| China's reform and opening up policy has achieved 30 years' sustained economic growth, especially in the last 8 years, with an average annual growth rate of 10%. Urbanization rate has reached 45%, foreign exchange reserves are up to 1.9 trillion U.S. dollars, GDP has reached 24.66 trillion RMB and per capita for 2040 U.S. dollars in 2007. As the level and concept of consumption of urban residents upgrade, especially the fast-paced life in large and medium-sized city, frozen foods have emerged and become prevalent gradually. At present, frozen food industry focuses on a whole expansion. For the future development, the scale and brand will be first priority for success and a more centralized industry will show up due to the principle of survival.This article describes a leading company named General Mills China Ltd. in the frozen food industry, a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Mills, which was established in the end of 1999 and since then it has always been focusing on health food research and development, production and sales services.Wan Chai Ferry is one of the most important brands under the roof of General Mills China, whose main products are dumplings, wonton, tangyuan and which mainly sells at the first tier cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and at the regions of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. WCF in those main sales regions have obtained good market share, more than 40% market share in Beijing, Shenzhen, particularly higher market share over 60% in Guangzhou and around 50% in Shanghai. But WCF is still considered as a regional brand other than national brands in this paper. WCF has three major competitors, Sanquan, Synear and LongFong, whose product lists are very rich, dumplings, wonton, tangyuan, baozi, mantou, zongzi, hot pot series and so on. They all have a higher annual sales volume than WCF. How to become a champion brand in the frozen food industry for WCF? How to make the business penetrate the whole country? Those are the questions this thesis is going to answer.Against this background, through the study of Chinese macro-environment and frozen food industry, using the management theories and tools like Porter's Five Forces model, SWOT, after analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the frozen food industry, the status of industrial chain and competition could be identified and the core competitive advantage could be found. By studying internal core resources of WCF including plants, human resources, sales channels, R & D capability and brand marketing, WCF can make a new strategy 'becoming a national widely known brand across all frozen food categories' . Finally, the new strategy could be executed through the organization, control systems, corporation culture.After a more comprehensive analysis, it is found that WCF is facing fierce competition to a certain pressure in the frozen food industry while with some unique competitive advantages. Homogenized competition is very common in the low-end frozen food markets. Price wars always happen in the same type, same taste category, which leads to a long-term decline of the industry margin. Therefore WCF must follow the path of differentiation in high-end market, using its brand influence. High-margin market is bound eventually to attract other companies to enter, the competition will intensify, so how to maintain the competitiveness of WCF in the high-end market? The enterprises should further improve the operational power of management, optimize the flow, control every aspect of the value chain and improve efficiency, then finally harvest a much stronger competitiveness. |
PDF Full Text Request