Corporate and business strategy case study Essay

Corporate and business strategy case study - Essay Example 2) The other key issue is that the company’s chocolates are seasoned. For example the box chocolates show the sales of almost 35% during the period of 10 weeks before the Christmas, a further 10% are for the Easter, including three million Easter eggs. Typically the company sells almost ï‚ £10m in last 72 hours of Christmas. 3) Chocolates of the company are hand made this makes the process of automated packing difficult for the boxed chocolate. The other companies on the other hand like Cadburys make moulded chocolates, which makes the automated packing easier. 4) Thorntons long-term strategy included vertical integration and product differentiation. This means the top person in the company belonged to a particular family. The product differentiation apart from the taste of the chocolate was also marked by the freshness of the chocolate. 5) One of the key issues has been the taste of the chocolates manufactured by the company. Thorntons range of the continental chocolates has made the company largest selling specialist of assortment chocolates in the UK. of Thorntons’ chocolates. However, since the demand of company’s chocolates is seasonal this puts extra pressure on requirement of the manpower during the peak season. The requirement of casual staff for packing purposes increases which leads to reduction in efficiency. Also the sales during peak season become almost ten fold hence there is requirement of extra staff at the retail stores also during the peak season. This makes the company more dependent on the casual staff. The casual staffs are quite expensive and it is not easily available. As it is the requirement of the casual staff in general in the market is more during the festive seasons. Also the casual staff is untrained, hence it has to be trained, which requires some of the resources of the company. The casual staffs have lower speed of working thus reducing the efficiency. The other critical issue is that the chocolates