Rogers Chocolates

The premium chocolate industry is a large market in the United States and continues to grow around 10% annually. It is also populated with very strong

However, forecast errors will also lead to unhappy customers, lost sales, and excessive inventory. To minimize errors, retailers should find the right demand forecast. Retailers do not want to have a lot of inventory sitting in the back room and too little inventory that will cause out of stock. Holding huge inventory will cause a retailer to have more expenses and decrease their profit if item is not sold especially if the product is innovative type like electronics. The challenge is to balance the inventory with demand. Communication and contribution from people in functional area is also important to create better information and improve overall accuracy. At this time, customer satisfaction will start to decrease. For example, MPRNews says one of Target loyal customer, Ann Hendricks, she is disappointed with target store in St.Paul. “Too many times, she says that store is out of the milk, coffee, bread, pasta and other staples she wants. At Target, sometimes the whole section of cheeses is blank. There's nothing in there” (Moylan). A loyal customer like Ann Hendricks goes to the Lunds & Byerlys store in downtown St. Paul to buy her grocery

The basic characteristics of the marketing concept that could be identified in Clare’s Chocolates are as follows:

If the operation have not reordered all the goods they need, this can lead to irritated customers and lower revenue for the operation.

Hershey’s and Cadburys are moving towards the premium chocolate market through the acquisition or upmarket launches (Zietsma, 2007). The profit potential present in this sector supported by its 20% annual growth rate make it very attractive for large organizations to come forward and avail this opportunity. There is a low threat of new entrants prevailing in this chocolate industry because of the high capital requirements and expected retaliation by current manufacturers. Current players in the industry also possess some barriers to entry for new entrants by maintaining economies of scales with their large production capacity and keeping their product differentiation with their specialized and novelty chocolate products. Even though there are low switching costs and easy access to distribution channels, but still the brand loyalty of the customers including the Rogers’ Chocolate itself make it harder for new firms to come into the competition.

While Europe and the United States account for most chocolate consumption, the confection is growing in popularity in Asia and market forecasts are optimistic about the prospects in China and India (Nieburg, 2013, para 9). According to the CNN Freedom Project, the chocolate industry rakes in $83 billion a year, surpassing the Gross Domestic Product of over a hundred nations (“Who consumes the most chocolate,” 2012, para 3).

Nordstrom has famously been known for its lean retail prices and its tight inventory. Nordstrom uses demand forecasting to minimize leftover inventory. Nordstrom’s total corporate management is based on two main goals. One is to associate purchasing with demand to keep inventory as lean as possible. Second is to present customers and sales associates with a wide-ranging view of Nordstrom’s entire inventory, including all stores and warehouses. Nordstrom relates purchasing with demand to keep inventory lean and show customers and employees Nordstrom’s inventory. Nordstrom keeps its items in stock for an extremely short period of time so that if a customer wants it, they only have

The chocolate industry operates in an oligopoly market. An oligopoly is when a small number of firms dominate the market. While not a quite a monopoly, an oligopoly market is still controlled by a select number of companies and the market can be directly impacted by one or two major firms (Oligopoly Investopedia). Hershey’s has control of the largest market share, holding 44.4% (U.S Market Share). Mars Incorporated follows behind in second by holding 28.9%. While these two companies hold much of the control and power within the industry, LIndt/Ghirardelli and Nestlé maintain a combined share of 15.1% of the industry’s market. This means that four companies hold a combined 88.4% of the market, with two of them holding a combined 73.3%. The market was not always this way however. Up through the 1960s many candy suppliers were regional.

When working in the catalog industry and a customer calls in and wants to order a red sweater and you are out of red sweaters, the company might have just lost the sale if the customer does not want a substitute colored sweater. This is the part of the continuous problem that L.L. Bean, Inc. has with item forecasting and inventory management. Working in a catalog business really helps companies to capture demand, but the problem most companies have is matching demand with supply. Every sale that is generated for L.L. Bean is by customers that want a particular item and if that item is not available, they lose the sale. Customer behavior is hard to predict which affects the demand level of all the

The premium chocolate industry is having an intensive competition in Canada with the strong growth potential. Industry growth opportunity imposes increasing competition from rivals and threats of new entrance that adds pressure on overall profitability. Even though Roger’s has been able to establish its place in the chocolate industry with its strong brand recognition and products’ quality, it still needs to be on top of ever- going market changes, by continuously

For over one hundred years, there has been only one company that has been on top of the candy industry in North America; Hershey. With over 14,000 employees, serving 70 countries worldwide and net sales of $6.6 billon, Hershey has come out on top. The Hershey company began in 1894 by Milton Hershey. The company has over 8 factories, but their main headquarters resides in Pennsylvania. The beloved Hershey milk chocolate bar has been a favorite by many, but would it still be if more people knew how it came to be that? One of chocolates main ingredients is cocoa. Cocoa, or cocoa beans come from tropical areas around the world, but is mostly found on the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Hershey, along with Mars and Nestle are the three major companies that buy their cocoa from West Africa, but with further investigation, it has been known that over 4,400 children work on those cocoa farms that they buy from.

In pursuit of upscale segments of the market and an increased market share, Consumer Food Groups (CFG) purchased the rights to become a distributor of Montreaux’s European chocolate products in the United States in June 2011. As CFG is the division which produces confectionery products for Apollo foods, they contribute not only to one-third of the company’s total revenues and net income, but are a vital part of Apollo’s ranking as second in the global confectionery business. Upon acquisition of the rights for Montreaux’s chocolates CFG formed a new division, Montreaux Chocolate USA. Under the leadership of David Raymond as division manager and Andrea Torres

An internationally celebrated ceramic artist, started Cowgirl Chocolates to provide some funding support for a yearly published arts magazine, High Ground, which she and her husband, Ross Coates, started in 1995. Her love of chocolates and hot and spicy foods spurred the idea of making hot and spicy chocolates to be sold in creative, artistic tins and packaging, which she labeled Cowgirl Chocolates. Her small business, begun in 1997, won a number of awards in fiery food competitions. While Cowgirl Chocolates grew steadily over its four years in business, it still generated only $30,000 in sales revenue in 2000, which was not enough to cover expenses. drained much of her personal savings to keep Cowgirl Chocolate in business. Her cash

The objectives that Montreaux USA wants to achieve in the coming 3 years are national distribution of the new Montreaux product line, $15 million in annual sales, and to be within the top 25 in revenue. Accounting for 52.6% of the market, chocolate is the most profitable segment of the confectionary industry. In 2011, Europe captured the largest regional share of the global confectionary market at 45.2%, with the Americas following at

Coca-Cola is a multi-national corporation that has its headquartered in Georgia, Atlanta. The company involves itself in the business of beverage production. Subsidiary plants are located all over the world i.e. Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and South America. Since the company has many branches and deals with a whole lot of inventory, there is a need to act proactively and timely so that there are no delays in logistics. Projections of inventory, i.e. inventory forecasting, are often done in the operations and supply chain management so that overproduction and inefficiencies are avoided. Coca-Cola also uses historic data to find out the direction of future trends (Butler, 2015). The process is used by the company to determine near accurate allocation of budgets for future production periods (Jacobs, 2013). There is a need for Coca-Cola as a company to find out the events that affect the company production wise. The occurrences include expectations of sales, and whether they will cause an increase or a decrease in the share price of the company. Nonetheless, forecasting provides a necessary benchmark for Coca-Cola, which has a long-term perspective of operations.