Soren Chemical Case Analysis

Soren Chemical Case Analysis

Jaimie DeVries
Mark Lesko
Katherine Milliken
Lori Quintavalle

Florida Atlantic University

Advanced Marketing Management – MAR 6815 – Online – Fall 2010

Dr. Gopalkrishnan Iyer

October 25, 2010
Problem Statement

Soren Chemical produces industrial strength chemicals, cleaning solutions, and chemical solutions for treating water. Since it’s founding in 1942, Soren has operated as a business-to-business company.   They have recently introduced Coracle, a pool clarifier aimed at the consumer market.   The goal for first year sales is $1.5 million. At 6 months, sales of Coracle are just $111,000.
For Coracle to improve sales in the second half of the year and come closer to meeting the first year sales volume target of $1.5 million, the marketing department needs to assess what the actual market is for residential pool clarifiers and if their product can compete.   If Coracle is considered competitive, Soren Chemicals must then determine the most effective means for increasing distribution and reaching the consumer market using either a “push” or “pull” strategy.
Situation Analysis
Our internal and external analysis is based upon Soren’s research of price and cost information for the top three competitors in the residential pool-use clarifiers: ClearBlu (Jackson Labs), Purity (Keystone Chemicals) and HydroPill (Kymera).   The conclusions drawn from our S.W.O.T. analysis are presented below (see Appendix-Exhibit 1 for a detailed analysis).
We determined the residential pool clarifier market to be roughly $112,500,000 (see Appendix-Exhibit 2), with Soren Chemicals aiming to capture 1.3% with the introduction of its private brand, Coracle.   Although offering equivalent or better results than other residential clarifiers and end-users a savings of $17 per year compared to the leading residential pool clarifier (Harvard Business School, Table A), Coracle has failed to achieve the required levels of awareness needed to meet... [continues]

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