Market Selection and Entry Strategy

Tasmanian Mountain Waters was willing to expand their business in the United Kingdom. The report included that Tasmanian Mountain Waters ® Natural Spring Water is a stable source of natural magnesium, calcium, phosphorous and other essential minerals with the best alternative pH 7.6-7.8 levels. Spring water of this company exists in 5 liters and 10-liter casks. Furthermore, these ‘bag-in-box’ would be feasible to store for a longer period and have a 5-year shelf life. Moreover, it was evaluated that it is also suitable for bench-top dispensing while practiced in the kitchen. The 5 and 10-liter cask is ‘bag-in-box’ goods that could be suitable for long-term storage of water.

It was evaluated that Tasmanian Mountain Water could penetrate into UK nation with the product of Natural Spring Water after analyzing the external environment of United Kingdom. The company has to develop various marketing strategies, this includes strategy related to the mode of entry, selection of the market to target, price, promotion, and distribution related strategy, which the company will adopt while entering the nation, which will be discussed in detail further (Abdulraheem Sal, 2016)

The market that the company will be offering the product will be the United Nation as a whole; every individual of the country will be offered the product. Moreover, major companies, schools and colleges will be focused for market selection. The reason would be promoting the education in nation, and providing quality product for students. For entering into the country, it is important for the company to decide through which mode a company is suitable to enter. Every mode of entry has their respective pros and cons, and the suitability of each mode is different. Some of the modes of entry include licensing, direct export, franchising, joint venture, outsourcing and many more (Craig & Douglas, 2015)

Mode of entry suitable for Tasmanian Mountain Waters is direct export, this is recommended as the manufacturing of the product will be done in the home country and not the host nation, and only the marketing of the product is to do in the host nation. Therefore, it is found relevant to enter in the nation through direct export of the products.

The major advantages while entering into the market through direct export is that the control of the product quality is purely in hands of the company top management. Therefore, there is no chance of poor quality product reaching to the customers; moreover, like another mode of entry, there are not many political issues involved.

Competitive Strategy

Disadvantage for this mode is that the company has to create brand awareness and brand image, as it is not entering with a goodwill, the company has to create its own goodwill, and has to be depended for the marketing on the local people of the nation, who will be selling the product (Cabral & Mathiason, 2015) (Choi & Park, 2016).

Competition is very high in such an industry, the reason being the low cost of switching for the buyers. The packed water is something, which is not considered for major decision by the company. Therefore for gaining a competitive advantage over the other brands of packed water would be product availability, this is the product, which would be sold if available in bulk. The product must be available in bulk in order to reach to the customers, and noticeable by the customers. Moreover, another strategy would be product innovation; this could be through its packaging, sizes of packaging from smallest to the largest size to target a different set of customers. (Misra, 2017).

Major competitors in this industry in the United Kingdom are Evian, Highland Spring Water, Volvic, and Buxton Spring (statista, 2019). In order to sustain in the competition, the company must provide the best quality product to the customers, with travel-friendly and best-suited packaging (Mora, 2015)

Price plays a very important role while entering into any nation, especially with the mineral water industry, where the competition is very high. The pricing strategy suitable for the company considering the pricing strategy matrix is “Pricing Penetration strategy”

According to this strategy, the company would be providing the highest quality product at a lower price than that of the competitors to attract maximum customers. Moreover, for retaining in the market in future the company would adopt the competitive pricing strategy that is it is going to consider any price change by its competitors as this could lead to decrease in market share of the company (Robson & Zeriti, 2014)

Since the company is entering the new market, it is recommended to follow the extensive promotional strategy, and promote the company through various promotional tool mix and make the brand popular among the customers. Some of the tools recommended are

• Popular brand ambassador – in the UK the person associated with the brand is the major factor to create the brand positioning. Some of the popular faces or Hollywood could be promoting this brand to create the status perception to the customers (Stahl & Tung, 2015)
• Sponsorship – it is a tool where the companies sponsor some of the popular events of the national level. This could be any stage show, award function, of a reality show in the country to create brand awareness (Dickmann, Doherty, Mills, & Brewster, 2008).
• Publicity – this is being in the news and topic for discussion among the people, this is not paid by the company. The price and product quality could be one of the reasons for the publicity
• Social marketing – this is one of the most popular ways to reach out to the customers and promote the brand and create customer perception about the brand. This could be social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Moreover, YouTube can be used for promotion (Trivedi, 2016)

The way to reach to the final consumer the company must decide this well in advance before entering into the market. The most suitable distribution strategy would be to reach out to the customers through the following ways.

• Retail store – the product must be distributed to all the retail store, and departmental stores for the sale of the product, and promotion of the product through displays. The packaged water must be available to be sold. Therefore, the maximum retailers must be used to get to the customers. Therefore, it can be said that the intermediaries in the supply chain would be more in numbers (Gay, 2016)
• E-commerce service – in today’s world, the service without the online availability of any product even the packaged water would be incomplete without e-commerce. Although, this is would only be available in case of bulk order. Therefore, the company must reach the customers through online and make the goods available to the doorstep of the customers. The reason being, most of the companies are available to customers online (Skudiene, Auruskeviciene, & Sukeviciute, 2015)

• Early promotions – since most of the people have not listened to the name of the brand, therefore it is important for the company to create the brand awareness in the places where the customer is about to open. The promotions must be started well before entering into the nation. This could include opening soon promotional hoardings and advertisement
• Target events and higher budget weddings – since some of the events in the nation are wedding, receptions, and meetings, conferences, which must be targeted to increase the sales of the company. Individuals must also be targeted, but it would not be as higher profits gaining that than with bulky customers that is through events(Anute & Deshmukh, 2015)
• Target large corporations – the large corporations of the company and various brands must be targeted to provide the water from Tasmanian Mountain Waters for their employees, other stakeholders. This will be helpful for the company to gain maximum advantage(Chan & Khodakarami, 2014)
• Target hotels – the use of water is maximum in case of the hotel industry, therefore it is recommended to the company to target hotel to increase the sales of the company (tasmanianmountainwaters, 2019)

Pricing Strategy

Conclusion

To conclude the report, it can be said that the report was based on the previous assignment of Tasmanian Mountain Waters that was willing to expand in the United Kingdom. For this, the mode of entry to the market suitable for the company was direct exporting. The reason being the company will be manufacturing the product in the home country, for which it is popular. Moreover, considering the competitive strategy, the recommended strategy would be product availability, and product differentiation through its packaging, quality, and sizes of the product.

The recommended pricing strategy would be a penetration pricing strategy, and competitive pricing strategy, this is due to higher competition in the industry. Promotion is very important while entering into a new market to create brand awareness and brand positioning. To reach out to the customer, the distribution strategy has to be created. The company is recommended to reach out through the various retail stores, and e-commerce.

References

Abdulraheem Sal, M. (2016). The Impact of Training and Development on Employees Performance and Productivity. International Journal of Management Sciences and Business Research, 5(7), 2226-8235.

Anute, N., & Deshmukh, A. (2015). Customer relationship management practices in gems & jewellery retail sector. International Journal of Research in Economics and Social Sciences, 163-169.

Cabral, A., & Mathiason, T. (2015). Symposium: Managing the global environment through trade: WTO, TPP, and TTIP negotiations, and bilateral investment treaties versus regional trade agreements: Introduction. American University International Law Review, 30(3), 1.

Chan, Y., & Khodakarami, F. (2014). Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information & Management, 27-42.

Choi, D., & Park, D. (2016). Innovative service concept generation based on integrated framework of design thinking and VRIO: the case of information supporting system for SMEs in Korea. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference on Electronic Commerce: e-Commerce in, 23.

Craig, C., & Douglas, S. (2015). International Marketing Research. Chichester: John wiley & sons.

Dickmann, M., Doherty, N., Mills, T., & Brewster, C. (2008). Why do they go? Individual and corporate perspectives on the factors influencing the decision to accept an international assignment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 731-751.

Gay, R. (2016). Effect of macroeconomic variables on stock market returns for four emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The International Business & Economics Research Journal, 15(3), 119.

mindtools. (2018). pricing-strategy-matrix. Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/pricing-strategy-matrix.htm

Misra, P. (2017). Brick and mortar store vs. online shopping experience: a study,. International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 16(2), 133-146.

Mora, M. (2015, november 18). Types of Market Research and Their Differences. Retrieved from surveygizmo: https://www.surveygizmo.com/resources/blog/market-research-types/

Robson, M., & Zeriti, A. (2014). Sustainable export marketing strategy fit and performance. Journal of International Marketing, 44.

Skudiene, V., Auruskeviciene, V., & Sukeviciute, L. (2015). Internationalization model revisited: e-marketing approach. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,, 918-924.

Stahl, G., & Tung, R. (2015). Towards a more balanced treatment of culture in international business studies: The need for positive cross-cultural scholarship. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(4), 391.

statista. (2019). leading-brands-of-bottled-mineral-water-in-the-uk. Retrieved from statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/308644/leading-brands-of-bottled-mineral-water-in-the-uk/

tasmanianmountainwaters. (2019). about us. Retrieved from tasmanianmountainwaters: https://www.tasmanianmountainwaters.com.au/phone/index.html

Trivedi, M. (2016). PESTLE technique–a tool to identify external risks in construction projects. International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), 3(1), 384-388.