Marketing Management

Questions:
a) What challenges could Rasna face?
b) How successful have the strategies been to establish Rasna? Comment.
Answer
a). In India, the SDC product was introduced by Pioma Industries in 1976 under the brand name
'Jaffe'. It was renamed 'Rasna' in 1979. In the late 70's and 80's, people were habituated to
drinking squashes and sherbets at home, and these were quite expensive. Pioma Industries found
a huge untapped potential in 1977 when Coca Cola's operations in the Indian market were closed
down due to changed Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) laws for MNCs in India. This
served as an advantage for Rasna in its bid to penetrate the market.
Rasna was already established in the market, however the main challange it had to face to
capture the market which was left by coca cola. Since people were habitual of drinking soft
drink, it had to be meet the expectation of the consumers maintaing quality. It is very difficult to
change the perception of someones mind when it is releated to the taste and health. It had to
come up with the ideas representing the drink to be healthy and tasty. It had to face the
difficulties at promotions end mainly.
b). Rasna has already its well developed supply chain and distribution network. However the
company aimed to cover every village with a population of up to 5,000. Besides pepping up its
distribution, the brand laid special emphasis on outdoor visibility by targeting more than 45,000
bus shelters, 5,000 pole kiosks, and over 200 billboards to display its brand message across the
country.
All these efforts and strategies have paid off handsomely. Rasna not only arrested its declining
market share but took it to new high never achieved before. The company claimed a market share
of 97.2% as against Coca-Colas Sunfill (2%); and Sugar Free (0.2%) in the SDC space. The
other players in the market have even worse market share Kissan Mr. Fruit (0.1%) and Tang
(0.5%). With its core brand equity facing not even a whiff of challenge from any quarter, Rasna
is now looking at propping itself up in the high-value juices and other soft drinks categories. And
is aggressively focusing on how to get the best out of modern retail. The companys modern
retail business is growing at over 40%. To give it added fillip, the company has also launched
high value products like powder drink Glucose-D and has relaunched its ready-to-drink
powdered brand FruitPlus in stick packs, to look trendy and appeal to the new generation kids
and youths.

Human Resource Management

a). Narrate the case with suitable Title for the case. Justify your title.
b). The points rose by the HR manger as reason for the latest issues in the organization is
justifiable or not. Support your answer with Human resource related concepts.
c). Help the organization to come out from this critical issue. If you are in the role of HR
manager what will be your immediate step to solve this case
Answer
a). I would be suggesting the title for the case as workforce equality. This is pretty justifiable
as the organization believes in equality amidst of workforce from top to bottom and this derives
satisfaction among the employees and it results the retention of the workforce along with quality
of the productivity.
b). The points raised by HR manager is justifiable because Human beings are social Animals as
popularly said by many Human resources Scholars. So human minds demands for social
recognition, self respect, consideration etc for their work and performance. The concept of slow
down production is a type of strike done by employee. The Industrial Relations sates that when
the employee wants to show their dissatisfaction to the management but dont want to go for
strike they follow slow down strike. The impact of which will be understood after a particular
period of time.
c). Had i been in the role of HR manager i would have taken following steps to solve the caes
and come out of this critical issues :1. Asking reasons from the management for new recruiting rather than considering available
potential talents.
2. If the reasons are acceptable that will be discussed with the employees
3. Convince the employee that this will not happen again in the organization and they will be
preferred for promotion and rewards according to their performance.
4. Increasing reasonable salary for the existing employees or exercising standerization of
compensation structure.
5. Employee Recognition:- Human beings can be easily motivated by Rewards and recognition
than that of money. In this case also the employees are not satisfied even after all facilities just
because of the reason that they are not recognized.

Principles and Practices of Management

c) It is often said that to be successful, an organization must be on an open system. What does
this mean and
how does it apply to this case?
Answer
c). An open system is a system that regularly exchanges feedback with its external environment.
Open systems are systems of inputs, processes, outputs, goals, assessment and evaluation, and
learning. Open systems continuously exchange feedback with their environments, analyze that
feedback, adjust internal systems as needed to achieve the systems goals, and then transmit
necessary information back out to the environment.
When we talk particularly about this case, Mr. Jain listened the feedback of the distributers and
he were not adamanet, in fact he decided to improvise the current models according to the
demand and based on the feedback he received, as he couldnt invest huge amount in producing
new models. This is a clear indication that the organization had open system.
Operations Management
a) What do you think has been the contribution of the marketing function, the product design
function and the operations function to the success of Swatch?
b) How do you think Swatch compares with most watch manufacturers?
Answer
a). For Swatch, the improvement from their diminished market share due to their high-priced
watches and the availability of low-priced brands, can be attributed to these three factors. First,
the development of their product from the use of classy materials to plastic cased watches and
the subsequent cost reduction that they garnered allowed for lower prices. Thus, enabling them to
compete with other brands.
Swatch had configured itself in order to swiftly develop and launch new products, speedily
manufacture these products, and deliver them to a more sophisticated, demanding, and
competitive marketplace through the use of cross-functional and concurrent engineering
structures and processes. This strategy by Swatrch can be linked to the fundamental idea behind
cross-functional teams is to include marketing, engineering, manufacturing, finance/accounting,
R&D, purchasing, quality assurance, designers, suppliers, and even customer representatives in
the early, formulative stages of the design process. This approach helped to minimize the cost of
design changes and maximize results for Swatch.
The marketing strategy in line with its new design had attain a marketability extended to ignore
social stratification.
No matter how impressive a product may be, it must be marketed correctly to succeed. Hayek
realized that the Swatch required the public to think about watches differently. Until the 1970s
watches were considered purely functional items that one wore to tell time. There was no fun
involved with buying or wearing a watch. Hayek, along with his newly hired advertising agency,
decided to position the Swatch as a fashion accessory. To appeal to the consumers emotional
side Hayek hired designers from all areas, not just accessories, to create an easily recognizable
image. Swatches would not be black and white like their predecessors; they would be alive with
vibrant colors and crazy designs to match moods and senses of style.

We can easily figure out that how product design, operations and marketing function have been
insturmental in the sucess of Swatch.
b). The core of the Swatchs strategy lies in building and highlighting 'differentiators' at all points
of contact, while targeting a wide cross-section of trend conscious consumers. By adopting this
route, Swatch aims to build a credible and 'aspirational' brand image and provide the consumers
a truly international brand experience which it believes is very critical for success in the market.
their study, extension evaluations depended on both category similarity and brand concept
consistency.
Swatch had the most successful brand extension program. Compared with Timex and Rolex,
brands with dominant associations related to performance extended best to categories which
shared the functional association (e.g., stopwatches), and symbolic brands with dominant
associations related to prestige (e.g., Rolex) extended best to categories which shared the prestige
association (e.g., bracelets), independent of category similarity, does not enjoy the level of
success by Swatch.
Unlike other brands, the company marketed the trendy synthetic watches to young consumers
with the idea that as they grew older they would upgrade their watches to higher-end
SMH brands like Omega, Blancpain, or Longines. Customers often bought Swatches in bulk,
coordinating different watch styles with their wardrobes, something that Rolex and Casio have
not done.
Swatch launches every three months a new set of designs; each would be composed of the five
basic Swatch lines: formal, active sports, casual leisure, fashion, and art. The revolving change in
the lineup enticed people to buy Swatches more frequently than absolutely necessary.
These are most attributes which differentiate Swatch from others and it keeps these attributes in
mind while comparing with other brands.