Analyse industrielle - étude en anglais

3. Industry Analysis

3. Industry Analysis

In the below section, one will gain a profound understanding of the competitive environment of the baby feeding bottle industry. The key target of any firm is to earn maximized profits. The business strategy is an essentially quest for profit maximization. Therefore, the primary task for any successful business strategy is to identify the sources of profits and the factors influencing the macro-environment. The firm’s proximate environment is its industry’s environment. The environment of the firm consists of all external influences that affect its decision-making process and performances. This will help a firm to identify the factors influencing its supply and demand channels, new entrants and the threats from substitutes on the industry level. The systematic, continuous scanning of the external influences are necessary and include PESTLE, Porter’s six forces, S.W.O.T and the Structure-Conduct –Performance model for Feed Me Bottles Ltd. in the baby feeding bottle industry.

3.1 PESTLE analysis

The Pestle analysis, macro-environmental factors which widely have the power to alter the demand of the product offered by any firm in an industry; the way in which a product is distributed , prices are changed or the way in which firms compete with each other in the industry. The below six macro-environmental factors consider the impact on the Baby feeding bottle industry.

3.1.1 Political Factors

The International health bodies like World Health Organisation (WHO) and many other national health organisations had put a pressure on Governments to regulate the use of BPA or to ban BPA products in regards to health issues especially for the babies. The United States & Canada banned the polycarbonate baby bottles in February 2008 following EU in November 2010 (Levy, S., 2009). Today’s consumer (moms) is educated and exposed to lot of information on internet which is a wonderful vehicle for the information and aware of new development in the market. They understand BPA and its implications. Therefore, suppliers and retails have responded very well to this issue and today BPA –free baby feeding bottles are a huge point of entry in the baby care accessory category. For example Toys “R” Us, is the world’s leading dedicated toy and juvenile products retailer, have changed all baby bottles and baby –feeding products sold in stores or through their websites to BPA free by 1 January 2009 (Levy, S., 2009).

3.1.2 Economic Factors

Economic recovery is very slow in mature markets like the United Kingdom and the United States, which has great impact on lifestyle of the people. For example, Vat rose to 20% in the United Kingdom in January, 2011, will not make much difference to the prices of small items but overall impact can be seen on consumer’s purchasing power. Less money will be left for discretionary or high end purchases (Mintel, 2011). Consumer will think twice before buying even small thing which will be of short period use. Economic factors related to supply and demand are also important. The firms that source their goods from china will see higher production cost due to rising costs in labour, raw material and less preferential tax treatment in china (www.globalsources.com 2011).

3.1.3 Social factors

Consumer’s purchasing power is a reflection of the lifestyle and consumer’s taste which finally determines the magnitude of demand. In today’s world, urbanization largely affects the size of family. People have become more ambitious and they are moving towards cities. Due to their lifestyle, couples are trying to become more financially secure before starting a family which leads to time before marriage and parenthood. This is a clear sign of aging, as women leave it until later in life to have children, contrary this is a positive sign for the market for baby and nursery goods as older mothers are financially secured and can afford to spend more on their babies. The rise of celebrity culture and the ‘yoga moms’ phenomenon, will help to increase the sales for boutique style retailers and manufacturers of high end designer baby product (Euromonitor International, 2006).

3.1.4 Technological Factors

As mentioned above, the internet has become an important vehicle for information. Wide availability of information and opinions about shopping for babies from magazines, internets (social networking websites like Facebook, through blogs: bymomsformoms.blogspot.com) and smart phone applications made easy for consumer to select product. Even brands now days use these blogs to get more information on products for new developments. Even more, brands have turned their attention in creating and developing online presence because of e-world. For example: all baby product brands and shops have online shops like www.mothercare.com, www.1stbabyshop.co.uk, www.avent.com, www.tommeetippee.com, www.kiddicare.com and many more.

3.1.5 Legal Factors

The firms have to adjust their products and the way they operate in the industry as per different regulatory and legislative framework that govern each product in the country in which they are active. Increase in global commerce which has impacted the international legal environment in terms of standardization of many processes and other aspect of product. International organisation like BPA, IBFAN are in the process of standardizing the processes in the value chain of the baby bottle products. As explained earlier regarding ban of BPA chemical by many countries by law in the manufacturing of baby bottles, has made many multinational companies and retailers to change baby bottles to BPA free baby bottles.

3.1.6 Environmental Factor

Awareness of the effects of toxics contents in the product have led to increased the efforts to develop technological methods or solution to the problems. The trend of organic products in the market especially for baby products has increased. The firms like Avent (Philips) have already developed a range of the baby products which is BPA free (Avent.com). Due to pressure groups and use of internet, consumers are getting educated about different products and theirs advantages and disadvantages. For Example,

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