Question

INSTRUCTIONS: READ THE FOLLOWING SITUATION AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ARISING FOR THE CASE ANALYSIS.

“STONYFIELD FARM GOES TO THE BLOGS”

The Stonyfield Farm story is a kind of legend. In 1983, friends and social activists Gary Hirschberg and Samuel Kaymen started with a good yogurt recipe, seven cows, and a dream. They established an organic yogurt company in Wilton, New Hampshire, to take advantage of baby boomers' growing concerns about natural foods and health, and to revitalize the dairy industry in New England. Stonyfield Farms has grown to become the third largest organic company in the world, with annual sales of more than $ 50 million in 50 states. It produces more than 18 million glasses of yogurt each month.

Stonyfield Farrn's spectacular growth is attributable in part to its ability to offer a product to a special niche market - people who value healthy food and want to protect the environment. These values ​​have become part of the "personality" of the company. Stonyfleld promises to use only natural ingredients and milk that has not been produced with antibiotics, synthetic growth hormones, or pesticides or toxic fertilizers. The company donates 10 percent of its profits each year to projects that help protect or restore the planet.

As the company expanded, management feared that it might lose touch with its loyal and committed customer base. Advertising based on traditional media was expensive and did not really help the company to "connect" with the kind of people it was trying to reach. This company prefers word-of-mouth techniques that deliver its message to customers in ways more compatible with its popular, organic, and activist-friendly image.

Stonyfield has multiple active email newsletters with more than 500,000 subscribers, and typically posts messages promoting causes that he supports on the tops of his yogurt glasses. Now she's turning to blogging to further personalize her customer relationships and reach even more people. Inspired by Howard Dean's presidential campaign and Dean's blogger tutorials, CEO Hirschberg became convinced that Stonyfield could use blogging to create a more personal relationship with consumers, different from the traditional sales relationship. "Blogs give us what we call a handshake with consumers" and "a little more access to us

Stonyfield now publishes two separate blogs on his website — Baby Babble and Bovine Bugle. At one time Stonyfield was running five blogs, but decided to withdraw three of them because they weren't attracting enough readers. Baby Babble provides a forum for Stonyfield employees and other parents of young children to meet and discuss child development and balance work with the family. Stonyfield created that blog because baby yogurts are one of its most popular product lines, and parenting blogs seem to appeal to a large number of readers. The Bovine Bugle provides reports about Jonathan's Organic Dairy Farm. Gates in Franklin, Vermont, a member of the organic cooperative that supplies milk for Stonyfield products.

This blog sparks a large number of nostalgic comments from readers who remember their childhood on a farm. As organic food grows in importance, these blogs help the company showcase the aspects that make it different from other brands and invite customers to help them in this endeavor. Stonyfield continually posts new content to each of the blogs. Readers can subscribe to any of them and automatically receive updates when available. And of course they can reply to these posts.

The benefits of blogging for Stonyfield have not yet been quantified so far, but management is confident there are real benefits. Blogs have created a positive response for the Stonyfield brand by providing readers with something that inspires them or sparks their interest -If blogs give new information to readers, inspire them to protect the environment or ask them for opinions, the administration believes that They will remember the brand when they are in front of the yogurt shelves in the supermarket or grocery store and that they will take a Stonyfleld product instead of a competitor when it is time to choose. Stonyfield has a fairly large website. Blogs offer a way to highlight some of the content on the Web that would otherwise be lost. This, too, helps drive some blog readers to buy Stonyfield products.

1.What is Stonyfield farm's e-commerce model and business strategy? What challenges and problems does the company face?

Answer 1

Answer:

Stonyfield farm’s E-commerce Model: D2C (Direct to Consumer Model). Stonyfield farm directly sells organic yogurt to the customers (the end-users).

Business Strategy of the Stonyfield is as follows:

1. Narrow Market Strategy: Stonyfield has a narrow market strategy in which they focus only on the niche market and the people who value healthy food and want to protect the environment.
2. Abandoning Traditional Media Advertising: The Company decided to abandon the use of traditional media advertising as it was an expensive affair for the company.
3. Word-of-Mouth Strategy: The Company decided to follow word-of-mouth strategy which means that they will directly speak and explain to the customers about their product.
4. Blogging as a medium: The Company decided to implement the word-of-mouth strategy and usage of blogging to connect with the customers personally and to build a relationship with them.

Challenges and problems faced by the company:

1. Fear of loss of touch with the customers.
2. Cost of expensive advertising.
3. Building a cheap, strong and connecting Marketing Strategy.
4. Fear of loss of business.