SWOT analysis of Dilmah Tea in Australia

SWOT is an abbreviation of strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This method is one of the famous tools that marketers and entrepreneurs used to classify the company state it is in and come up with good solutions. A SWOT analysis can help company to gain insights into the past and come up with possible solutions to an existing or potential problems (Ommani 2011, p.1). Strengths and weaknesses are mostly determine by the internal features which can be controlled by the company .while, opportunities and threat and determine by external features which can’t be controlled by the company (Sharp 2013, p450).

The advantage of having the SWOT method is that it helps a company to address a variety of business issues, make it a great tool to support brainstorming session. However, SWOT analysis also comes with a disadvantage which is the ranking of major problem can’t be recognized and SWOT analysis can become outdated quickly since the world is changing (Nordmeyer 2013).Below is the table that states SWOT analysis for Dilmah.

Marketing mix (4p’s)
Marketing mix or also known as ‘the 4Ps’: product, price, promotion and place (Sharp 2013, p.13).The four Ps’ are variable elements that a company has control over (Ehmke, Fulton, and Lusk n.d.).Besides that, marketing mix has got nothing to do with scientific theory, but simply a conceptual framework that helps identify major decision making for the company to configure their services or products to suit the consumers’ needs and wants. Palmer (in Goi 2005) states that marketing mix helps marketers to develop both long-term strategies and short term strategies. The first p is stand for product. Product is stated as a product or service that the company provides to the consumers. The second p is pricing this means how does the company sets the price with value based pricing, market based pricing or cost based pricing(Sharp 2013). The third p is promotions.

It means how the company does it promotion by cutting down its quality to sell more or does it give bulk promotions to help gain the market share. The last p is place is how the company wants to sell the product locally or internationally, where is a good place to sell the product that are offered. The marketing mix helps managers to develop a good plan or strategy for the company however there are some criticism regarding the marketing mix. The marketing mix states only production-orientated definition of marketing and not customer–orientated (Goi 2005). Product

Dilmah tea in Australia has a wide range of tea such as original gardens tea, green tea, real white tea, organic tea, gourmet black tea and also real chai tea. This states that Dilmah uses the “product mix strategy to diverse their product and does not offer similar products as their competitor because Dilmah products are pure Ceylon tea. Besides that Dilmah also provides excellent service, they have develop online shopping for tea with tea description benefits, nutrition facts and which tea preference goes with food preference and also the online service provided are assurance, reliability and good responsiveness from the online dealership.

Pricing
Dilmah products aren’t the cheapest tea product that are offered in Australia. The normal pure Ceylon tea is priced at Au$ 5.99 for 20 bag while Lipton tea is offering a price of AU$ 2.99.This means that Dimah uses the value based pricing. This means Dilmah has set price depends on how is the quality and setting their price. The consumers are attracted to the product even though, the price is high because they know Dilmah teas are good quality with pure tea from Ceylon. Promotions

Dilmah products are being advertise on social sites, TV and also advertise their product through celebrity like Peter Kurukita celebrity chef (khadem 2013). Merrill J Fernando, Dilmah founder also states that he wants consumers to be aware of the Dilmah products and he has authorize AUS 4 million for their marketing advertisements. Place

Dilmah products are being exported around the world. The products are being mass imported in Australia and New Zealand. Dilmah has also been opening tea bars around the world to give awareness of tea benefits and has been doing well in Chile, Colombo Kuwait and Poland (Khadem 2013).

Introduction

The purpose of doing this research essay is to analyze the issues that are being faced by Dilmah and how does Dilmah find solutions to the problems they face by using the marketing tools. The Australian market was dominated by multinational tea company such as Lipton, Bushell and Tetleys. Dilmah tea was at the highest during 1960 and 1970 but then been declining in the early 1980s.Dilmah founder has develop a marketing strategy by importing all Dimah tea from Sri Lanka and not like competitors which has mixtures of tea. Australia is among the largest tea consumers with a per tea capita consumption of 0.55 kg per year. Due to the declining stage of Australian tea consumers also had little or no idea regarding pure Ceylon tea due to competitors using CTC method. Dilmah tea, have decide to come up with good marketing plans to help boost Dilmah tea consumption. Dilmah had good cost advantages ,sharing the distribution of profit margin and also absence of import duty Dilmah was launched as pure origin teabag product but as time goes by the have expanded their range of products to satisfy their segments market (Sharp 2013, pp.506-509).

The marketing tools that was used to asses Dilmah conditions are SWOT analysis, marketing environments (Internal & External).segmentation, targeting, positioning and lastly, the marketing mix (Sharp 2013).

LOR
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-amp-disadvantages-swot-analysis-41398.html http://www.wipo.int/ipadvantage/en/details.jsp?id=2766

http://www.academicjournals.org/ajbm/pdf/pdf2011/30Sept/Ommani.pdf http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ec/ec-730.pdf

http://irasmos.slf.ch/Presentations/hans-romang.pdf

http://www.dilmah.com.au/dilmah_story_dilmah_philosophy.html