The food company’s plan for a global expansion over the next five years is broad and should consider the relevance of international value chains. In addition, it is important to understand the dilemmas and challenges that an organization will face when trading (Sangaiah et al. 2020). The importance of chains lies in the fact that with the help of them an enterprise can organize its activities in the most efficient way with a large profit margin. In addition, they allow the dissemination and exchange of skills and the improvement of the process and technology of food production. Due to this, the company enters the world market and participates in global expansion.
However, in today’s world, a firm may face chaining dilemmas. First of all, this is due to the environment, as developed countries are pursuing a policy of reducing emissions. Accordingly, in the long term, the company must move to a more environmentally friendly level (Patel 2017). In addition, problems may arise in the supply to the African continent and its informal economy. Since much of Africa’s supply chains are not government controlled, the firm’s challenge is to ensure a stable infrastructure by increasing funding for the sector.
For an organization, one of the main points is sustainability. This is manifested in the regularity of deliveries and the coherence of work. Sustainability means constant cooperation with the main suppliers of primary material and the absence of regression in the company’s income. To do this, the company need to solve management issues through the application of organizational strategy (Patel 2017). Investing in equipment by reducing the number of human resources will reduce risks. However, the dilemma will remain value for money in food supplies. For example, the African continent is mostly made up of third world countries where people have fairly low salaries. Accordingly, it is important to find inexpensive suppliers of raw materials for these regions.
Another dilemma is the consistency of all systems in the supply chain process, as common technologies and approaches allow for a more accurate and efficient work environment. This improves the relationship, which reduces the risk of failure. However, since individual elements and global expansion require cultural and social differences to be considered, it is important to add changes to the system to cope with this.
As for strategies regarding the upstream and downstream value chain related activities of a global firm, it is important to evaluate the regularity and effectiveness here. From the point of view of the upstream, the firm’s strategy is aimed at finding regular and reliable suppliers that meet the requested prices and quality (Lamberti and Pero 2019). The downstream supply chain considers customer demand as the main niche, and here the strategy adjusts to changes in taste and availability for different financial groups. For a five-year expansion, it is important to evaluate the firm’s marketing campaign. Strategies for this can be market research using SWOT analysis and PEST analysis. They allow one to see the strengths and weaknesses of the market and predict future trends (Lamberti and Pero 2019). The evaluation of competitive and pricing policy plays a paramount role. Due to this, the company will be able to be competitive, having more profitable offers for customers. Among other things, the analysis of the sales market and suppliers will make it possible to establish market segmentation and mathematical and statistical methods for optimizing storage and transportation costs. This will enable the company to establish a policy conducive to expansion.
Reference List
Lamberti, L., and Pero, M. (2019) ‘Special issue editorial: Managing the supply chain management–marketing interface’, Business Process Management Journal, 25(2), pp. 246-249.
Patel, H. J. (2017) ‘Behavioral aspects of Supply Chain Management: Strategy, Commitment, Integration and Firm Performance – A Conceptual Framework’, International Journal of Supply and Operations Management, 4(4), pp. 370-375.
Sangaiah, A. K., Tirkolaee, E. B., Goli, A., and Dehnavi-Arani, S. (2020) ‘Robust optimization and mixed-integer linear programming model for LNG supply chain planning problem’, Soft computing, 24(11), pp. 7885-7905.