Market Entry Plan: Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, Essay Example

Plan Revisions

When managing a product through the product lifecycle there comes a time when certain decisions must be made as whether or not certain aspects of the plan will need to be completed or not.  There are other times when a solution to the problems the product launch is facing does not exactly fit into what the expectations held by the key stakeholders.  In these cases there must be an analysis completed to fully understand what trade-offs are worth compromising over and what other actions could be taken to mitigate the risks and still deliver the requirements to the end user.  With any plan there comes a time to make revisions and continually improve the plan to remain agile in the implementation.  Through the product launch of AllStar brands there were specific scenarios in which the initial plan had to be modified in order to fully realize the opportunities available to the organization.  The first revision of the plan is the initial thought to mitigate costs by establishing a manufacturing plant in Chile.  While the logistics of the operation would mitigate costs the real reason to establish the heart of the operations in Latin America is to establish a presence and potential loyalty to a localized operation.  Many of the other manufacturing operations are sourced outside of Latin America and are imported.  By becoming closer to the point of sale and those consuming the product a sense of loyalty could be leveraged in future operations.  The next area of concern is the timing of the operations.  The plan is to move at a relatively quick rate in which we establish a hub of operations in Chile in the first period and then expand every third and fifth period.  This timeline will ultimately vary depending on how fact the operations can be established in Chile.  If a facility already exists the operations could be set up for production in a shorter amount of time but if the facility needs to be built and configured the timeline will change and the opportunity costs may inhibit launch in other countries.  To mitigate this risk the distribution channels can be established while the initial plant is being built and production runs are passing their quality requirements.

Challenges in Latin America

There are two main challenges entering the Latin American market.  The first is the competition that is already established.  The goal was to enter markets that did not have a high level of market ownership by other commodity providers.  The problem with this is that there is already an established set of large organizations spanning the key geographical areas in which our organization is planning on launching.  The launch of the product will require specific competitive advantages to be created in order to be successful.  Each area will need these key benefits to be communicated and exposed to the consumer so that the consumer will choose the AllStar product over the already established commodities.  Each market entry will need to have an established plan specific to the entry and sustainment of the product within each country.  The first example would be that of Mexico.  Mexico does not have a regulatory screenings on toothpaste and the plan is to exploit that deregulation as an opportunity for growth.  The AllStar organization will offer a product that meets higher quality standards and offer that to the consumer.  The plan would need to include the management of those costs associated with increased quality, a plan for marketing the quality as a value add to the product and a return on investment for these efforts that exceed the increased cost.  As with Mexico, all markets need to have the specific plans for creating a competitive advantage and how to sustain the market share.

The second challenge includes distribution of the commodities throughout Latin America with the centralized hub in Chile.  The problem with this scenario includes the establishment of the manufacturing process in the newly created Chilean facility which would encompass all aspects of sourcing, manufacturing, planning and logistics.  In order to establish this type of production capability from scratch would mean that a dedicated team would need to create the centralized facility while also establishing their roots in Latin America.  The timeline to ensure this type of foundation is properly built is at risk due to the aggressive timeline established by the corporate headquarters.  To mitigate this risk there will need to have a team that is dedicated to Latin American operations that would seek out an already established manufacturing facility that could be configured to produce the toothpaste commodity.  The logistics of the operation would need to be pre-planned in order to meet local, state and international operations so that all the shipments between Chile, Mexico and other Latin American countries will be smooth and allow for the movement of the commodities to the consumers.