product line, including chocolate, espresso, salads, pastries, tea, and sandwiches that enable them to attract a huge number of buyers into their premises.
This helps them to build the revenue base easily because they do not depend on a narrow product portfolio.
The competitors, however, have a weakness of venturing into the market without fully considering the risks involved. In essence, most of the rival firms end up failing in their businesses.
Additionally, the competing firms do not seem to be keen on developing unique concepts like what Just Us! has achieved. Thus, they do not have a greater chance of establishing loyal firms compared to Just Us!
Brand Positioning
Just Us! will position itself as a value product that is worth consuming on a daily basis. As a value product, all the branded commodities will remain affordable to the buyers to enable them purchase them on a daily basis.
Just Us! coffee will retail at a relatively lower price compared to the average price charged by the competitors in the industry.
The target market will mainly include home buyers, office consumers, and wholesalers. The home buyers consist of individuals who purchase the coffee product in its packaged form and go to their houses to prepare the beverage by themselves.
Office consumers consist of organisations or corporations that buy coffee for purposes of serving their staff and clientele. Wholesale buyers, on the other hand, consist of buyers who acquire Just Us! coffee in large quantities and sell the product in smaller quantities to retailers.
Just Us! will retain its emotional brand promise. As a fair trade company, Just Us! does more than just business as it seeks to empower the larger community. The company commits itself to continue with direct purchasing and acquisition of coffee products from producers without using middlemen.
Any consumer who acquires a Just Us! brand, therefore, will be enhancing the efforts of the company to support the producers who are based in various countries.
The company’s customers have a better reason to believe and trust its products because they have been packaged with a high quality aspect in mind.
While Just Us! provides a high quality product, it also ensures affordability on the part of the consumers by charging a lower price compared to the rivals.
Selected Marketing Strategy
Just Us! will initiate a different strategy for marketing its products where it will consider adopting penetration pricing. In addition, the firm will advertise its products extensively and expand its distribution to enhance the distribution network and enhance the growth rate.
Action Plan
Product
Just Us! will spread its product line to introduce product types such as sandwiches and salads within the next 12 months. The company will also seek to expand the coffee product, which is the core business competency of the firm.
Introducing salads and sandwiches will enable the company to target younger consumers at the age of 20, in addition to the usual consumer bracket. Just Us! will specially remodel the product offer to target the younger market segment between 20 and 24 years of age.
An addition of various brands of juices and sodas to the product line will enable the company to effectively address the needs of this new segment.
Price
Just Us! coffee will retail at $2 for each mug, while a packet weighing 500g will retail at $8. The company intends to penetrate new markets throughout Canada and set its prices slightly lower than what the competitors charge.
This approach in pricing in combination with the high quality coffee product will ensure that Just Us! will penetrate into newer markets easily. This will, in turn, see Just Us! expand its current market share.
Distribution
The company will begin selling the Just Us! coffee brand to the market through normal retailers and shops. This will be in addition to the currently existing distribution channel as a way of reaching more buyers.
Just Us! equally intends to practise franchising to increase the number of coffee stores and cafes spread across Canada.
In highly lucrative regional markets, the company will advance loans to willing franchisees to entice more traders and individuals in establishing franchise shops. This will see the market presence increase significantly.
Promotion
Just Us! will deploy sales representatives in at least five regions in Canada where it had not previously established operations. The sales representatives will play a critical role in ensuring that Just Us! develops new outlets for the distribution of its coffee products.
The firm will acquire a sales trainer whose main role will entail offering training to the newly hired sales force. To sustain this programme, the company will set aside an additional $150,000 to the company’s budget figure to meet the training costs.
Just Us! will increase advertising for the cafes and restaurants based in the various university market areas because of the lucrative nature of these market locations.