Introduction
Supply chain management refers to the whole process of producing alongside delivering a service or a product, from the initial stage of sourcing the raw materials to the last stage of delivering the product or service to the final consumers.
It starts with sourcing and extraction of the raw material. Followed by a Logistics provider taking the raw materials to a supplier, who then takes them to a manufacturer, who processes materials into a finished good. After that, the product goes to a distributor, then to a retailer, who sells it to the consumers. The moment the consumer purchases the good, the cycle is complete.
History of Mango Juice (Maaza Drink)
Around 4000 years ago, Mangoes originated in Southern Asia, particularly in Eastern India and Burma. Indians believe that mangoes signify life, and it is a national fruit of India. In 1976, the union beverages factory started selling Maaza in Africa and the Middle East as a franchise. In India, it was launched in 1976 and acquired by Coca-Cola. Maaza is obtained from mango’s natural pulp, and its constituent is the mango pulp of the alphonso variety, known as the “King of Mangoes” in India.
Ingredients of Mango Juice
The mango fruit contains a higher nutritional value and is beneficial health-wise due to its vital ingredients. It is composed of macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and amino acids; micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals; and finally, phytochemicals such as polyphenols and volatile phenolic compounds. According to Muslim et al. (2021). mango juice is a human diet due to its energy value. It remains a crucial fruit for the manly diet due to its energy value for 100 grams of pulp which ranges between 60-190 kilocalories. The water constituent, nutritional plus non-nutritional elements of mangoes vary depending on the type of mango cultivated and several pre-harvest and postharvest factors.
Competition
Competition comes in if there is a contest between companies selling the same product or service. There are three known mango drinks brands, frooti, maaza, and slice, in the mango drink industry. Maaza competes against these two brands, Pepsi and Frooti (Kothari, 2017). In the campaign, Frooti did a brand makeover after thirty years, having a new logo and visual avatar. Furthermore, a campaign was launched and promoted broadly across print and digital media to address this change to its consumers. Maaza and slice also developed other different strategies for the campaign. While facing competition, firms should strategize on pricing, adventuring into new markets, good packaging, and conducting digital marketing.
Supply Chain Strategy
Maaza mango drink is a beverage from the Coca-Cola company.
Coca-Cola adopted a new supply chain strategy known as DOIP, which stands for Demand, Operations, and Inventory Planning.
This new strategy is much more flexible than the old SOP model (sales and operations planning).
This model has four main benefits, which include the following:
- Elevating production through quality service
- Predicting the current and future sales volume
- Identifying complementary promotions and potential sales volumes
- Reducing operating costs by balancing the scale of supply and demand
This generally boosts business agility.
Infographic of Product Supply Chain
This is a simplified chart for a processed mango moving from the farm to the consumers (Kruijssen, 2022). From the farm, mangoes are handpicked, loaded into lorries by the logistics providers or pre-harvest contractors, and taken to the wholesalers or direct to the factories for processing. In the factories, they are brought into the ripening chambers. The damaged ones are removed. After ripening, the process begins with washing with chlorinated water and follows a series of procedures until the final product is obtained. This end product is then sold to retailers and exporters by manufacturers. The end-users finally buy the juices from the retailers for consumption.
Infographic of Information Systems
Sharing of information increases the efficiency of the supply chain by limiting inventories and smoothing production. A hundred percent efficiency of a supply chain is critical as competition is no longer between companies but between supply chains.
Adopting good information systems increases the efficiency of the supply chain by limiting inventories and smoothing production.
The table displays the classification of production information. Sharing such information helps the suppliers, logistics producers, and even the consumers.
For instance, when maaza shares its production schedules with a group of its suppliers, this will positively impact the company by lowering part inventories with zero risking stock-outs. Besides, customer service levels also improve when logistics producers give shipping information.
Pricing of Maaza
Pricing is an element that scales up profits in the supply chain through a relevant supply and demand match. Maaza is the number 3 brand in the overall beverage category for Coca-Cola India and made significant gains in market share in 2021 (Coca-Cola, 2022). According to the company, Maaza reported sales of Rs 2,826 score in the year 2021 despite the overwhelming circumstances due to the Coronavirus (Coca-Cola, 2022).
Promotion
Maaza, known as the number one noncarbonated drink in the market of India, has several activities related to the promotion of its mango juice to maintain its status quo. In endorsing their mango juice, maaza has used well-known celebrities within the film industry, the actors like Varun Dhawa, among others (Singaram et al., 2019). This has led to mass fans liking this product due to its attractive and witty commercials displayed on news media and billboards. Furthermore, it incorporates direct dealings via conducting roadshows and experimental sampling.
Future Issues
Maaza is there to refresh the world and make a difference. Maaza is emerging with a lot of vigor to do business the right and pose development in the future. Looking at the loopholes in Maaza production, the company should strategize and close such gaps to better the mango drink. Maaza needs to revise the following issues:
- Method/ kind/ cost of packaging
- Distribution of their finished products within a limited geographic location
- Manufacturing capacity is too low.
Conclusion: Future Developments and Recommendations
Maaza’s marketing aims at propelling the product to be the world’s first one billion dollar juice drink brand by sales coming out of India. In 2016, the market size of Maaza was around 50 percent of the total mango fruit drink market (Dollar Business Bureau, 2017).
Coca-cola and its bottlers need to bring enhancement by coming up with new, pocket-friendly, and quality juice packs. Additionally, this Coca-Cola needs to expand its distribution in new markets, stop concentrating in India alone, and increase the manufacturing capacity to double the sales of Maaza by 2020.
References
BluePrint. (2020). Overview: What is wholesale? Web.
Coca-Cola Company. (2022). Financials. Web.
Dollar Business Bureau. (2017). Coca-Cola targets Maaza to become $1 billion brand by 2020. Web.
Kothari, C. (2017). Retailer’s perception about Non-Carbonated Drinks in selected cities of Gujarat. In 6th International Conference on Trade, Business, Economics and Law (p. 64).
Kruijssen, F. (2022). Simplified market chain of fresh and processed mango. Web.