Corporate strategy paper exam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Corporate strategy paper exam - Essay Example The other companies make greater use of the vegetable oil, which result in the better shelf life of their product. 4) The other key issue is that the company's chocolates are seasoned. For example the box chocolates show the sales of almost 35% during the period of 10 weeks before the Christmas, a further 10% are for the Easter, including three million Easter eggs. Typically the company sells almost 10m in last 72 hours of Christmas. 5) Chocolates of the company are hand made this makes the process of automated packing difficult for the boxed chocolate. The other companies on the other hand like Cadburys make moulded chocolates, which makes the automated packing easier. 6) Thornton's long-term strategy included vertical integration and product differentiation. This means the top person in the company belonged to a particular family. The product differentiation apart from the taste of the chocolate was also marked by the freshness of the chocolate. the company that has made such a huge selling of their product. Also freshness has been receiving the top priority. It is these factors, which laid strong foundation stone of the company for it future growth and expansion. of Thorntons'chocolates. ... 2) Strong network of retailing stores: For any manufacturing company the most crucial requirement is the excellent network of franchisee. Thornton' has its own retailing outlets, hence there is much more lesser dependency on external marketing strategy or the franchisee. 3) Freshness of the chocolate: Freshness of the product is the distinctive feature of Thorntons'chocolates. However, since the demand of company's chocolates is seasonal this puts extra pressure on requirement of the manpower during the peak season. The requirement of casual staff for packing purposes increases which leads to reduction in efficiency. Also the sales during peak season become almost ten fold hence there is requirement of extra staff at the retail stores also during the peak season. This makes the company more dependent on the casual staff. The casual staffs are quite expensive and it is not easily available. As it is the requirement of the casual staff in general in the market is more during the festive seasons. Also the casual staff is untrained, hence it has to be trained, which requires some of the resources of the company. The casual staffs have lower speed of working thus reducing the efficiency. The other critical issue is that the chocolates have lower shelf life, this makes it difficult for the company to sale the chocolates through alternative retail outlets like the garages, super markets and small shops. This reduces the market of the company, which could help the company during off peak periods. 4) Company's chocolates are seasonal: The maximum sale of the chocolates manufactured by the company is during seasons like Christmas and Easter. Now the company has a huge manufacturing infrastructure. It also has wide