We will be the first Chinese supermarket targeting at university students and located on campus.
Currently, there are two main Chinese supermarkets, one is in Coventry called Dongxi, and the other one is in Birmingham call Day-in. They will be our main competitor. We will sell the products at the same price as they do, but shopping at us will save a lot travel expense and time for local students. There are quite few large supermarkets around campus. Costcutter is the most convenience because of its location.Tesco and Sainsbury also own a large number of customers because they are on students' way to campus and they offer very large place for car parking.
Cathay YA locates at the centre campus; therefore, all students and university staffs can access it easily. We don't sell every thing as Costcutter does, but the same product we sell, e. g. , rice and all different kinds of noodles; they are better priced with high qualities. There are about 18,000 students and 4,000 staffs at Warwick University.University students are short of cashes and most of them have a very busy life.
We offer them a wide brand of easy cook noodles, very good quality rice pack and traditional seasonings, which will save them a lot money and time, meanwhile, provide them a taste of home. Moreover, the international students are our major customers. They normally miss their mums' cooking badly, so the Cathay YA will provide them fresh traditional oriental food and material. It will be welcome by them; even the price is a little bit higher than native food.Looking in the future, a great opportunity will be seen. This is the number of international students keeping increasing, especially the number of Chinese students.
By the data provided by International Office, the number of Chinese students currently takes 1/3 percentage of the whole international students. By the increasing of the number of Chinese students, more and more British and students form other nations will be influenced by Chinese culture; meanwhile they will pay more interest in Chinese goods especially the food.To manage a business successfully, the lone time view and comprehensive strategy should be made before the business started. Every factors need considering carefully, either positive or negative. The following is the analysis about our business in a long term, which is from the five points: Strength: All the founders are from china and are the university students currently, who know the Chinese culture and university life very well.
We will obtained the information about the market demand quickly, and response promptly.Meanwhile the location and opening hours are also our strength. Weakness: The founders are young, so lack of experience is our major weakness, none of the founder has any experience on management or finance. Moreover, too little people to handle the busy time. Because not all of us will be available at the same time to due the study activities.
Thus managing a suitable timetable is also a big challenge for us. Opportunity: The greatest opportunity for us is the increasing number of international students especially Chinese students.And more, the Chinese food is becoming more and more popular, which is good news for us. Threat: We are not the only group of people who realise that the Chinese food market hides great opportunities, more and more supermarket and shops begin to sell oriental food; more competitors less profit will be shared. Meanwhile there are also other people have interest in setting up a oriental food supermarket near the campus. Price is always a key factor that will determine the market competition.
The main competitor of Cathay is Costcutter.Since Cathay concentrates more about oriental goods, therefore the goods style is quite different from what the Costcutter sells. From the point of Cathay is the unique oriental supermarket in the campus, Cathay has no actual competitor in the campus. Thus we don't need to compress the price of every sort of goods to compete with Costcutter.
Only the price of the common goods need considering. From research, the main common goods are rice, pop noodle, and soy sauce. Form the appendix - pricing, it can be seen clearly that the prices of these three kinds of goods are much lower than in Costcutter.Although the price of CathayYA will not be advantaged compared with other oriental supermarket in Coventry city centre or Birmingham, the location becomes the sharp weapon this time to compete with those competitor. Thus the planed price is reasonable and will give us enough confidence. Before the shop has been set up, the actual opening hour is quite difficult to determine.
We plan to open the shop for longer time in the first two weeks (9:00 am-12 pm) to observe when is the reasonable opening and closing time. We notice that the Costcutter is closed earlier on weekend and totally closed during Christmas and Easter vacations.Therefore we want the Cathay YA be open on the weekend and vacation as normal week time. Especially during the Christmas and Easter vacations, according to our marketing research in appendix, most of the foreign students are living in the campus and need more food and dink to hold parties and celebrations.
Thus the vacation time will be valuable for us which we cannot miss. However, summer would be a special case, because it is a long period vacation. Therefore, we are opening during weekdays and daytime only, which will bring down the electrical bill.
