Background of the Company

Discuss about the Global Marketing for Contemporary Theory.

The combination of different plans used by a company in order to reach pre-targeted goals is known as marketing strategy.  It is a well-organized written plan which the company must follow in order to succeed in their method of operation (Hollensen, 2015). A good marketing strategy involves a detailed plan about the company’s action focusing on the existing product mix, the environment of the company, the capability of the company and the flaws that it has in its present plans.

This report deals with the strategic management of the chosen company engaged with milk and dairy productions named as Murray Goulburn. The crux of this report is to find out the environmental factors affecting the growth of this company. The report starts by providing a brief description about the chosen company followed by the vision that they possess for themselves. The internal and external environmental factors of the company have been highlighted using the tools namely, SWOT and PESTLE (Allon et al., 2016). The gaps of the existing strategies have been highlighted thereafter. The strategic analysis, market segmentation and the marketing mix of the company has been given followed by a recommendations and actions to be taken in future for the growth and sustainability of the company.

Murray Goulburn Co-operative Limited was founded back in the year 1950 with the collaboration of 14 different dairy firms of Australia. At present, the company is the largest producer of processed milk and dairy products within Australia (www.mgc.com.au, 2016). It mainly deals with three products namely, processed milk, butter and cheese. Present data suggests that the co-operative limited has more than 2500 milk farmers supplying them with their daily need of milk to produce, cheese and butter. In 2016 the company faced a hindrance in their business and suffered a loss due to price slash and intervention of Woolworths in their business domain (www.thenews.coop, 2017).

The Australian company has the mission of catering to the people’s demand for dairy products throughout the country and abroad. Murray Goulburn is totally under the control of the milk farmers of Australia. They have the vision of being people’s first choice when it comes to consuming dairy products (www.mgc.com.au, 2016). The company while trying to achieve their vision and walk on the road of success keeps their focus on two aspects, namely the innovation and operational excellence of their company. They have the vision to become one of the top-notch producers of dairy products in the global market. In order to reach this target they try to bring in innovation and modern operating system within their factories. This report now tries to focus on the environment under which this company works to attain their achieve vision.

Mission and Vision of the Company

The success of a company depends on its efficiency to implement its environmental management system. For an organization the EMS stands as a systematic structure and comprehensively planned document which helps them to manage the resources and abide by the laws of the nation where it operates (Brown, 2013). The working of an organization depends on both its internal and external environmental structure. Through this report, the SWOT and PESTEL analysis have been provided to see the internal and external factors of Murray Goulburn that affects its entire working system.

The acronym SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and the threats faced by the company in its course of operation. The strength of the company can be optimally used to grasp the opportunity and improve in the line of business whereas the weakness should be identified and the threats should be avoided as much as possible (Hollensen, 2015). The following table shows the SWOT of Murray Goulburn of Australia:

The PESTEL analysis identifies the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal aspects of the organization. The table below shows external environmental factors that affect Devondale Murray Goulburn’s production.

The above analysis of the company based on SWOT and PESTEL highlights the existing gap within the system of the company. The company has been busy with their production and maintenance of hygiene within the production process. It never tried to look beyond the demand and analyze the market. Hence, it faced problems from the supermarkets who wanted to make this company a supplier of their demanded products. It has implemented innovative technology within its plant to improve efficiency of their production procedure but seldom tried to look into the trends of the global market.

After identification of the gaps in the company’s existing operation, the company set up some new targets along with the existing old targets. The objectives can be summarized as follows:

• The main target remains unrevised that is to provide fresh and good quality dairy products to its consumers.
• Along with that, the company is going to implement strategies to yield maximum return on be-half of farmgate.
• The company is going to focus on ways by which it can increase its hold amidst the strong competition posed by the supermarket giants.   

A proper strategy can help the company to achieve its objective. Hence, the company has been formulating their strategies with special focus to the chosen objectives. The strategies taken up by Murray Goulburn are as follows:

• The company uses high profile technologies to pasteurize its raw product that is milk. They also thinks of using multiple step pasteurization for maintaining the quality of its goods and increasing the shelf life of their products.
• In order to yield maximum return, the company is trying to increase the supply of all most all its products. Along with it, they are prioritizing their production of full cream milk, chocolate flavoured milk for chocolate lovers and lite milk for calorie conscious people.
• Due to constant pressure posed by the supermarket giants, the company had been facing severe problems. Through a strategy of reducing their supply of in-shelf products in the supermarkets, the company can influence and re-build their dominance.

The business of Murray Goulburn can be divided into three segments, namely dairy foods, nutritionals and ingredients and other few subsidiary business (refer to appendix, figure 1). The company always tries to position their products in such a way that their consumer gets a high perceived value from consumption of the products. On other hand, they try to keep their price at minimal subsistence level while targeting the large mass of population in Australia and Asia. While analyzing the market based on the annual report of the company it can be seen that there has been an increase in the total production, equity and total asset of the company in the year 2015-16 but an reduction in the sales revenue and milk intake by the consumers during the same period.

This report can be concluded by putting forward the future plans of the company and the recommendations for being successful in their targets.

The company targets to open up new plants in Asian markets. Since, the company is unaccustomed with the global demand hence it plans to initially launch processed milk in the Asian market. It is expecting to launch full cream milk, chocolate flavoured milk and lite milk at initial stages (www.theaustralian.com.au; 2015). Two graphs have been provided below to highlight their targeted revenue and targeted price of these 3 products in Asian market during 2019.

The study above about the company helped to identify the problems and the environmental aspect through which the company deals its regular production. Few things can be recommended for future success of the company. They are as follows:

• Due to improvement in trade, people now have access to products from other countries. Hence, the company must follow the global trend even while operating at home market.
• The company is engaged with production of milk, cheese, infant foods and milk beverages. In order to sustain in business it is recommended that they increase their product portfolio and introduce other dairy products as well.
• The company can invest more on their advertisement in order to retain their position in the market.

References:

Palmer, D. (2016). Murray Goulburn in trading halt. Theaustralian.com.au. Retrieved 19 January 2017, from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/murray-goulburn-enters-trading-halt/news-story/5cea2f8775b90129661545055bee8915

Home – Devondale Murray Goulburn. (2017). Mgc.com.au. Retrieved 19 January 2017, from https://www.mgc.com.au/

Lynch, J. (2016). Murray Goulburn’s domino effect on Australia’s dairy industry. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 January 2017, from https://www.smh.com.au/business/murray-goulburns-domino-effect-on-australias-dairy-industry-20160426-gofabk.html

Lockhart, J., Donaghy, D. J., & Gow, H. (2016). Murray Goulburn and Fonterra are playing chicken with dairy farmers.

Brown, A. (2013). U.S. Patent Application No. 14/434,272.

Hollensen, S. (2015). Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.

Alon, I., Jaffe, E., Prange, C., & Vianelli, D. (2016). Global marketing: Contemporary theory, practice, and cases. Routledge.

Coppola, F. (2016). Co-operative News. Retrieved 19 January 2017, from https://www.thenews.coop/106550/news/agriculture/lessons-learn-murray-goulburn-milk-saga/

Murray Goulburn Annual Report 2016. (2016). Retrieved 19 January 2017, from https://www.mgc.com.au/media/40795/murray-goulburn-annual-report-2016-web-.pdf