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1. 0 Introduction: 1. 1 Main Issues: After analysing and collecting all the information we could find from our resources, we have come agreed to choose Kickapoo (M) Sdn. Bhd. as our researching market. The research question that we have come to investigate is why kids and especially teenagers, who were into Kickapoo before, do not buy the drink anymore.
We choose this market because the generation Y are not loyal about their brands especially when it comes to drinks since there are so many other varieties in the market, but this drink has been around in the market for more than 30 years and at a point was cherished by young and old, but now it has diminished and cannot be even compared to the likes of Coke or Pepsi. Hence in conclusion we would like to identify the problem with the Kickapoo joy drink to find out why it is not the drink of choice for the Malaysian public anymore. 1. 2 Main Components: As our research assignment, we have chosen Kickapoo (M) Sdn.
Bhd. To understand the external environment of the Soft Drink industry as well as the internal situation occurring at Kickapoo (M) Sdn. Bhd. In order to comprehend our customers better and realize the reason why they would not buy the drink. Also understanding the market is also important, thus both the primary and secondary research shall be conducted in this paper. Our research approach would include surveys and the questionnaires would be used as the research instrument from which the quantitative research was selected. It will provide close ended questions for the respondents to answer with clarity.
The non probability judgements sample was chosen in order to get a high quality of data analysis, from which only the good prospects will be selected for more accurate information. For understanding the market, 150 to 200 questionnaires will be provided to the respondents and the questions will be given to them based on discussion which was prepared by the researcher. Face-to-face interviews, online and telephone interviews will be offered well in order to ensure that the respondents understand the questions and would be able answer open-mindedly.
The personal interview with Mr Lee Pooi Weng (The Manager of Kickapoo) provides this paper for a better understanding of the real issues of the company. The secondary research will be conducted through the internet. The articles and journals that we have gathered online will be assessed for our groups prospect support. 1. 3 Research Objective: 1. To identify the current customers perception towards Kickapoo joy juice 2. To evaluate why customers choose other drinks compared to Kickapoo. 2. 0 Literature Review: . 1 Company background: Kickapoo Joy Juice is produced by The Monarch Company, which was founded in Atlanta in 1965 by Frank Armstrong, an advertising executive who had spent years working with an international soft drink company. He envisioned that a beverage company would capitalize on this market; hence the Monarch Company was born. Kickapoo Joy juice was the first drink produced by this company. The Monarch Beverage Company owns trademarks, licenses, and trade secrets throughout the world.
They have strong partnerships with bottlers, suppliers and distributers, combined with our innovative marketing programs, a competitive edge, generate sales momentum and effectively promoted our brands around the world. In 2006, SV Beverage Holding Sdn. Bhd. has been appointed exclusive franchise for Kickapoo Joy Juice in Malaysia. (Www. KickapooJoy. com. my) 2. 2 F. M. C. G Product Background: Kickapoo Joy Juice is a citrus-flavoured soda inspired by the tonic of the same name in Al Capp’s comic strip “lil Abner” which appeared in the newspapers from 1934 to 1977.
It is based on the Original Joy Juice Recipe which was first bottled by Monarch Beverage in the U. S. A. It was also a favourite drink among Malaysians and the in the markets where Kickapoo is available, although now it has diminished a lot in the market structure of today. Kickapoo is available in stores in 325ml cans, 600ml and 1. 5 PET bottles with the distinctive yellow bars and in 300ml Non-returnable glass and 285 ml returnable glasses. Kickapoo Smart Kickapoo Smart is a new Kickapoo formulation with added Vitamin C. It has been specifically developed to cater for school children.
The recipe has been specially modified to meet government requirements of low sugar and low carbonation for this segment. Kickapoo Smart comes in a handy 325ml plastic bottle. (Www. KickapooJoy. com. my) 2. 3 Company Business Problem: The success or failure of a company or business undoubtedly depends on the marketing strategies taken upon. It is very important for every organization to undertake its marketing strategies to gain competitive advantage over its competitors. To succeed in a business, an organization must outdo their competitors in satisfying target consumers.
Marketing strategies also play an important role in identifying consumer needs and wants and to search for potential customers, therefore to enabling an organization to increase revenue and achieve its marketing objectives. However, the marketing strategies implemented should be wisely done as they “influence consumer responses in the marketplace and affect the marketing strategies of competitors” (Boone ; Kurtz, 2000 p. 87). * Competitive: Soft drinks benefited from a flow of new brands trying to capture share in the growing categories of fruit juice, sports and energy drinks.
However, the scale of growth for soft drinks as a whole was hampered by the showdown in carbonates. Many soft drink companies also engage in strong advertising and promotion in order to keep up with competitors and the large influx of brands. The ramp of new launches in most soft drinks helped keep the industry interesting but threatened the survival of Kickapoo Company. (Country Report, 2011) * Taste of Strange: The taste of Kickapoo Joy Juice is apparently too sweet, with a hint of citrus, lime more than lemon and apparently looks, smells, and tastes almost exactly like Mountain Dew. Maybe just a bit more limelike. Quaffmaster, 2009) * Promotion Problem: Kickapoo Company do not focus on product advertising. The general public rarely sees adds of this drink in any place. The Company also does not try to improve their sales strategies to attract customer to purchase the soft drinks. In addition we have also prepared a SWOT analysis for further depth in research: Political Analysis Change in law and regulations; including changes in accounting standards, taxation requirements (including tax rate changes, new tax laws and revised tax law interpretations) and environmental laws in domestic or foreign jurisdictions.
Secondly, political conditions especially in international markets, including civil unrest, government changes and restrictions on the ability to transfer capital across borders. Thus their ability to penetrate developing and emerging markets which also depends on economic and political conditions and how well Monarch Beverage Company Inc are able to acquire or form strategic business alliances with local bottlers and make necessary infrastructure enhancements to production facilities, distribution networks, sales equipment ; technology.
Economic Analysis In 2008 we witnessed a global economic crisis which was due to several indicators of economic downturn worldwide which included high oil prices, which led to high food prices and global inflation; a substantial credit crisis leading to bankruptcy of large and well established investment banks as well as commercial banks in various nations worldwide, increased unemployment and possibility of global recession.
As the inflation rate goes higher, consumer buying power represents a key threat in the industry thus in order not to face losing market share to competitions, management must continuously respond to the changing attitudes and demands of consumers. Social Analysis Consumers from the ages 34 to 55 are increasingly concerned with nutrition. Since many baby boomers are reaching an older age in life, they are becoming more concerned with increasing their longevity. This will continue to affect the non-alcoholic beverage industry by the increased overall demand in healthier beverages.
Increasing awareness among consumers, public health professionals and government agencies of the potential health problems associated with obesity and inactive lifestyles represents a significant challenge to the soft drink industry. A common criticism associated with the soft drink is its use of caffeine with possibility of physical dependence. Technological Analysis The effectiveness of the company’s advertising, marketing and promotional programs with the new technology from the internet and the television using special effects assisting in making products look attractive.
With the product advertising looking attractive, it helps in selling of the products and this technology is being used in media to sell their products. For example, the introduction of cans in the market has increased sales for Kickapoo Joy Juice as it is easier to carry and an improvisation of the glass bottle. Due to the introduction of new machineries in production line it has increased sales and the product image tremendously. Environmental Analysis
The Monarch Beverage Company’s system environmental commitments are focused on the areas in which they have most significant opportunities to make a difference such as water stewardship, sustainable packaging, energy management and climate protection. For example, in 2006 the system used approximately 100 billion litres of water and the goal of the system is to reduce the amount of water used to produce the beverages, recycle the water used in the manufacturing process so it can be returned safely to the environment and if possible replenish water in communities and nature through a global network of local partnerships and projects.
The company also continued to make strides by advance packaging initiatives focused on three main objectives which is to reduce – by designing consumer-preferred packages that use the least amount of resources while maintaining product quality, recover – which is to build packaging management systems to collect post-consumer packaging and reuse – by introducing post-consumer packaging and packaging materials again to deliver sustainable value.
In addition to setting specific global targets, The Monarch Beverage Company has worked hard to cooperate in community recycling programs that support litter prevention and community beautification organizations around the world including “Kempen Kebersihan Nasional Malaysia” in Malaysia, the “Tidy Britain Group” in Great Britain and “Keep America Beautiful” in the United States. Legal Analysis Marketing decisions are strongly affected by developments in the political and legal environment. The environment composed of laws, government agencies and pressure groups that influence and limit various organizations and individuals.
Sometimes this law also creates new opportunities for the business. Here are some legal affairs that the Monarch Beverage Company had to face recently, in the year 2000 Monarch which owns the registered trademark to ‘Kickapoo’ and ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’ in Singapore for non-alcoholic beverages had legal issues with National Aerated Water Co Pte Ltd (NAW) due to Monarch’s predecessors had licensed NAW to manufacture and sell carbonated drinks under the trademark “Kickapoo Joy Juice” in Singapore and Malaysia.
This license was immediately terminable by Monarch should NAW use any syllable or part of the term “Kickapoo Joy Juice” on any goods not belonging to Monarch. NAW began selling and distributing a drink called ‘Kick’ for a third party who subsequently led to Monarch terminating the license but NAW kept continuing to bottle and sell ‘Kick’ & ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’ soft drink.
Monarch succeeded before the High Court and the Court of Appeal which may deal mainly with the restraint of trade issue although NAW did contend that the prohibition against using any syllable of ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’ was an illegal restraint of trade thus rendering the contract void and unenforceable. 3. 0 Methodology 3. 1 Primary and secondary research: As for our group assignment, we are going to use the primary and secondary research to prepare our proposal.
To collect primary data a business field must carry out field research such as face- to- face interviews, telephone interviews, online interviews, questionnaires and focus group and consumer panels. In the primary research, we choose to use the survey research method as our primary researches because we can learn about consumer’s knowledge’s, beliefs and satisfaction to measure in the population. We use the quantitative rather than qualitative method because we provide question and answer to allow respondents to reply to our questions and also give feedbacks.
Two hundred questionnaires will be prepared and each member with 50 questionnaires to be given to the public to be filled up (refer in appendix). We also uses face-to face interview with our respondents and even the owner. While as for our secondary research method, we use the internet to get information from online journal and also from articles relating to the food and beverages industries in Malaysia compared to other countries. (Ahmed continues) 3. 2 Justification of the selected method: In this research, we had chosen to use the survey research method as it is a very common research to conduct for quantitative method.
Survey is a best way to receive feedbacks and respondents thoughts and also satisfaction towards the drink. Furthermore, survey research method is more precise because we approach the consumers. We selected 50 targets population, the bigger the population, the more precise answers we’ll receive back. The face- to- face interview use is the personal interviews, so that we can observe the respondents answers and feedbacks. Quantitative will be use as close end question because we’ll get immediate response from respondents and the convenience for them to choose the answer compared to writing for the questions.
As for the sampling method, we choose the non probability which is the judgement sample. Judgement sample is chosen because of the precise feedbacks only from customers. We use the internet as our secondary research because internet covers a broad area of information. Also internet provides us with accurate and fast respond in searching for articles and also journals. We can also get different sources from different website as our references. We also tried to get information from newspaper to help in our research 3. 3 Limitations of the selected methodology * Primary research
The limitation of this survey research is that when we doing the survey and giving questionnaires to respondents, some of the respondents may not want to cooperate with us by giving feedback. Furthermore time consuming because we need to explain in more detailed to customer regarding to our research and questionnaires. We also get to know some of the respondents that did not answer all the question and incomplete answer. Another limitation is that using personal contact can caused respondents to feel impatient while answering many question from the questionnaires.
It is not easy because we also need to observe respondent’s reaction and expression. Well as for the limitations of judgement sample which fall in the non probability method is because we choose to do survey on the respondents that always go to the consumers. This is a difficult method because is not easy to verified their existing customers rather than other consumers. * Secondary research The limitation of secondary research through using the internet is that internet may provide broad information and many relevant articles and journals relating to the food and beverages industry.
Another limitation of using the internet as the secondary research is that is can be too general and vague; this can cause reader to believe. As for online journals and articles that we are using, it may be useful and is a research method done by authors. We did this research and search for information where a place that provides a wireless connection such as in Starbucks and mostly at college and at home because this is where we can do our secondary research. 3. 4. Critical Evaluation – how could they impact on your findings? Primary research According to Will G. Hopkins (2000), in quantitative research, the aim is to determine the relationship between one thing (an independent variable) and another (a dependent or outcome variable) in a population. Quantitative research designs are either descriptive (subjects usually measured once) or experimental (subjects measured before and after a treatment). A descriptive study establishes only associations between variables. An experiment establishes causality.
For an accurate estimate of the relationship between variables, a descriptive study usually needs a sample of hundreds or even thousands of subjects; an experiment, especially a crossover, may need only tens of subjects. The estimate of the relationship is less likely to be biased if you have a high participation rate in a sample selected randomly from a population. In experiments, bias is also less likely if subjects are randomly assigned to treatments, and if subjects and researchers are blind to the identity of the treatments. (Hopkins, W. , 2000) Moreover, there are many areas would be weak and lack of accuracy.
For instance, the incomplete answer and inaccurate data from survey research will influent the quality of our findings. It is risky that some failures might exist in this marketing plan due to the low quality of data research. The basis that provided by interview and survey research could lead this marketing plan towards a wrong direction which is harmful to business. Also, the face-to-face interview could be risky because consumers might be fed up with our interview and questionnaire. It might have a negative influence towards the consumer’s impression of Kickapoo Joy Juice.
If there is failure appears in interviewing skills, it might cause disaster damage to business of losing current consumers. * Secondary research The data analysis from secondary research might not be fully relevant, however, it is helpful to understand food and beverage industry better, and provide business people a good vision on recent issue which might have an influence upon business in the future. 3. 5 Suggestion to minimize any problems: To address these failures may exist in research methods, we provide and use a number of solutions and to its well-designed plan.
In order to get a reasonable research and reliable data, we should ensure that the questionnaire is clearly designed customer satisfaction and is easy to understand issues related to our respondents. The number of questions was 15; it should not be seen as customers more than 10 minutes. This is very important, and we gave the interview with good communication skills will make our respondents feel relaxed and happy to answer the questionnaire. In addition, we provide a good interview question and ask the respondent’s Kickapoo Company to answer the questionnaire.
This can encourage them to do and which help to improve the quality of the data. In addition, we will also thru e-mail sending the questionnaires to respondent who do not will to answer the questionnaire. This will avoid unpleasant incident took place in face to face interview. In furthermore, Kickapoo Company also should improve their advertisement strategies and find the way to let people willing to try it. For example, providing free drinks in a popular area. Lastly, we will provide an additional extension of the number of the survey questionnaire because if we get any incomplete answers and questionnaire we ould have enough replacement for extensional another 200 questionnaire paper. At the same time it will help us better analyze the data more accurate. 4. 0 Conclusion In conclusion, the primary research with the personal interview with Mr Lee Pooi Weng the manager of Kickapoo (M) Sdn. Bhd, he provided us with a clear direction on the issues in the company. We got many ideas for this research from him, so we decided to conduct a quantitative survey research with customers and the questionnaire has been provided in the appendix.
Based on the academic research papers, the secondary research from online journals, newspapers and academic articles provides this proposal with critical evidences and reasonable suggestions. The content of this proposal has been explained clearly and the quantitative research is suit for this case so that we would be able to generate an accurate data from customers. Although there are some limits of this research, but with our suggestion it will provide us a high quality data after the survey research. This proposal is going to help Kickapoo (M) Sdn. Bhd. ith determining a good marketing plan towards improving customers’ perception towards the Kickapoo drink. 5. References Interview Lee. P. W. (2011) “Interview with Manager” At Kickapoo (M) Sdn. Bhd. 3, Block B, Jalan SS 13/5, Subang Jaya Light Industrial Estate, Subang Jaya, Selangor. Books Boone L. E & Kurtz L. D, 2000, “Contemporary Marketing”, 8th edition, The dryen Press, Harcourt brace, USA Online articles Hopkins, W. (2000). Quantitative Research Design. Available: http://sportsci. org/jour/0001/wghdesign. html. Last accessed 19 July 2010. Kickapoo Joy Juice Official webpage ttp://www. kickapoojoy. com. my Weird Soda review Of Kickapoo Joy Juice by Quaffmaster Sunday march 15th 2009 http://www. weirdsodareview. com/2009/03/kickapoo-joy-juice. html 6. 0 Appendix. 7. 0 Questionnaire 1. What is your gender? ( ) Male ( ) Female 2. Which age group d you belong to? ( ) Below 18 ( ) 19-29 ( ) 30 – 49 ( ) 50 and above 3. Which race/ethnic group do you belong to? ( ) Malay ( ) Chinese ( ) Indian ( ) Others: _____________ . How many times do you consume a soft drink in a week? ( ) Rarely or at least once ( ) 2 – 5 times ( ) 5 – 9 times ( ) 10 times and above 5. Indicate level of agreement with the following statement: Factors you consider upon purchasing a soft drink? | Strongly Disagree| Disagree| Neither Agree or Disagree| Agree| Strongly Agree| Image| | | | | | Taste| | | | | | Packaging| | | | | | Brand| | | | | | 6. When do generally consume soft drinks? (Please select as many as applicable) * | With food |
After meals | While travelling | After playing | In a party | To quench the thirst | With hard drinks | While smoking | During meetings | Other | 7. Rank the following attributes in the order of importance for buying a soft drink. (1 – Most Important… 13 – Least Important) * | | | Price| | | Fizz| | | Nutritional Value| | | Star Endorsement| | | Sweetness| | | Shape & Design of Bottle| | | Size of the Bootle| | | Brand| | | Flavor (Cola, Lime, Mango, Orange, etc. )| | | Type of Packaging (Bottle, Tetra-Pack, Fountain, etc. | | | Ease of use with Alcoholic Beverages| | | Thirst Quenching| | | Availability| | | | Rank values must be between 1 and 13| | | | 8. When comparing Kickapoo Joy Juice with Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Kickapoo Joy Juice is _________ ( ) Excellent ( ) Very good ( ) Good ( ) Fair ( ) Poor 9. How did you come to know of Kickapoo Joy Juice? ( ) Newspaper, television or magazine ads ( ) Internet – Online blog, social networking websites etc. ( ) Word of mouth ( ) Recommended by friends ( ) Others: _________________________ 0. How likely are you to purchase Kickapoo Joy Juice if your 1st choice of soft drink is not available? ( ) Definitely buy ( ) Probably buy ( ) Not sure ( ) Probably not buy ( ) Definitely not buy 11. What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear the following? Kickapoo __________________ Joy _______________________ Juice ______________________ 12. If any, please suggest ideas to further improve Kickapoo Joy Juice __________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________