Transcript:

[ Music ] >> The strategy's actually the easy part. I want to build a model that other companies can look at and emulate. A model that's based on strong ethics and financial success. I'm Joe, founder and CEO of Theo Chocolate. We exist in a distribution system in grocery across this country where you need to operate at a certain size and have a certain level of success just to stay on the shelf. We need to grow in order to continue our business. >> Joe convinced me that I should start this company with Joe. I'm Debra, vice president of sales and marketing for Theo Chocolate. When Joe realized that he needed to move to Seattle to start Theo, he wasn't going to relocate unless I was willing to relocate along with him with our son. I didn't want to be the only, the thing that stood in the way of him realizing his dream, and it's chocolate after all. So it's a chocolate factory. [ Music ] >> We produce products that really excited us, and we put them in packaging that we really liked. We learned very quickly that as fabulous as those products were, they weren't necessarily products that other consumers wanted to have. >> When we looked at our numbers and realized we were not growing at the rate that we thought we should be, and that in certain markets we were struggling, we decided to apply some science to what we were doing. We'd had a really, really great launch and had garnered a lot of accolades, both from press and food critics, partly because of the uniqueness in what we had done, but when push comes to shove, it's really a volume game, and we needed to be selling a lot more chocolate. >> In order for us to attract a more mainstream group of consumers, we had to produce products where the flavors were easily accessible and understood, in packaging that was easy for consumers to read on the shelf, and at price points that was attractive to them. >> Initially, we were targeting green consumers or people who were really foodies, meaning that they're adventurous eaters, and we needed also to be selling in places where people just wanted a milk chocolate bar - >> We made flavors like coconut curry and milk chocolate. That's not something that plays on Main Street very well - >> We had people coming in to our store all the time saying, well, can't you just do chocolate with mint, and so we thought, well, yeah. We definitely can do chocolate with mint. We weren't especially excited about doing chocolate with mint, but we realized why wouldn't we do that if our customers are asking for it. >> We looked at our market data for the first time, and we looked at what were the clear winners - >> It was the motivation to have products out there that people understood across the country. So chocolate with orange, chocolate with mint, straight 70 percent dark chocolate, chocolate with cherries and almonds. More recently, a spicy chili. When we expand the bar line, it'll be dark chocolate with coconut. Just a much more accessible product line, which turned out to be a really, really important move for us, but there was already a lot of this kind of product on the market, you know, on the shelf, and retailers have limited space. 

1. Theo Chocolate started out making fabulous products. But, Joe says, they werent necessarily products that other consumers wanted to have. Joes examination of what his customers wanted gave him insight about the ______ environment of his organization.

Options:

external

internal

2. At Theo Chocolate, managers want to be sure that their products will be competitive given the culture of the company, the companys efforts to treat chocolate producers fairly, and the goal of educating the public about fair-trade chocolate. Considering all of these factors relates to the ______ component of the strategic planning process.

Options:

setting objectives

choosing activities

managing trade-offs

creating fit among activities

3. Theo Chocolate will have a good corporate strategy if which of the following components are true? Check all that apply.

Options:

The strategy gives the company a differentiated position in the marketplace.

The company can effectively execute the strategy.

The strategy makes good use of the companys key resources.

The strategy fits with the companys current sales model.