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Author
Regas, Andrea
Zhuge, Yan
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Abstract
The pet food market in Spain is growing year by year and continued to grow in value in 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic situation. However, this progress was very uneven, depending on the sales channel and product. In addition, "natural", "grain-free", organic and even vegan recipes continue to gain market share. At the company level, Affinity, Nestlé, and Mars continue to fight for the free-from private label market, while the specialized channel remains open to new players.
This increase in the sales volume and value is translated as a huge opportunity for lots of companies. This is the reason why Lucta company wants to enter this market, as it is a huge opportunity for the growth of the business. The objective of this international marketing plan is to develop an accurate study of the pet food market in Spain and analyze the opportunities of Lucta in this sector. The execution of this international marketing plan has been conducted following different parts. The first part of the plan is based on an analysis of Lucta including corporate analysis, financial statement, resources, and capabilities, value chain analysis, positioning of the company, and 4ps of the marketing mix. The aim of this part of the objective was to understand in deep the strengths and weaknesses of the company to set up different improvements for the company at an internal level.
The second part of the project was an examination of the Spanish market and its current trends, conducting first a PESTLE analysis and afterward a careful examination of the pet food market in Spain as well as an deep investigation of Lucta’s main competitors. By doing that, we were able to locate the main opportunities and threats of the company inside the pet food market in Spain.
Following the internal and external analysis, we summarized the critical factors in a SWOT.
After that, we focused on setting objectives for the future launch of Lucta’s new category of products, which were focused on positioning the brand as a benchmark of quality within the Spanish market. Subsequently, we develop those objectives by setting up different marketing tactics that will enable Lucta to attain its desired positioning. To do that, we frame the 4 strategic objectives inside the 4P structure, highlighting the KPI’s of each to track the performance of each strategy.
The budgeting of the first-year plan for Lucta petfood division is the next part of the project.
There, we analyzed the market value and volume to be able to attain the desired objective of a 0,5% inclusion of the company in the Spanish petfood market. We develop calculations to accurately estimate the sales forecast of their products, the cost of their sold goods, and the budget for the marketing plan. With those results, we were able to predict the gross margin and the break-even point of the company in this first-year plan.
To finalize, we draw some conclusions based on the previous analysis and execution of our marketing plan. The conclusions include recommendations and limitations as well as future related research topics.
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