Flower Is a very emotional product because the customer’s purchase flower’s for special occasions. They are so attached to the color of the flower because It represents a valuable treasure to them. For example, during the period of valentine’s roses are in high demand. Spouse’s, Girlfriend/boyfriend usually purchase roses to celebrate this special holiday with their love one. The rose will serve as the symbol of love, care, appreciation, and integrity to one another.
Another example that demonstrates the idea of flower been an emotional product is the mother’s day/ ether’s day holiday. During these holidays family members show appreciation for their parent’s by presenting them with a special flower that symbolize the love, care, affection and gratitude for all the parent’s have done in their lives. The bottom line is flower Is Indeed a very emotional product whose demand Is high during special holidays. 2. How International marketing flower does defer from computers?
Flower Is a perishable product and Its marketing Is based on color and quality rather than In quantity; whereas, the computer can be marketed In both quality and quantity. The supply of flowers must work quickly and swiftly from the producer to the consumer because of the nature of the product; whereas, in the computer industry that may not be necessarily a problem. The computer can be customized accordingly with the consumer needs and wants (I. E. How much hard drive space it will have, the memory capacity, what kind of processor should it have, etc. But the same customization maybe hard to do for flower because It would required many genetic changes to the plants in order to achieve certain customization. The computer can be marketed business to business as well as business to customer. But the same cannot be done for flower because of the short live of the product. The pricing of flower Is very different from of a computer. These prices variation has a lot to do with the durability of the product. A flower may live for about 1 5 days whereas a computer may last for couple of years.
The flower demand will depend severely on holidays and seasonal changes: whereas, the computer demand is all year round. 3. What is the size for flower market? Who are the main supplier countries? And who are the main buyer’s countries? The main suppliers are the Equator, Netherlands, France, Italy, Mexico, Germany, etc. The main buyers are the U. S. , Russia, etc. The market is pretty big but the risk are high as well. In order for the company to survive it must maintain a very efficient supply chain from the producer to the consumer.
Equator who is big supplier of flower in the world enjoys quite a competitive advantage in relation to Its main competitors. Equator has cheap labor cost, 12 hour a day sun, and the fact that farms are very close to the airport. But in recent years these competitive advantages have been matched by other producer In North Africa, reducing great quantity of flower at a lower cost whereas Equator focuses in producing its flower in high quality rather than quantity. The pick of the market is around the month of February.
During this time the price of flower tends to rise due to the heavy demand allowing companies to generate 1/3 of their revenue around this time. Equator supplies 25% of the rose in the world. For every 1 flower sold in France there are 19 sold in Netherlands. 4. What are the key issues for managing flower supply chain for exports? The efficiency of the supply chain is essential for the survival of the flower business. Transportation is one of the issues everything must be in coordination from the producer until the flower is delivered to the customer.
There should be no delay at any point of the transportation. A simple delay can be very costly because flowers cannot be stored for a long time. Another issue is the scrutiny of the boxes of flowers to see if there is any illegal drug include with the flowers. This scrutiny’s can cause damage to the flowers and cause some lost revenue. A third issue is the natural disaster something that the suppliers have no control over. These natural disasters can be very costly to the supplying countries.
