Question: Please help me to analyze this case study in strategic management: Honors coffee is a small coffee company, to be precise: one of the many
Please help me to analyze this case study in strategic management:
Honors coffee is a small coffee company, to be precise: one of the many specialty roasters that increasingly take part in the global coffee market. So far, 50% of their revenue has been derived from B2B sales: office coffee as well as coffee sold in gastronomy. Both categories will plummet in the weeks or months ahead Germany is going to work from home, and cafs, restaurants, bars, and hotels have to close. Either the brainstorming of the two founders would lead to a master plan about how to compensate for the feared drop in their B2B sales or they would have to severely shrink their business. Peter and Dirk had founded Honor Coffee in 2017 after a trip to Oslo where they got to know the local coffee scene. Honor Coffee is a so-called specialty roaster, a business focused on roasting high-quality coffee that has been imported from one of the many coffee-producing countries along the coffee belt. Most of Honor Coffees coffee is sold as coffee beans, but sometimes they also grind the coffee for their customers faster/easier use at home. Honor Coffees brand is respected not only by regional private customers but also by businesses and restaurants in a few large cities in Germany (such as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt). Their value proposition is based on slowly roasted coffee, as well as their use of Fairtrade coffee beans of highest quality. Their unfair advantage can be seen in the close relationship with their three suppliers in Colombia, Brazil, and Indonesia. This allows them to cut out a number of middle men, and to reduce their supply chain to only one local exporter per country. At least twice a year, they visit the coffee farms and cooperatives. This helps them to not only control quality, fairness, and sustainability whilst strengthening their relationship to their suppliers but also to create content for their website/social media accounts.
Honor Coffee has grown to Euro 500,000 in revenues and 5 FTEs (including the two founders). While most of the coffee related activities (such as roasting or sales and marketing) are carried out by all employees, the founders focus on strategic issues (such as future development, finance, and legal issues, but also purchasing). Amongst their employees is one native Spanish speaker and one design student extremely helpful for maintaining the relationship(s) with the suppliers, and for the sales and marketing activities, respectively. A few activities such as hosting services for websites and online shops, payroll service solutions, or tax filing are outsourced to specialists. The world coffee market is mature and towards the end product highly concentrated - in particular after a wave of consolidation in the last decade. The two major players are Nestl and JAB Holdings, and the top ten roasters account for 34% of global coffee sales. Nonetheless, towards the raw material there is little concentration and there are numerous coffee farmers, cooperatives, as well as local exporters. The aggressive moves of the top players and their growing similarities drive the consolidation trend. However, coffee growth in developing countries, where local purchases matter more, as well as the craft movement in industrial economies foster smaller coffee roasters. Europe is the largest and most important market for specialty coffees, together with the United States of America. The number of specialty roasters, coffee shops and local coffee brands, which can be seen as the bandwagon in the introduction of high-quality coffees, is still increasing in Europe, partly driven by more demanding European coffee consumers. The global coffee market can be segmented by product type, distribution channel, and type of preparation. The product type follows the type of the coffee beans such as Robusta and Arabica. Concerning distribution channels, coffee is sold in super and hyper markets, convenience stores, as well as specialist and independent retailers. According to the preparation type, coffee is sold as instant, roasted, specialty, and ready-to-drink coffee. With around one third of all imports, Germany is Europes dominant importer of green coffee beans. Interestingly, consumption in Germany only amounts to one third of its imports, two thirds are re-exported mainly to European countries. Germans mainly buy their coffee in retail, prefer fresh over instant/soluble coffee, and increasingly purchase coffee in pods (pads, capsules, ). 80-90% of all Germans aged 18-64 drink coffee on a daily basis and drink even more coffee than mineral water (162 liters vs. 144 liter). Quality (40-60%) and price (40-50%) are the most important criteria in the coffee purchasing decision, but in particular Germans with a higher education take sustainability criteria into consideration (17%). Around half of the German coffee drinkers prefer to buy from the brand which they typically choose. Coffee is mostly drunk at home (~90% do so), but their office (~60%), their friends & familys place (~55%), or gastronomy (~50%) are important locations, too. The VAT in retail amounts to 7% and imports of roasted coffee cost an additional EUR 2.19/kg in excise duty. Importing coffee typically involves a number of intermediaries and today, the average green coffee export value is still less than 10% of the $200 billion revenues generated in the coffee retail market. As the bottle is closed to be finished, Peter and Dirk have started to smile, again. The crisis might even end up as a necessary push towards the unavoidable. Their first moves seem pretty clear, and even for the long term, theres a variety of options to skyrocket their so far small business.
QUESTION: Internationalization & OLI-Framework- Why should the company further internationalize? Why not? Please describe two reasons to internationalize based on Dunnings OLI-Framework! Be as concrete as possible! What could be the benefits and risks?
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