Assignment Sample on BU7411 International Marketing Strategy
INTRODUCTION
The Kraft Heinz company is one of the better-known companies today in the food and drinks sector and there are offices of the company that exists in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America, Canada and the United States (Whitler, 2021). The American multinational has not yet expanded to the South Africa where there might be potential. In this study, using the two cultural models pertaining to the market expansion, the cultural issues of the target market will be analyzed and the differences with the home market will be scrutinized too in this study. The threats and the opportunities of the new country of market expansion, will be discussed as well.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Kraft Heinz company has an American food and drinks company based in Chicago and the company as the name suggests, is formed by a merging of Heinz and the Kraft foods. With big names in the food and drinks sector, the Kraft Heinz company holds a market share of 7.8 percent still in the United States that reflects its loyal customer base, positive brand perception as well as the strong brand equity. It competes with the leaders in the foods and drinks industry such as Nestle and the Coca-Cola company as well as the Pepsi Co company and having a market share of almost 8 percent still in the United States, shows the market position stronger than many other in the segment (Reis, 2021). The best-selling brands offered by the company are Kool Aid, Marconi and Cheese, Heinz ketchup, Jell-O and Original Juice that have earned global respect. The company currently exists in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, United States, Belgium, Ireland, India, Indonesia, Canada, Norway, China, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Russia, Canada, Sweden, Poland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and the United States. The company is ranked highly amongst the food and drinks company in the global context, and it is only the continent of Africa they are not catering too (Kumar, 2019). That is why, South Africa which has a huge potential as it is a developing country with emergent economy – is targeted as the new market in this study. The Kraft Heinz company uses a number of internal and external strategies to develop its brands throughout the countries of the world. Agile management, health-conscious nutritious food and drinks that marks its iconic sustainability practices which are its main strategies in the home country (Agnihotri & Bhattacharya, 2021). It also creates high barriers to other company to enter the market because of its high range of product portfolio and diversified products. And integrated supply chain plus the operations centre that follows the agile methodologies are at the core of the business processes.
However, in the country of South Africa, the culture is quite different than that of the United States that is vital to note. The market culture is based on family values, strong kinship as well as the spiritual, political and the religious values that drives the country. That is why, if Krafts and Heinz is focussing to expand in the country, then the local culture of Africa must be analysed properly. Using the Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s model that determines the very seven cultural dimensions – Africa is more based on universalism than particularism. Being a strong value driven society, the African market culture thrives mostly by using the universal African philosophies that borders on solidarity, compassion, and the respect (Marwah, 2021). As for the African market culture, the collectivism philosophy dominates individualism which is the chief difference with the United States. In the affective versus neutral dimension of the model, the emotions play a major role in the African business and marketing perspectives (Kraak et al., 2019). In the African market, the achievement strongly pursued as compared ascription and the values of hard work, consciousness is very high as well. In the country of Africa, the generalization is major problem and a culture issue that leads to violence, business, and the lifestyle problems (Pandey, 2020). In the next dimension, as resources such as money and the natural resources are quite limited in certain areas of Africa, sequential management is preferred over the synchronous management. Africa has a very closed culture and that is why, it is more inner directly and the companies coming to Africa needs to align themselves with their local culture in order to succeed properly, otherwise there will be problems.
Applying the High and low context culture model by Edward Hall, communication and interactions and their models has been emphasized greatly. The high context focusses on what is known as the face-to-face communication and low context is the opposite of it – that is through electronic and internet communications. As south Africa has a mixed race of white and dark-skinned people, research says that the white skinned Africans are more into the low context culture as compared to the other groups (Kraak, Rincón‐Gallardo Patiño & Sacks, 2019). And hence most of the businesses nowadays including Kraft Heinz depends on digital communications and high technology use, this can be blocked or opposed by the new markets in South Africa because of high context in the dark skinned African who have a high context. Communication barriers and the problems whether to go for electronic or telephonic or face to face business communications is serious areas of decision making for the Kraft Heinz company is survive in the African market.
Hence, from the critical evaluation, it can be understood that there are a number of problems in the African market that pertains to different values of collectivism, generalization, low context culture which are completely opposite to the American philosophies integrated in the Kraft Heinz company (Kumar, 2019). These are the chief values differences with home country in terms of culture that can lead to major misalignments. The country being inner directed is another issue because the American company must develop locally aligned policies according to the country’s business and marketing culture.
The potential in the south African is quite high because of the achievement, hard work and sequential (procedural management) philosophies in the country. A good corporate communications team that focusses equally on face to face and digital communications has o be developed by the company chosen here, in order to manage the stakeholders and social capital in the country (Nguyen et al., 2020). The marketing strategies should be focused on product diversification so as to appeal responsible to the ‘African culture’. Three sixty-degree marketing strategies can be used to balance the communication mix to enter African markets.
References
Agnihotri, A., & Bhattacharya, S. (2021). Growth Strategic Options of Kraft Heinz. SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals.
Kraak, V. I., Rincón‐Gallardo Patiño, S., & Sacks, G. (2019). An accountability evaluation for the International Food & Beverage Alliance’s Global Policy on Marketing Communications to Children to reduce obesity: A narrative review to inform policy. Obesity Reviews, 20, 90-106.
Kumar, B. R. (2019). Merger of Kraft and Heinz Company. In Wealth Creation in the World’s Largest Mergers and Acquisitions (pp. 79-84). Springer, Cham.
Marwah, A. (2021). Persuasive strategies of the illocutionary act in 9 international food and beverage brand’s advertisement (Doctoral dissertation, UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung).
Nguyen, K. H., Glantz, S. A., Palmer, C. N., & Schmidt, L. A. (2020). Transferring racial/ethnic marketing strategies from tobacco to food corporations: Philip Morris and Kraft General Foods. American journal of public health, 110(3), 329-336.
Pandey, M. A. (2020). Why you need to do competitor analysis to succeed in marketing your brand. Psychology and Education Journal, 57(9), 3521-3527.
Reis, R. (2021). The influence of CSR initiatives on organisational identification: a case study with Kraft Heinz (Master’s thesis, University of Twente).
Assignment Services Unique Submission Offers:
