Thornton's Strategic Choices Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words - 1

Thornton's Strategic Choices - Essay Example At that time, he might have not realized that the foundation of his shop was actually the foundation of an international business, which would continue to grow in the coming decades, and his products would reach many countries. His two sons, Norman and Stanley, joined their father and started conduct many of functions, such as manufacturing, packaging, retailing and others, in-house. During the 1920s, the shop started attracting customers from distant areas and the benefits of constant product innovation became apparent to Thorntons (Allen, 2010, p. 85). During the 1970s, the company slowly started expanding into the neighbouring countries of Europe and Australia. By the year 1972, the exports to these countries accounted more than 0.3 million pounds. Impressed with the gains made through exports, the company decided to enter into US market with the long-term expansion plan of setting up 100 stores in the next decade (Mullins and Walker, 2009, p. 390). Although, the company would hav e to later close down the purchased shops and abandon these plans because of failures in the US market. By the late 1980s, Thorntons had established itself as a strong brand name in UK with 170 company owned shops and 100 franchised outlets. Thornton had become an important brand name of chocolate at High Street. Thornton had now become a public company, with impressive share performance (Thornton and Bishton, 2009, p. 258). Business Model and Operations Thorntons only has a 1 percent market share of the confectionary market and claims to be having a 6 percent share of the confectionary gift market according to the statistics from the year 2009. Nevertheless, the company is the biggest manufacturer and retailer of specialist chocolates in the UK market. The company’s core product is boxed chocolates and it believes that its core competency lies in the manufacturing of these chocolates, with the help of quality ingredients and company owned recopies (Mullins and Walker, 2009, p. 390). The in house manufacturing method is largely labour intensive. The company relies on outside suppliers for packaging, basic liquid chocolate and solid chocolate bars (noncore business). In order to make up for sales during low seasons, the company would go on to sell ice creams and greeting cards as well but in selected outlets, mostly franchised. The company places special attention on the freshness of its product, in order to provide a unique customer experience (Thornton and Bishton, 2009, p. 258). As mentioned earlier, Thornton has been distributing its product to the customers in two different ways. First, the company owned stores, which were costly to acquire or obtain and to maintain in the long term as well. However, the company could ensure greater control over the business and in terms of interaction with