Assessment background Using your own organisation, an organisation you are famil
ID: 414341 • Letter: A
Question
Assessment background
Using your own organisation, an organisation you are familiar with or have researched, carry out an investigation into management strategy. Describe how it is applied and how other strategies could be implemented. Note the assignment tasks and format below and bring into your discussions the findings of additional research outside of the learning packages.
Assessment tasks
Write a well-informed report, of approximately 2000 words +/- 10%, which describes and critically analyses the findings of your investigation. Make recommendations, or give alternative suggestions where appropriate, for improving the management strategy in your case study. The numbers in brackets refer to the maximum marks available for each section.
Assignment format
Title
Contents
Executive Summary (5%)
Introduction including brief background and diagnosis of the organisation chosen (10%)
Description of present strategy (10%)
How it is implemented (15%)
Alternative strategy - problems these could overcome (or cause) (15%)
Discuss the contribution of the gurus (20%)
Conclusions drawn from the investigation (15%)
References (5%)
Appendices
Additionally 5% of the marks are given for organisation and presentation
Guidance notes
Students should carefully read the guidance notes before addressing the assignment tasks.
1. You will be expected to show evidence of research and well balanced arguments supported by academic literature relevant to the problem (in addition to the learning package material).
2. Consider the project carefully before starting to answer it and ask yourself whether you can get the data and if it can be done within the word limit. Tackling a large project will inevitably result in you either running over the word limit or not being able to do the project justice.
3. Look for sources of evidence to stimulate your ideas, e.g. customer complaints, audit reports, staff reports and customer surveys.
4. The report should be appropriately referenced using the Harvard referencing system. The balance of sources used will depend upon the nature of the subject, but could include:
§ Books
§ Research papers
§ Government reports
§ Journals
§ Websites
§ Lecture notes
§ Case studies
5. The assignment should be well-presented, structured and demonstrate a good subject knowledge. Credit will be given for the overall ‘quality’ of the writing, e.g. relevance of content, clarity, structure, grammar, spelling and the use of diagrams and tables where applicable. There are documents available from the University web site to help you with report writing styles and referencing.
You can attach tables of raw data or background information to the organisation as appendices, clearly labelled and cross-referenced in the appropriate place in the main text of the assignment. However, you should bear in mind that the appendices are not marked, hence you should not attach substantial documents or rely on them for additional marks.
Explanation / Answer
Rise of Ayurveda
Last 15 years in India have seen rise of Ayurveda in the consumer goods market dominant by companies like Unilver and P&G. Even these giants have now been forced to change their strategy and move away from their traditional chemical based products. The reason is Patanjali, an Ayurvedic product based FMCG Company, which is beating all odds and is registering 100% growth since last 9 years. Started in 2006, company now stands with a revenue of 1.6 billion USD in 2016-17 and revenue is expected to grow to 4.3 billion USD in 2017-18.
Patanjali started by Yoga Guru Ramdev and Balkrishna, combines ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with latest technology. Ramdev is a prominent Yoga teacher and has been responsible for teaching Yoga to common Indian, rich and poor alike. In early 2000, he featured on television in morning Yoga slot and soon became very popular among the commons. He along with Balkrishna started Patanjali in 2006 and could manage to disrupt and shake the very basis of FMCG market in India.
Patanjali has a strategy for each product and generally takes on the market leader of the product. It follows different strategy for chemical based FMCG companies and Ayurvedic product companies.
For chemical based FMCG products, Patanjali puts emphasis on usage of Indian made Ayurvedic products, and would inform consumers about the harmful effects of chemicals in other products. Eg. for a basic product like toothpaste, Patanjali has managed to scratch away the market share of Colgate by putting more emphasis on usage of Ayurveda. Even Colgate and HUL are now forced to change their strategy and concentrate more on Ayurveda.
For taking the existing Ayurvedic product based companies, Patanjali has a strategy of low pricing combined with good product quality preposition. Indian company, Dabur has been market leader in honey. Patanjali honey was introduced with a huge price undercut, since then Dabur has been facing issues in keeping its market leader status intact.
For keeping pace with the revenue growth, Patanjali has also changed its distribution strategy. From dedicated stores, their products have also moved to big stores and are even available online.
Manufacturing is being mainly done in mother plant in foothills of Himalayas, though a lot goes in contract manufacturing which sometimes raises question over the product quality.
Patanjali has taken big FMCG companies head on by riding on Baba Ramdev’s image and the wave of Ayurveda started by him.
In the television advertisements main emphasis would be not just to showcase their product quality but also to indicate that how bad the market leader is either in terms of product cost or the chemical ingredients.
For now, both these strategy have paid off and revenues have shown phenomenal growth.
Patanjali started with dedicated stores with free medical advice facility. These medical advisors were trained Ayurvedic medical officers. Initially it attracted a lot of consumers who after medical advice would went on to buy ayurvedic medicines. After the initial aword to mouth marketing and success of their dedicated stores they tied up with lot of hyper stores and their products have now moved to almost every big store in India.
Their products are now also available online.
As a lot of products go for contract manufacturing, company may face issues in maintaining the product quality. They need to have a proper vendor and contract manufacturing system in place avoid quality issues in future.