Management Report - Health Life Product
Essay by KylinAggie • April 10, 2012 • Case Study • 1,568 Words (7 Pages) • 2,176 Views
Management Report-Health Life Product
1. Strategic Report
Health concern has become an ever important topic in people's daily life. The food health is also vital to people's daily life. In this context, a new product was planned to be launched to the market, which is Healthy life working as a food detector. It can be used to test the food elements and analyze those elements whether it is good to people or not. The competitive advantage of Healthy Life is that it can test certain elements or food when you ready to eat and tell the customer whether it is allergic to it or not. Moreover, it can record the test result, which will remind the customers when they eat food. People now are exposure to the environmental pollution, so food hygiene issues put a great emphasis on the society. This product not only can test the harmful elements, but also it can be intelligent to tell whether it is allergic to the customer and record it. Customers will use it to keep healthy and fit in their daily life. This product is also affordable to the households and available to them in supermarkets, boots, and hospital. In other words, it is easy to buy everywhere with the suitable price. However, currently this product is customized one, because each product can only record one person's data. The data cannot be deleted anymore after recorded. The other functions mingling with detector may encounter a technical problem for the time being.
2. Competitive advantage assessment and means to achieve it
Mawhinney (2001) pointed out that Porter's Five Force model is usually used by management consultants when analyzing the state of an industry and its main companies. Each force contains some components and can have a positive or negative effect on the industry. Finally, the management will summarize how great the competitive forces are likely to be. Mehta (2008) concluded that the five dominant forces of supplier power, barriers to entry, buyer power, threats of substitutes, and industry rivalry can be used to understand the best way to gain competitive advantage in the industry.
Supplier Power: Food safety concern has been emphasized in China in recent years due to several food safety issues. To satisfy the customers and the government requirements for great quality in food production, suppliers now turn to the latest solutions in product inspection. They supply the advanced technologies such as metal detection and X-ray technology for Healthy Life to manufacture the food detector products. However, this advanced technology can be produced that customer can afford. Therefore, the supplier power is very strong because they provided the advance technology to the Health Life products.
Barriers to entry: Since the food safety has become ever important in China, and Chinese government put strict laws and regulations on food safety control. (Shames, 2009) In this context, the requirement of food inspection products is very high because it sets out the strict requirements on the food inspection products according to the government laws and regulations, and puts strong emphasis on the advanced technology applied in the food inspection products. Therefore, the barriers to entry are high in food inspection industry.
Buyer Power: People now in China realized the importance of food safety. Not only the food safety is related to the daily life, but also it is related to an attitude and life style. Healthy Life products will be target to the households they can afford. This means customers have the great power to buy this product. The only concern is that Healthy Life product can only record one person's data. The purchasing power can be regarded as high but limited due to current technology limitation.
Threats of substitutes: The food testing market now is composed of the traditional testing method and rapid testing method. Healthy Life products are belonging to the rapid testing method because it will process the test and display the results in a quick way. However, to be precisely, the traditional testing method to the food safety will be more convincible to the customers. Therefore, if the customer would like to spend the time to wait for the testing results by using the traditional testing methods, then the threats of substitutes are medium to high.
Industry rivalry: Food safety inspection industry can be seen as a relative new industry in China. Especially for the rapid testing method, it is a new one in the current market. People's attitude towards the food safety concerns has changed a lot from least concern to the most concern because the healthy life is very important. Therefore, the demand for the food safety inspection products is increasing, especially for the daily use, but the supply for such kind of products is not many enough. Thus, the competition in food inspection industry is not very high.
Decision Making Strategies:
Mintzberg (1994) pointed out that strategy making is not an isolated process. Strategy making is a process interwoven with
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