The fern’s company, страница 8

Today South Korea belongs to the Asian Tigers – fast growing Asian countries. South Korea has the steady economic growth – 5 % a year. Korean economy is the 11^th largest in the world and the third largest in Asia. In 2007 the inflation was about 2.5%. And during the previous years the inflation varied from 2 till 4%.[14]

Socio-cultural aspect:

The population of South Korea is 49,232,844 people. The growth rate of population in 2007 was 0.3%.[15] So we can say that this country has a good demographic situation. And moreover we have the potential growth of demand connected with the growth of population.

We should mention that people in South Korea eat fern from ancient times; they use it in their everyday meal. Nowadays there are also some tendencies in consumer’s preferences and demands in this country. Firstly, Korean prefer now to buy fern from Siberia, because they consider it has better color and taste. Also nowadays people start to eat more fern, because healthy life-style is in fashion and fern is traditionally considered as a healthy product.

Technological aspect:

In that part we should mention that South Korea has better infrastructure than Russia (roads, transport and etc.) But from the other side we can face tough competition in that aspect. We should consider as our competitors not only Russian companies but also Korean firms. We can face competition in two main aspects: technologies and packing. Nowadays salty fern became more popular, because people think it saves all useful vitamins and elements better, than dried. Also people prefer to buy fern in vacuum packing because of the same reasons and also it increases the shelf-life of a product.[16]

S.W.O.T analysis

So, before entering into international market each company should estimate its possibilities. Company should take into account its strong and weak points, threats, which can exist inside and outside the company, and opportunities in the market. And concerning our company, we make a research, which helped us to identify each of S.W.O.T. analysis points.

Strength

As we said before, our company located in the South Siberia. We choose such place as the location because South Siberia is very rich in resources. So, the most important of our company’s strength side is that we have a lot of resources for growing fern. It is also our competitive advantage, because if we have a lot of resources the price of fern won’t be very high.

Moreover, according to our research Siberian fern’s quality is very high. Even Japanese proved this fact. They usually carefully check it. They themselves visit fern’s Siberian plantation and watch for its pickling. So, it is another company’s strength – the Siberian’s fern quality.

And as we said before, there are a lot of resources for growing fern. That is why we considered that our fern’s price won’t be very high. So, we would have price advantage before our competitors.

Weaknesses

The most important of all our company’s weaknesses is that we can pick fern only two times in the year, in May and June. Other time we can only processing our fern. This weakness could play a very important role in the company’s future and it need to be solved.

            Then we must highlight that production costs is also very high. We need spend a lot of money on gambling machines and transportation. Fern’s transportation must be very carefully. Fern must be packed thoroughly, as it may loose its quality during transportation. This problem must be also solved very quickly.

            No many people know about Siberian fern. Even few people know that fern is an eatable product and that it can be used like a medicine. Fern supports people’s immune and digestive system. So, our weakness is poor brand awareness.

Threats