YEO's Marketing Strategy - Analysis

Company Background

YEO’S PRODUCT (M) BHD is involved in the industry of canned foods and drinks. They also produce noodles. Having a new logo in the New Year represents the improvement of the organization to face new challenges in the modern era. YEO’S PRODUCT (M) BHD have been working hard in this food and beverage industry and currently are very strong in it.

YEO HIAP SENG Malaysia started with introduction of Schweppes canned drinks in 1985. The year before, they were the first organization in Malaysia to create and pack drinks using the brand name of Fizzi. These carbonated tropical fruit flavors drinks are packed in 325 ml cans. During the same year, YEO HIAP SENG also made history by becoming Malaysia’s first organization to sell mixed fruit juices. The juices were 100% pure under the brand name Junior Juice.

Another innovation done by YEO HIAP SENG was from their research and development department which successfully produced the first non-fried instant noodles in this country as well. With all the success until today, YEO HIAP SENG is still looking forward to greater success. As a public relations consultant hired by YEO HIAP SENG, I have the responsibility to produce a public relation plan and the budget allowed maximum is RM 300, 000 per annum. The objectives, stakeholders, messages, detailed public relation activities as well as costing will be discussed further in the following paragraphs.

Stakeholder

Campaign Objectives

• To reach a sales of RM 8,000,000 in year 2013.
• To build a strong brand image among Malaysians.
• To persuade the consumers to consume our product.
• To create an awareness among our brand in Malaysia.

Communication Message

Product Situation Analysis

Yeo’s emphasizes in producing curry canned food. Curry canned food are the company most favorable products categories in total. These categories of products including chicken curry, beef curry, lamb curry and mutton curry with potatoes. All these products are the company main income. The company main targets for this category of products are housewife, students, food hawker and restaurant. Yeo’s chooses housewife consumer as its target market because they are the “decider” in using spice in their cooking for her whole family. Consumer in this segmentation normally ages 30 – 78.

However, to be more competitive, Yeo’s expanded its products to variable. These products are canned drinks and cintan mee. These products contribute side income to the company. Due to these products are not the company main incomes; therefore these products are quite competitive. But they still need to go on producing refining these products to be conservative.

Category that purchases company products the most is at the age range from 39 – 63 years old, 38%. Follow by age’s category of 26 -38 years old, whereby the purchases percentage is 28%. Meanwhile for 39 – 63 years old and 63 years old purchaser consists of 19% and 15%.

Competitor Situation Analysis

Today the market competition is not only rife but also growing more intense from year to year. These developments explain the current talked about “marketing warfare” and “competitive intelligence systems”. It is because market has become so competitive, understanding customers are no longer enough. Companies should start paying keen attention to their competitors. Successful companies design and operate system for gathering continues intelligence about competitors. It would seem a simple task to a company to identify their competitors. It would seem a simple task for a company to identify its competitors. However, the range of a company’s actual and potential competitors is much broader. A company is more likely to be “buried” by its latent competitors than its current ones.

The most challenging thing for Yeo’s is facing giant competitor such as Alagapas, Besta and Adabi. These companies have huge capital and have branch in every state in Malaysia. This makes it almost impossible to penetrate.

Market Situation Analysis

There are two main parts of market situation analysis, which is microenvironment analysis and macro environment analysis. A company should know its position in market, its competitors’ position and the threats to the company. The most important thing is how the market environment affects the company.

Market Analysis

From the research conduct Yeo’s has notice a few potential market segmentation.

Target Market

• Housewife
• Students
• Food Hawker
• Restaurant

Table 1: Market Segmentation

From Table 1, Yeo’s chooses housewife consumer as its target market. Housewife prepares meal for her family everyday; she is the one who decides what to cook and what ingredients to use. They are using the salted soya bean to make the food more delicious. With the products that produce by Yeo’s such as canned foods are the simplest food to be prepared. We focus in the curry which is the famous foods for the Asian people. Due to this reason, we can say that housewife is the “decider” in using some canned foods in her cooking for her whole family. The most famous products are sardine in tomato sauces, chicken curry, chicken kurma, beef curry, lamb curry and cuttlefish in soya sources and others. Consumer in this segment normally ages from 30 – 78. This segment focused on canned foods such as tuna flakes in vegetables oil, tuna with sliced chili and tuna with chili and basil leaf, which are mostly favorable by housewife.

Meanwhile, students who that staying outside is one of the consumer that hit the list of market segmentation because they are expanding fast. Most of it serves their meal by eating the canned foods. They are potential for chicken curry, sardine in tomato sauces and the most favorable is the tuna canned food which provide in different type of taste.

Food hawker nowadays is expanding faster as to the economy downturn recently. More and more people tend to involve in food industry. They will sell sandwiches in morning and afternoon. They are potential for tuna flakes in vegetables oil, tuna with sliced chili, tuna with chili and basil leaf and sardine in tomato sauces.

Restaurant is well known in this region for serving local and foreign food. As major attraction to consumer restaurant have serve local food. As a conclusion, restaurants are potential customer of company in using most of company’s product.

Three Year Strategy

Year 1

I also suggest the organization to promote the products to the market through advertising. The two main areas of focus are magazine and newspaper.

Magazine – YEO HIAP SENG can publish in daily magazines their advertisements. Magazine is a very good tool to brief potential readers about the company. Many magazine readers are around Malaysia, and some even read it daily as a part of their activities. Most of the other people read magazines during their free time.

Newspaper – Newspaper will be a better choice compared to magazine. This is because the amount of newspaper readers is more than magazine readers. Through newspaper, YEO HIAP SENG can publish their potential products with pictures, location, profile and information regarding the product. It is very easy for YEO HIAP SENG to reach their target market through newspaper because almost everyone reads newspaper in Malaysia.

Year 2

Exhibition

Exhibition will be held in many famous places around Malaysia like KLCC, Midvalley, Bukit Bintang and Pavillion. Exhibition is a part of PR strategy to get more attention of the consumer.

Seminar

Seminar can also be held at school and university areas. Examples of famous places are Pay Fong Highschool, Inti University College and Nilai College. These places have many students and able to accommodate up to 1000 places for attendee.

Year 3

Brochure

Brochures will be printed in three languages and they are Mandarin, English and Malay language. Special designs that can catch attention will be used and the print will be in tri-fold brochure, tri-fold result in six panels and three panels on each side, the size (3panels x 2sides) of 3.67 x 8.5. Thick gloss paper with four colour process will be used so that the quality can be seen and also giving a good impression. The estimated print out copies will be around 10000 copies after consideration of the target market.

For year 1 strategy, the total amount of budget forecasted is Rm 280, 000 which is just about the allocated budget of Rm 300, 000. The second year strategy is only Rm 200, 000 only for exhibition purposes. In the final year three, the budget is only Rm 124, 000 which is getting lower and lower because the first and second strategy are not repeated.

Commercial Partner And Sponsorship

Much consideration was taken before choosing our potential commercial partner and sponsorship. Guinness Anchor Berhad (GAB) was chosen because it is the market leader in the beer and stout industry of Malaysia. This company started business in 1989 with the partnership between Malayan Breweries and Guinness Malaysia Berhad. On the similar year, it was listed in the KLSE as well. As a related industry, they can truly assist our company in sponsorship to achieve greater success. This is an ideal reason to seek them as sponsor for the organization of ours.

Control And Evaluation

Analyzing the effectiveness of the public relation plan is another important part of evaluation test. It used to estimate whether the media that we use reach to our target market effectively. Our company marketing department staff will do a research for advertising ROI (Return On Investment). It is a strategy that uses to measures the relationship between output (sales) and input (budget, money spent on message creation and delivery). By doing this research we will know whether the tools used in the public relation plan is efficient enough (Allen, 1999).

All of the measurement and evaluation activities will help us to learn which way is the most effective way to reach our target audiences. Therefore, we can increase the performance of the public relation plan in the future.

Summary

Absolutely, marketing is most powerful and crucial division in one company. Marketing and sales staff should work together to achieve their mission. Market opportunity is a big factor in shaping a company’s strategy in its campaign. Indeed, managers can not properly tailor to the YEO ‘s situation without first identifying each company opportunity, appraising the growth and profit potential each one holds and crafting strategic initiatives to capture the most promising of the company’s market opportunities.