Question

A friend of yours wants to begin selling maple syrup that he makes on his forest property. He has asked you, as a marketing student, if he should sell his maple syrup product through retail or wholesale channels.

a) Explain the difference and pros/cons of each marketing channel for your friend and suggest a channel based on your knowledge. Also include promotion mix strategies for your friend’s new business.

b) What are the main (marketing) concerns you have about this business venture?

Answer 1

Below is the discussion of the pros and the cons of each of the marketing channels along with the promotion mix strategies and concerns about a business venture.

A ) There are various marketing channels for the transportation of products from one place to another and according to my friend, it should definitely go for the wholesale channel. By opting for the wholesale channel he would get the benefit of bulk selling to the wholesaler as wholesaler buy the products in bulk which will after all give benefits to my friend.

But there can be some issues with the wholesale channel as it would be a long procedure to go as first the wholesaler will buy products from my friends then the retailer will buy from wholesaler and customer will buy from the retailer so that would be a long procedure and there would be less profit to the friend.

similarly, there are some benefits and disadvantages of a direct channel of the retail channel as the benefits would be there would be no delay in the transfer of the product but there would be less profit in that. some of the promotion mix strategies that would be very beneficial for the selling of maple syrup would be:- giving free samples to people to make sure that people like their product, discount on first use, and many more. This would help in the boosting of the sales of the maple syrup he should also go for media advertising.

B ) Some of the main concerns of the business venture would be:- proper designing of the product to make sure that people feel attracted towards the product and they tend to buy the products, they should proper balance between the quality and the growth of the product and the cost of the production be recovered from the revenue, there should be proper keeping up with the market standards and competitions to make sure that our product doesn't get down.

A Thumbs Up! Would be really helpful for me. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible.