Introduction
Quaker is a Company based in Cupar Scotland, United Kingdom. It produces oats food products and has been manufacturing oats for over one hundred years. It merged with PepsiCo in 2001 becoming one of the fifth largest suppliers of end user products internationally.
The Company’s leading products in United Kingdom include; Scott’s Porage Oats, Quaker Oats, Scott’s So Easy, Snack a Jacks, Quaker Granola Cereals and Quaker OatSo Simple, these products are the best I the food industry in Scotland (Quakeroats.com). Currently the company holds 52.9% of the market hot breakfast division which has been gradually increasing division in the mealtime market (Quakeroats.com).
Quaker has utilised technology to markets its products and uses internet as its principle means of advertising. To do this, it has designed a website through which the customers are able reach it and get to know of their products.
Quaker customers can use the website to learn the health issues and how to live healthy, the products that it offers, the benefits that the products add to the consumer, navigate to other website such as Facebook, twitter and You tube, locate stores in various regions, learn the Quaker history, the brands that it offers, the community programs that it is involved in (Quakeroats.com).
Strengths and weaknesses
The internal and external analysis of a firm is a vital element in strategic planning process. The surrounding issues internal to the company are normally grouped as strengths and weaknesses, and external issues to the company are grouped as opportunities and threats. (Bradford, Duncan and Tarcy 38).
Strengths
Quakeroats Company has various strengths that we shall briefly discuss in this section. Strengths refer to Company’s resources and potentials that enable the Company to gain competitive advantage. For instance, cost advantage of using internet as a marketing tool, funds, having skilled workforce, availability of raw materials and so forth.
In this case, Quaker uses internet to promote its products; through its website which has proved as an effective platform of advertising its products which provides it with the competitive advantage that it needs. The company’s website is very fast and enables the customers to access the company information in real time which means they are always up to date on their various products. (Bradford, Duncan and Tarcy 40).
Costs management is another advantage that Quaker Company has because of its website which enables both customers and the Company to save costs. Customers save money because the website is quicker to load which means that customer’s access information without any delay and the Company saves costs because it advertises cheaply.
Target market is the other strength that the Company has; this is because the website is able to capture the best audiences of the information throughout this medium and hence gain large market share. The website is also effective because it can direct campaign to different regions, demography, and varied target market.
The website has various campaigns types such as adverts, company log, navigation bar, and icons directing customers to other websites (Quakeroats.com). The wordings and titles of the website are well described, therefore any customer in need of the Quaker information can easily understand.
In addition, customers can easily find the customers products from other websites, for example, yahoo, AltaVista, and Google (Quakeroats.com).
Weaknesses
The website does not display the number of viewers logged in the Company’s website which means that it doesn’t know the number of viewers who can access information from their website which implies they are unable to know whether they have attained their target. (Bradford, Duncan and Tarcy 47).
The website does not also display a buying process in which customer can buy the product online; this means that they loose sales because of this. Finally, online post banners and text adverts cannot be displayed because they are blocked by firewalls when they are advertised through other websites such as facebook (Bradford, Duncan and Tarcy 52).
Conclusion
The company can gain large market share and increase revenues by providing an online buying portal and I would recommend this to this Company.
Works Cited
Bradford, Robert w, Duncan, Peter j, & Tarcy, Brian. “SWOT analysis Simplified strategic planning. London: Chandler House Press. 2000. Print.
Quakeroats. Quarker Oats, 2011. Web.