Introduction
The Animal Foodland is a premier food company that seeks to meet the needs of dog keepers in Austin, Texas, and its environment. The firm specializes in organic foods to meet the needs of clients who seek an alternative to animal products. The location of the business is preferred because Texas has a high population of pet dogs. The city has a vibrant dog industry, including pet boarding and pet games. Consequently, the region provides a critical market for dog food. Although there are several dog food outlets in the city, none meets the quality and convenience that Animal Foodland hopes to deliver. Animal Foodland intends to manufacture top quality dog food containing multiple nutrients based on extensive research. According to Hobbs and Shanoyan (2018), most Americans prefer organic foods for their pets. The company will manufacture food items that meet the nutritional needs of dogs reared for different purposes. Besides, the company customizes nutrition based on the dog’s developmental stage to ensure healthy canines. Animal Foodland will add value to their service by organizing home delivery and free consultation services for dog owners. In this regard, the company seeks to produce unique products and services for dog owners in Austin.
Mission Statement
The mission of Animal Foodland is to provide excellent service for dog owners. The company seeks convenience in the pet business by delivering dog food upon request and free pet owners to pursue other engagements. The company also aims to enhance the dignified treatment of dogs by providing consultancy services geared towards offering the correct dietary needs of the canines. The firm seeks to employ qualified dog nutritionists and ensure products from the company meet the dogs’ highest nutritional value. The company will maintain a culture of teamwork and problem-solving to achieve the best deal for clients. The firm will pursue these objectives with professionalism and responsiveness. The company also provides feeding accessories to dog owners to enable hygiene in dog feeding to minimize infections. Through these activities, the company seeks to deliver excellent and convenient feeding service to customers to enhance their quality of life.
Goals
- Animal Foodland seeks to deliver quality food services for dog owners in Austin by pursuing the following goals.
- To manufacture high-quality pet food that meets the nutritional needs of dogs bred for diverse purposes.
- To offer excellent nutrition advisory services to dog-owners to ensure that they provide the right foodstuffs to their pets.
- To facilitate fast and efficient delivery of dog food to locations requested by clients.
- To foster a culture of teamwork among employees and ensure continuous product improvement and achieve customer loyalty.
Short Term Goals
- To establish a state-of-the-art dog manufacturing plant that meets the building codes for the city.
- To recruit highly trained and skilled personnel that will be responsive to customer needs.
- To develop a marketing strategy that includes direct selling, electronic positioning, and social media campaigns.
- To establish a management structure that fosters teamwork for quality service management.
- To identify reliable suppliers for the supply of raw materials for dog food.
Long-term Goals
- To achieve a manufacturing capacity of 100 tons per day of dog food in the next five years.
The management will measure this goal by monitoring the daily production rates through the automatic factory records.
- To obtain 50% of share in the dog food market in the next five years
The firm will get these data from market trend analysis conducted by independent firms.
- To employ top talent in nutrition and customer service in the next five years.
The firm will ascertain this goal by assessing the number of professional employees specializing in pet food and marketing with graduate qualifications.
- Develop a concrete corporate social responsibility by hosting free community dog feeding workshops to enhance market visibility in the next five years.
The parameter for measurement will be the frequency of workshops held and the number of attendees.
- To achieve a strong brand identity through aggressive marketing
The metrics used to measure this goal will be the number of likes on social media and downloads of marketing content on the company website. The technicians will also monitor the number of visitors to the company website. Another measurement parameter will be search engine results for the company.
Environment Analysis
Environmental analysis is a tool that enables an assessment of the external and internal factors that affect the business. This section will examine the impact of competitive, political, legal, technological, and sociocultural forces on the dog food business. The analysis will allow an understanding of the company’s competitive edge and prospective performance in the industry. The analysis will also offer vital information on possible adjustments to better address industry rivalry for a competitive advantage.
Competitive Analysis
Animal Foodland faces competition from other pet food manufacturers, including “Just Food for Dogs” and “Tomlinson’s Feed.” Tomlison’s Feed supplies healthy organic dog food and has developed an enduring legacy by regularly distributing donations to rescued dogs in Central Texas. Besides, the company boasts of highly trained and experienced staff. However, the firm does not offer consultancies to dog owners and supplies. Again, Tomlinson’s Feed only manufactures general food for dogs and does not consider the nutritional requirements for the pets reared for different purposes. Anima Foodland, therefore, has a competitive advantage by offering these additional services to the market. However, the company must confront the benefits that Tomlinson’s Feed has in the market because of extensive experience in the per sector since 1946.
Just Food For Dogs offers a range of natural delicacies for dogs and has a “no secrets. Open kitchen” policy that can gain considerable public trust. The company also has a strong professional team with expertise in outreach, veterinary, and food formulation. Just Food For Dogs, however, has no elaborate corporate social responsibility. Animal Foodland seeks to enhance its brand against Just Food For Dogs by leveraging its CSR in training members of the public on healthy options for dog food.
Economic Analysis
The company seeks to address the company’s economic issues by using sustainable manufacturing processes to minimize production costs. Animal Foodland could suffer economic challenges due to inflation in the economy. Inflation harms return on assets and reduce firms’ capacity to compete (Dewi et al., 2019). The firm will seek to increase demand for its products through competitive pricing and free nutritional advice. The firm will also employ short-term staff on a contract basis to manage the wage bill. Besides, the firm will subcontract the transport segment to minimize the capital cost.
Political and Legal Analysis
The company seeks to maintain staff based on the employment policies in the city for both permanent and permanent staff. Animal Foodland has a resident accountant that will ensure statutory compliance to local taxes and levies. The company has aligned with the city’s building codes and the safety measures according to the city’s standards.
Technological Analysis
Animal Foodland is mindful of the impact of technology on its business operations. In this connection, the company has adopted technology in marketing, customer requests and feedback, and manufacturing. The firm established the correct rations of nutritive contents in dog food through sophisticated measurement technology for precision. The company has also developed a mobile phone application for interaction with customers and address their complaints. The company also markets its products through social media and hopes to apply analytics technology to achieve precision marketing.
Socio-cultural Force Analysis
The business is mindful of the busy lifestyles of the dog owners in Austin. The Austin area comprises mainly middle-class working residents who have limited time to tend to their pets. Animal Foodland responds to the increasing demand for organic dog food due to skepticism about meat products. The firm responds to these needs by providing delivery services to save the clients time shopping for the items. The firm also responds to the dog rearing culture as a hobby in Austin and seeks to deliver quality nutrition-related services to the market. The dog is a status symbol, and individuals seek to maintain healthy pets that can accompany them for family outings. Animal Foodland takes care of the nutritional needs of these pets and readily supplies to destinations requested by the client within the Austin locality.
SWOT and Needs Analysis
Strengths
Animal Foodland is in a rapidly growing middle-class area of Austin. The increasing population creates demand for food, and the form provides easy solutions for this challenge. Most middle-class people are engaged in regular jobs and have little time to cater to their dogs. Clients can also use the free time to care for their families and enjoy a better-quality life. In this regard, the company has a ready market for its products. The company also specializes in organic food that most residents prefer.
The firm also boasts of a strong management team comprised of professionals with rich experience in the market. The leadership at Animal Foodland includes equal representation of men and women and thus achieves gender equality for enhanced public image. The various persons in the management team comprise individuals with training in pet nutrition, organizational leadership, and marketing. The management provides visionary leadership required to achieve market domination in the niche dog nutrition industry.
Despite its recent entry into the pet industry, the firm boasts impressive knowledge of the market through the accumulated experience of its leaders. All the team members have worked in Austin before joining Animal Foodland and are familiar with the buying behavior of the residents. Besides, 80 percent of the employees reside in the Austin neighborhood and are accustomed to the residents. The company, therefore, enjoys the ease of penetration because of local popularity.
Weaknesses
Animal Foodland is a recent entrant into the dog market and has poor experience in the field. Consequently, the firm struggles to establish customer trust as a reliable supplier of dog food. Many of the customers already have allegiances to established companies in the area, which slows down the speed of market penetration. The company thus spends considerable resources to market the firm and to and achieve market trust.
Animal Foodland’s staff are less trained in handling the nutritionist needs of the dogs and marketing. Despite the high skill levels of the management, the company has not attracted highly qualified staff. Company employees are significant partners in a company towards gaining customer confidence. Customers gain an impression of the company based on the quality of interaction with the staff. Although Animal Foodland seeks to attract employees with high skill and experience, the firm has limited resources to retain experienced staff. Based on this reality, Animal Foodland has difficulty obtaining customer trust with low-skill staff. The company must therefore invest in considerable resources to train staff to equip them with the required skills.
As a new entrant into the market, Animal Foodland has not established strong relationships with suppliers in the market. Most of the suppliers have little capacity, and the firm must obtain raw materials from several individuals. The firm seeks to address this challenge by growing the crops required to manufacture organic food. In the current scenario, the company cannot ascertain whether the crops supplied to the firm have been developed through organic means. Animal Foodland, therefore, produces below capacity due to a lack of a reliable supplier for their raw materials.
Opportunities
Animal Foodland offers delivery services and free workshops for dog owners, which positions the company as a socially responsive agency. Most residents in the Austin area have a close connection with their dog pets and desire the best service to keep them healthy. Delivery offers convenience to dog owners and frees them to attend to other duties. The free training provides critical information for dog owners and endears the firm to the community. Training is an opportunity to attract new customers to the company.
The uptake of dog rearing as a hobby in Austin is a boon for Animal Foodland. The increasing numbers of middle-class citizens occupying the area have continued to adopt dog rearing. Animal Foodland seeks to exploit this trend by providing unique products to this population. The population is young and technology savvy, and the firm will reach out to them through social media advertising. The firm also hopes to tap into this market through exceptional customer service.
Animal Foodland has a unique CSR program of training dog owners on nutrition and offering exceptional customer service. The training programs can act as forums for marketing the firm to attract new customers. Besides, the CSR program positions the company as a socially responsible firm needed to obtain a favorable brand image. The strategy also creates an avenue for corporates to connect with the community (Celik et al., 2019). The training campaign will be one of the company’s signature activities and will provide an opportunity to sell the company’s products.
Threats
The dog food industry is highly competitive in the Austin area, and Animal Foodland risks gaining a diminished market share. Clients are likely to patronize more experienced corporates leaving Animal Foodland with a small market share. The company must thus develop an innovative marketing strategy to attract customers. A change in government policy could affect the mode of business for the firm. The economic challenges occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic may trigger increased levies from the government. The additional tax will diminish the company’s profits. Regulations on urban pet ownership could reduce the population of dogs and decrease the profitability of the company. Austin has several companies with vast experience in dog handling. Many of the companies have established customers and offer higher remuneration to their staff. Animal Foodland, therefore, risks losing its valuable employees to these established companies.
Conclusion
Animal Foodland stands a great opportunity to thrive in the organic food industry in Texas because of its innovative business strategy and location. The company’s situation in the fast-growing middle-class suburbs of Austin provides growth opportunities. The company also offers customers unique services through home deliveries to afford them free time to attend to other aspects of life. Nevertheless, the company must look out for the competitive forces that threaten to derail its market penetration. Several other companies operate in the niche area, and Animal Foodland must provide creative promotion to remain completeness. Besides, the firm has little risk of losing its staff to established corporates who offer better terms to its employees. Animal Foodland must leverage its unique customer service strategy and the resourcefulness of its management to penetrate the market and build a strong corporate brand.
References
Celik, A., Abdul-Kareem, A., & Yilmaz, H. U. (2019). The impact of corporate social responsibility on community development: Evidence from Ghana. Global Journal of Business, Economics and Management: Current Issues, 9(3), 122-133. Web.
Dewi, V. I., Soei, T. L., & Surjoko, F. O. (2019). The impact of macroeconomic factors on firms’ profitability (evidence from fast moving consumer good firms listed on Indonesian stock exchange). Academy of Accounting and Financial Studies Journal 23(1).
Hobbs, L., & Shanoyan, A. (2018). Analysis of consumer perception of product attributes in pet food: implications for marketing and brand strategy. Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Web.