Take Gourmet Express to Asia

International Marketing: Case Study Analysis

Case Study Analysis

            The long-term goal of Gourmet Express is to achieve long-term viability and make it an attractive proposition for eventual sale to another company. The company is positioned well to achieve this goal because of the several opportunities for expansion. Since its establishment, Gourmet Express has witnessed gradual expansion beginning with the national roll out. With the changing socio-cultural trends gearing towards professional and social activity across various countries, and the change from conservativeness to modernity, the food market presents a potential opportunity that Gourmet Express can exploit to achieve its long-term goals. However, there are potential challenges associated with international expansion, which are mostly posed by cultural barriers that pose the need to make use of different marketing approaches for different target markets in different countries; this tends to increase the cost of marketing (Hill 2011). Furthermore, Gourmet Express, a small food company, faces fierce competition from large competitors such as Kraft, Unilever and Nestle, which have very large marketing budgets when compared to the marketing budget of Gourmet. In the case study, Gourmet Express is aiming to expand its operations to target South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, the challenge is that the advertising strategy that was successful in Australia is not likely to work in the target markets identified for expansion and may damage the brand. This is because the people in Hong Kong and South Korea do not live in a manner depicted in the ad whereas Taiwan is a conservative society. In addition, there are no adequate funds to cater for new communications campaigns.

From the case study, it is apparent that there are a number of strengths and weaknesses associated with the Gourmet Express with regard to its objective of international expansion. Some of the strengths of Gourmet Express...