Case Study “magic Muffin”

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Another significant factor of making Meg’s business viable is for her to use social media. Social media these days is a big platform that could help make a company more powerful and stronger. Most times, small businesses rely on “word-of-mouth” to advertise their businesses potential customers. If there is a specific site where people can detect where her location is plus the days is open, plus having the availability to see reviews on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, consumers drum up free publicity for small businesses. Also, this can make her company get bigger just because her customers will feel more comfortable with it. Apart from this, Meg should consider making CSR products; since society is now demanding for companies to have social responsible products, Meg could promote that her muffins are sustainable and therefore attract more people to her store. This will also make return on investment to be higher.

Correspondingly, Meg should start using generic strategies. The first one could be Differentiation. This means the use of new technology and the deploy of resources in a radical new way. This should also include, Overall Cost Leadership; Here, there’s simple organizational structures, timely decisions that affect cost (which is, as said before, Meg’s biggest problem) and upgrade technology and integrate feedback from the market place. Evidently, once Meg is settled down then and only then she should consider expanding to other. Since the concept is viable but the business itself is not, so she should implement new strategies. For an entry strategy, the best that will suit her would be adaptive strategy, this means to lower the price of her muffins, soups and beverages and once she’s having success, she should then increase the price. Hence, she should then improve on advertising and marketing. If Meg improves advertising, she could not only increase the amount of customers she has but she could also have a stronger access to the local market. Meg could also consider focusing on a niche; she could take advantage of niche marketing to reach her clients. “Niche markets give small business owners a competitive advantage.” She could even network with groups of other professional from the same niche who are not her competitors. Also, because Meg is a small business owner she spends too much time on day-to-day features, because of this she may not have time to develop ways to advertise her business so she should improve on this. An equally significant aspect is that Meg was failing to adopt a proper Growth Strategy. Bad opportunity causes growth strategy badly instituted. This is yet another reason why Meg should have mergers & acquisitions, organic growth, strategic alliances, technology, franchising and licensing.

- Evaluate whether the Newport store presented a good opportunity and return on investment (1000 words)

Nevertheless, return on investment and the fact that there’s still the question if the store presents a good opportunity remains a growing problem. Getting included in an awful business opportunity can be amazingly excessive and disheartening, however actually it happens constantly. Business visionaries are continually searching for the following huge thing, however salesmen and numbers can be precarious regardless of how taught you are on a theme. It's extraordinarily difficult to discover great business opportunities, and any fruitful CEO will let you know it took a while to hit the nail on the head. This is why it is recommended to Meg to use a Feasibility Study.

A Feasibility Study, as said before, is an analysis of the viability of an idea. Feasibility studies can be utilized as a part of numerous ways yet principally concentrate on proposed business wanders. Ranchers and others with a business thought ought to direct an achievability study to decide the reasonability of their thought before continuing with the advancement of a business. Deciding early that a business thought won't work spares time, cash and grief later. The feasibility study is directed after makers have talked about a progression of business thoughts or situations. The practicality study casings and "substance out" particular business situations so they can be concentrated on inside and out. Amid this procedure the quantity of business choices under thought is generally immediately diminished. During this process, Meg may investigate the different ways to position her product in the markets place and organizing this one at the same time. This will allow Meg to take several paths before reaching her destination.

To start, Meg should conduct a Pre-Feasibility Study. A pre-feasibility study may be led first to deal with pertinent situations. Before proceeding with a feasibility study, Meg may want to do a pre-feasibility analysis on her own. If she were to find early that the business idea proposed is not feasible, she will be able to save money and time. However, if the results of the pre-feasibility study led to proceed with the feasibility study, Meg’s work may have resolved issues that otherwise would’ve been higher.

Furthermore, Meg should consider implementing a market assessment. This may determine the practicality of a proposed item in the commercial center. The business sector appraisal will recognize opportunities in a business sector or business sector fragment. On the off chance that no open doors are found, there may be no motivation to continue with a possibility study. On the off chance that open doors are discovered, the business sector evaluation can give center and course to the development of business situations to explore in the possibility study. A business sector appraisal will give a significant part of the data to the promoting practicality area of the attainability study. In contrast, the conclusions of the feasibility study should diagram top to bottom the different situations inspected and the suggestions, qualities and shortcomings of each.

Keeping in mind the end goal to assess whether opening a store in Newport was a great open door and return on investment, one has to look on Meg’s Growth Strategy. When implementing a business growth strategy, one as to make sure that there is a clear analysis to make sure that the business one is doing is a good opportunity. Therefore, when Meg opened up the store in Newport, she took into consideration her market penetration which led to Meg having to deal with her expansion. Evidently, when Meg opened up her store, her original cost was of $134,00. Nonetheless, the net profit she had made in 5 months was of $44,000. This means she could use the Pay-back method. This method will help Meg determine how much time it will take her to have back her initial expenses. The result was more or less