MARKETING PLAN FOR WHITBREAD PLC

Marketing Plan for Whitbread plc

Marketing plan for Whitbread plc

Introduction

This case highlights the practical use of marketing tools to develop a strategic expansion to a new European market for a Netherlands company. The development of matrix marketing and its association with the planning process is deemed to be effective. In this report we have taken Boddingtons as a theoretical example and examined what could happen.

The beer market in the UK is very competitive. Therefore, it is difficult to increase output or market share. Whitbread plc, as owner of Boddingtons Beer Company, has recently invested heavily in a new canning plant and wants to ensure economies of scale to improve its cost structure. The company also wishes to increase the turnover of barreled beer as this method offers the highest margins.

The aim of this report is to provide possible solutions to this problem and to offer a market expansion strategy into The Netherlands. The Netherlands has been chosen because of its proximity to the UK and its favourable attitude towards beer and Netherlands products.

Increasing competition in its domestic markets has led Whitbread plc to consider the possibility of expanding its activities into foreign markets. According to Ansoff there are four possibilities:

* market penetration;

* market development;

* product development;

* diversification.

The penetration of the Netherlands beer market is made difficult through the regionalization of the market, which is already in a stage of maturity. This can be seen from the product-life cycle in Figure 1.

The company is already diversified and a further diversification could negatively affect the flexibility of the company as a whole. The only alternative seems to be to exploit its competitive advantage that it achieved through its new canning technology and by the development of new markets in order to follow a globalization strategy. Ohmae supposed that only those companies which are internationally oriented will survive in the long term as there will be no national boundaries that could protect the domestic company in the future. This can be proven by the fact that many breweries increased their exports recently and there are signs of a growing threat for national producers. The aim of each company should be to develop and to dominate new markets in order to attack in advance.

The corporate objective is, first, to follow a globalization strategy. The introduction of one product at the same time in more than one country should be avoided. To develop an effective market expansion strategy the focus should be placed on a single country/market. The first country we want to export our product to is Holland. The Netherlands is in close proximity to the UK and the cultural differences are not as great as in southern Europe. In addition, the Netherlands are traditionally beer, rather than wine, consumers and there is no major ale brand present on the market. The secondary objective for the marketing department is therefore to develop the ale market in The Netherlands. In addition, the Netherlands market offers the opportunity to team ...