Soren Chemical Case Study

Strategic Options

As mentioned in the case, Soren had made their market plan to reach pool service professionals and specialty retailers by using the wholesale distributors who had reach in the market. Moreover, the company had done the press release in trade journals that targeted the pool service professionals and specialty retailers and created a new website for the product. It also highlighted the packaging with the message of reducing annual chemical costs by 20-30%. Despite all the efforts, the company received over 2,000 enquires from interested customers within the first three months and decided to response by sending brochures, technical notes, and material safety data sheet about the product. Nevertheless, the sales did not perform as the company expected because it did not spread the product awareness campaign to the end customer which represented only 30% can be recalled that they had received the response materials.

From the data given, it would recommend the company to re-launch the Coracle in the second year before the summer seasons. Thus, it will be the high seasons for people for swimming compared to its first year that the company launched the product in September as it was not a good time to generate sales for swimming pool product. Soren should focus more to promote aggressively to the end customers and educate them about the advantages of the products. This will create demand from the consumer side (Market Pull) and in the end it will force wholesalers and distributor to stock up the product (Market Push). The company can also try to distribute more of its product directly to Wal-Mart or Home Depot because it will increase the availability of its product to final consumer as the data shows 80% of customer maintained their own pool. It will also increase the bargaining power over its wholesalers and distributor whose demands 20-30% of gross margin and unlikely to offer the product to consumers (as 70% of respondents stated).