Market Structure: Eastern Foods - Literature review Example

Eastern foods Introduction There is a growing market for fast food in the United Kingdom. The fact that the eastern foods have identified this market opportunity and aims at developing fast food business in the United Kingdom indicates a greater urge for expansion. There are certain issues that are deemed quite important as far the development of the fast food business in Birmingham is concerned. This issues the human resources, accounting, and marketing and operations management. In order to be able to develop a complete organizational structure for this business to be able to realize success these issue will have to be adequately addressed due to the fact they form the core of all the activities in this industry (Joanne, Otto, and Michael 2005, p.30). This project aims at presenting an outline indicating the way forward for the eastern foods expansion plan in the United Kingdom. The concept of human resources is significant within any given business. It basically concerns the welfare of employees in the organization as well the manner the employees interact with one another towards the realization of the business’s goals. Various challenges are deemed to face the eastern foods business in line with the management of human resources. The issue of culture is an issue that presents challenges to many organizations. The human resource team of eastern foods will have to take the initiative of ensuring that diverse aspects within the organization are well controlled. Other critical challenges that the eastern foods will have to address in the management of human resources include; developing a plan for staff recruitment, ensuring coordination of staff, developing ways of training its employees and motivating them to work towards the targeted business goals. Accounting is another crucial feature of organizational structure that the company will have to address. Basically accounting involves the management of the finances of the business. In this case some of the challenges that the eastern foods management will have to anticipate and hence the need to have a strategy a plan to address them include; developing budgets for the business, developing ways of profit maximization and realization of sales targets, administration of payrolls and control of takings in the business. Another very important challenge in line with accounting is financial reporting. This basically involves the presentation of financial reports such as financial statements at the end of a specified time. Financial reporting will pose a challenge to the business necessitating the need for the management team to ensure that it develops ways of fostering better ways of keeping records. Financial reports provide very crucial information in regards to the performance of the business hence they are used in facilitation of decision making process in the organization. These challenges shall aid in the developing of an organizational structure by the management on how to carry out financial management. Marketing relates to all activities that aid in creating awareness about a business and promoting sales. Marketers make a business and its products to be well known to customers. For the eastern foods business there are some challenges in line marketing that will assist the management team of eastern foods to have an idea on how to structure their marketing strategies they include; ensuring high customer service standard, ensuring that queries and complaints presented by customers are well handled and developing ways for the diversification of the business’s marketing campaigns (Pollan 2009, p.65). Another crucial challenge in line with marketing involves the issue of finances. Marketing activities especially when a new business is being developed in a hew region cost quite high. Operations management involves activities that involve dealing inventory issue in the business in this case the challenges related to operational management include; developing ways of order supplies, ensuring organization of both equipment and stock, ensuring that the business is maintained and developing was to foster security and cleanliness in the organization. With adequate considerations of these challenges the eastern foods business will be able to have an efficient, effective and operational organizational structure. Operations management structure Operations management relates to a wide range of activities with regard to the processes of designing, planning, operating, and controlling systems beginning from how the foods are made to the final activity of serving customers. In order for the new out lets in the UK to be able to carry their day to day activities effectively, a strategic approach is of necessity for the purpose of highlighting some of processes that are possibly expected to be taking place in the environment of the business on a daily basis (Sault, Joanne; Toivanen, Otto, and Waterson, Michael 2002, p.15). The operations structure plan in this case will have to address the following concerns What areas of the order taking process can be enhanced or rather improved that is the food preparation part or the food delivery part? How can the improvement be made? How can the equipments in business be rearranged so at to obtain the speed needed to drive activities and operations in the business? What new equipment is needed? What kind of development and training is needed by the employees? In order to be able to address these concerns within the operations structure there is need to have an operations strategy for the business which in this case may be “developing business process that aids the firm in the production and delivery processes of both services and products.” The figure below is an outline of the operational structure strategy aimed at supporting the daily activities of the eastern foods business outlets. From this structure providing value to customers is the daily mission, providing value to the customers is the competitive priority and ensuring low inventory levels short flow times is the operations management strategy (Arturs and Wilbur 2001, p.45). Linking communications between stores in the outlets and fast transportation system is what ultimately defines the operations management structure. The use of satellites, cross docking and focused simply involves the application of technologies and enabling process in the daily operations. From the application of the operational strategic structure above tracking is enhanced for every stock keeping unit, day to day activities as well as store outlet. The outlets will be able offer immediate responses to demands from customers. In addition the structure will facilitate the coordination of ordering processes from all the outlets to the suppliers for their required products for production. In a bid to adequately fast foods demand the following the operations structure will adopt the following criteria; Make to order-this involves production being carried according to the specifications received from customers. Make to stock- this involves production with reference to the anticipated level of demand Assemble to order-this involves production being carried with the incorporation of additional specifications from the customers. The operational structure is anticipated to support the following productions; Project production-this is a one time production according to the order received from the customer. Mass production-this will involve the production of large volumes of a standardized product for a large market. Batch production-this will involve the processing of many activities to take place at the same time. Continuous production-this will involve production of a large volume of the product commodity. From the application of the operational structure by eastern food business outlets the expected benefits include; at the outlets inventory will be turned over twice in every one week while the beverages in the industry will be turned over twice within the same period. The sales will be expected to increase due to the fact the identified market is large. This operational structure will therefore be of great significance to the eastern foods outlets and their efforts to capture a new market. Marketing structure Marketing activities are significant as far as the success of any given business is concerned. In this for the eastern food business the concept of marketing is quite imperative. For the marketing structure of the new eastern foods fast foods outlets to be developed a market analysis is crucial consideration. This step involves the process of evaluating the nature of market in regard to the fats food products. This is in line with the identification of the target market as well as understanding the size of the market that the outlet is aiming at servicing. The targeted market as identified by the eastern foods company is students. In this case the market analysis will aid the outlets to develop a business profile that well fits the needs the customers. In addition the outlets will acquire data and information that will offer assistance on how to focus on ensuring a healthy orientation as well as a fresh lifestyle. The marketing structure will have to ensure that the outlets for the eastern food demonstrate concerns in regard to increased health conscience of the public. Additionally in relation to the economic environment the market analysis will facilitate a better understanding of the factors or rather conditions that will have the likelihood of affecting the operations of the outlets and ability to meet the demand for fast food products. Competition is another aspect that will have to be considered in the development of a marketing structure (Irmen, Andreas and Thisse, Jacques-François 1998, p.85). This is due to the fact it is crucial to develop a marketing structure that will aid the outlets to counter competition from rival business and hence gain a competitive advantage in the market. The following diagram below represents relationship marketing as a marketing structure strategy that will enable the eastern foods outlets perform well in the market. The marketing structure strategy that will be adopted by the outlets is a relationship marketing strategy. This structure will solely aim at ensuring rapid penetration of the outlets into the new market. The marketing activities are meant to be linked with customer and the quality of fast products that will be produced. Marketers in this case, will bear the responsibility of linking their activities with the quality of fast foods and then provide the customers with information regarding the quality of products being brought into the market (Bresnahan and Reiss, Peter 1991, p.45). They will end up creating a link between the products and the customers. The network that the marketer will create through the relationship marketing strategy will ensure faster movement of the outlets towards optimization and hence gain a competitive advantage against other businesses in the same industry of fast foods. Total quality management system will provide support to this network thus promoting consistency and hence having a major impact on the marketing structure. The outlets for eastern foods company main objective with the marketing structure in place is to make customers of fast foods to gain confidence in buying and consuming their products that are health conscious. In addition the enhancement of timely deliveries is as well part of the objectives for the purpose of attracting more and more customers. The marketing structure will ensure when implemented will serve the purpose of; Establishing a fast foods brand that is recognized Capitalizing on the brand as a way creating a reputation through product diversification Positioning the outlets as providers of tasty, fresh and healthy meals With such a clear and feasible purpose the outlets will be able to price their products in competitive manner basing their comparison on the already existing one in the market. The most crucial aspect that the market structure will promote from diversification perspective is product which will aid the outlets obtain a larger market share (Thomadsen and Raphael 2000, p.77). Conclusion The Eastern foods company is bound to turn successful through its expansion initiative in the United Kingdom if all aspects in relation the human resource management, accounting, operations management and marketing as addressed herein are adhered to. This project presents a clear overview the challenges that the eastern foods company should expect in the development process. This aid the company in the process of developing measures to address the challenges in a timely without causing any delays as far as project time management is concerned. the fact that the target market for the fast foods are university student whose greater percentage are from Asian origin penetration into the market will not be difficult. The company outlets will produce at their best and market their brand to gain customer loyalty as a key to development and growth of the business. In addition as a recommendation the outlets should highly not overlook the aspect of after sale for the customers such as the delivery services. after sale are quite imperative if a business is survive and gain a larger market share of the market it can be a way of obtaining a competitive advantages against the rivals business within the fast foods industry that already in existence. Bibliography Arturs K. and Wilbur C. 2001, Firm heterogeneity, market heterogeneity and agglomeration, Mimeo; Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California Berry, Leonard L., Seiders K., and Grewal D., 2010 "The Journal of Marketing." 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