Management insight - Research Paper Example

This brand is mainly sold in the UK. Blue Charge: this is an energy drink produced in the United Kingdom. It competes with products such as Powerade and Red Bull. It is mainly used as an alcohol mixer by the students and British youth culture. The name of the manager: Gerald Penser The title of the manager: Chief Executive Officer Challenges facing the Gerald Penser as the CEO of Cott One of the biggest challenges that face Gerald is ensuring that the company remains relevant in the soft drink industry, which is dominated by very strong competitors such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola companies.

This is quoted as follows “Gerald Pencer, a Canadian entrepreneur who came up with a new strategy for competing against these powerful differentiators.” (Gareth and Jennifer 263). Penser has a reason to fear his competitors because they can use their enormous budgets to bring Cott on its own knees. This is quoted as follows “Indeed, in 2010 both these companies announced a plan to buy back their bottlers at a cost of billions of dollars…” (Gareth and Jennifer 263). Reasons why pencer is facing these challenges The fact that Coca-cola and Pepsi are house hold names throughout the world, and since their brands are strongly entrenched in the minds of many customers means that Penser and his team have a very challenging task of devising unique strategies.

Although Cott is its own bottler, which helps them pursue a low-cost strategy, Penser is still presented with a lot of challenges because his competitors can make some slight moves rendering their competitive strategy irrelevant. For example, both Coca-cola and Pepsi announced to buy back their bottlers in 2010, a move that can endanger Cott’s competitiveness. The most relevant managerial task In order to counter the strong competition from Coca-cola and Pepsi, Penser has undertaken a well calculated strategic decision.

This strategy is aimed at producing “a high-quality, low-priced cola, manufactured and bottled by the Cott Corporation…but to sell it as the private-label house brand of major retail stores such as Walmart and supermarket chains such as Kroger’s, thus bypassing the bottlers” (Gareth and Jennifer 263). Through this strategy, Penser will ensure that the products of Cott corporation are bought because of they are low price; therefore, the company will still survive in the industry that is dominated by two companies with huge budgets.

This strategy will make it possible for Cott to sell its products at low prices because they do not need to spend much on advertisements, since such a role is played by the retailers. Since Cott’s competitors have a presence at every corner of the world, Pencer ensures that his low-cost strategy is implemented in other countries beginning with the most strategic ones such as the United States. The theory or concept in the chapter The issues discussed in this chapter can be described by Michael porter’s theory of competitive advantage.

In this theory, strategies that are used by businesses to maintain their competitive advantage are explained. These strategies can be classified into three categories including market segmentation, differentiation, and cost leaders. The firms with high market share such as coca-cola and Pepsi are highly profitable, but those with small market share can play their cards well and make huge profits, as well. According to porter, firms with high m