Executive Summary

Dr. Tim is a local manufacturer and supplier of high quality premium dog food though the initial size of the business limits large scale production of the premium highly athletic canine dog food formula for the sled dogs as well as the pet dogs. The company’s business strategy is based on product differentiation from other dog food brand by other companies. The pet food company is an expanding market with the growing market segment is the dog products and supplies represented by 5.5% of the general market. In the next five years, the pet products industry is expected to increase from $ 5.2 to $ 6.9 billion as a result of increasing number of pet owners as well as the popularity of the sled dog competition. According to a research conducted by the American Animal Hospital Association, an average household spends less on wines, electronic gadgets of drugs than what they spend on pets due to the recent trend of pet humanization.

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Introduction

Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company was founded by Dr. Tim Hunt in 2004 in Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Despite the local market being saturated by pet’s products, Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company has showed a tremendous improvement in 2011 by selling over 1.8 million pounds of kibble. The company has established a product line of premium dog food products such as Momentum, Chase, Kinesis and Pursuit which are for specific dog activity type ranging from high to low activity level. It is an all-natural pet food manufacturer and has lines of pet food products. To improve its performance and profitability, it is imperative to identify the company’s growth strategy and develop a strategic plan for it. To achieve this, the report analyzes the nature and scope of entrepreneurial management, the case study’s business opportunities and growth strategies both locally and internationally and the limitation that the business might face in its business expansion venture. Additionally, the report discusses organizational culture and the internal environment has influenced the accomplished of the company’s goals. The last part discusses the strategic planning.

Entrepreneurial management

Nature and scope of entrepreneurial management

Hayton (2005) viewed the scope and nature of entrepreneurship management has a multi-dimensional concept and economic activity that surfaces and functions in a socio-economic and cultured settings. In a business framework, the nature of entrepreneurship management entails the relationship between an individual, the venture and the environmental factors that brings about the business’ success (Kelley et al., 2009; Hills & Jones, 2010). According to Berglund (2005), entrepreneurship is represented as an economic event with elements of the company, the individual and the environment each of which work together to influence the venture’s success. Individually, the elements elaborate on and improve entrepreneurial attitudinal orientation framework by evaluating the attitudinal and behavioral orientation in the firm. Further, Panigyrakis and Theodoridis (2007) explain that the elements assimilate the theoretical  contributions from other fields for instance economics and strategy to evaluate the business’s specific attributes with respect to strategic orientation, competitive attitude, utilization of the local and social networks for effective information exchange and the level of technology (Ittner & Larcker,2003). While the main objectives in a new venture are entrepreneurs’ satisfaction and economic success, it is up the effective and efficient entrepreneurial management to being about this success.

The features of entrepreneurial management

Hitt and Ireland (2002) have described entrepreneurship according to the process and the outcome perspective where in the process, he describes it as the process by which individuals pursue business opportunities regardless of the available resources while on outcome perspective, they describe it as an innovation. As far as entrepreneurial management is concerned, Hayton (2005) defined it as the practice of utilizing entrepreneurial knowledge to increase a new business venture’s effectiveness. According to Hitt & Ireland (2002) Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company is a small business located in the harbor of Lake Superior in Marquette County. In their study Hornsby et al (2009) discussed several features of the entrepreneurial management most of which Dr. Tim’s have managed to incorporate in its business. Several features such as passion (Berglund, 2005) persistence, decision making (Kelley et al., 2009) market, product and customer focus (Sine et al., 2006) execution intelligence and high performance (Hills & Jones, 2010; Bell et al., 2003) have contributed to the success of many small scale and medium scale business. Different entrepreneurs perceive challenges differently (Bell et al., 2003) and thus, their responses tend to be different which brings about an impact despite of the resources and financial limitations. Berglund (2005) claims that if it was not for the entrepreneurs’ assessing and responding differently, they would not be able to make any social or economic difference. 

Environmental analysis

External environment analysis

According to the Global Industry Analyst Report (2015), the global food market will rise to about $ 56 million as the consumption patterns vary in accordance to the economic conditions; cultural norms especially in small families and growing middle class populations have transformed pet owners’ spending patterns particularly in the pet food sector. Pet food especially for dog account for a bigger percentage of the pet food in the market and with the evolving technology, pet food companies have a business opportunity where they can take their business to the online. Digital technologies such as Amazon are constantly developing and launching new services and sales platforms like Subscribe and Save, Prime Air and Prime Pantry (Brad, 2013) some of which aims at delivering products to customers using drones. This invention has not only globalized the pet food industry but has also provided entrepreneur with the growth strategy where they can develop and penetrate to new markets hence expanding their business. Due to the increasing consumer demand and the isolate location of the business, Dr. Tim’s websites provides the necessary web analytics that could be used in decision making, marketing, advertising and online ordering services. Since many users login into various social networks, the comments and users information on these sites have provided insights to consumer demands for pet food products.

Customer environment

As small company, Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company has focused on the production of high quality and premium all natural pet food products for dogs for competitive or sporting purposes. Another than dog food, the consumers in this new markets have also communicated their need for other pet products and services such as pet therapy, pet massages and dog treats. Alongside the Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company, the veterinary clinic that Dr. Hunt runs provides pet services and in the implementation of this growth strategy, the veterinary clinic will have an opportunity of expanding its premium services to Singapore. Other than increase in pet ownership as Brough (2014) had articulated above, the countries with growing economy like China, (Hornsby et al 2009) and pet humanization trends like Russia, Japan, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil(GIA, 2015; Brough, 2014) have provided consumers with more flexible income to indulge in wide pet products purchase. According to Moldway (2014), these factors have increases the consumers’ spending power as well as the demand for pet specialty services, premium foods and upscale products. Also, Dr. Tim has business opportunities in these countries and states where the company’s current pet food products can be introduced.

Competitor analysis

Further, Dr Tim’s Pet Food Company’s strategic growth has been limited by the saturation to the local market by already existing pet food products from the companies’ competitors. As a response to a saturated market, Dr. Tim’s has responded to the situation by developing and maintain its brand image through the manufacturing of the all-natural premium pet food products (Pendleton, 2012) that have provided it with competitive advantage.  Product focus has been a major issue for the company with the main concern being on the maintenance of the brand image that the company has strained for a long time to create. Despite being successful in the recent past, the company has faced expansion difficulties as well as the saturation of the local market. High quality and natural images being the main focus of the company, Dr. Tim Hunt has resisted the urge to share his products with large pet food retailers for the fear of losing the products’ quality and brand (Pendleton, 2012).

Channel analysis

It has been the company’s founder’s concern that if the company were to distribute its premium products to other to other large discounted retailers and stores with no regards to special brands such as Science Diet might damage the Dr. Tim’s pet products (Pendleton, 2012). Customer focus have been a significant feature in the Dr. Tim’s entrepreneurial management since Dr. Hunt’s relationship with the fellow mushers who contribute to the bigger percentage of the company’s costumers have been strengthened by his knowledge and participation in sled dog competitions. Dr Hunt has looked for ways to expand his business but all also to avoiding brand damaging risks. Business expansion is a major concern for Dr. Tim’s Company though according to Dr. Hunt, he has already expanded in products to include high quality all natural premium formulas for racing dogs and other pets like cats. Though the business has expanded extensively, brand identity is a major concern regarding its maintenance. However, concerns about distribution on the company’s brand product to stores linked mass production such as Walmat and pay no special attention to the all-natural premium products created by Dr. Tim’s has to be assessed and measure the impacts it will exert on the company’s brand image (Pendleton, 2012).

Internal environment analysis

With this extensive knowledge in competitive canines in terms of the nutrients they mostly need during competition, Dr. Tim managed to come up with a racing dog food formula that included more fat and less carbohydrates which promoted the dogs’  performance, stamina as well as endurance (Boyle, 2010). Also, the company developed various dog food formula according to the activity level of the dogs such as the Pursuit for the moderate to vigorous canines and the Kinesis for the medium to low activity level canines (Gjestson, 2011). Since the company is mostly known for the production of pet food for the high performance canines (Momentum), these other products have been effectively marketed and advertised. Market penetration strategy will be a suitable growth strategy for the company’s other products, especially for those pet owners who humanize their dogs.

The effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s employees, suppliers, distributors, investors and the customer (Hayton, 2005) has a significance impact on a firm’s performance for instance the extensive knowledge of Dr. Hunt and his team on the canine nutrition and especially for the racing dogs (Boyle, 2010). Due to the firm’s location in Marquette County where the sled dog races takes place, the firm’s major customers are the mushers and a considerable number of pet owners whom the company have strived to meet their needs. With his veterinary experience, Dr. Hunt knows exactly the type of food that each of the customers’ dogs need and so he designed different dog food for different dogs.

Entrepreneurial ideals from opportunity-based view

In whatever growth strategy Dr. Tim chooses to pursue, the company can take advantage of the internet data tools such as the Google AdWords Keywords Tool to access consumers’ search trails to study the pet products that costumers need. However, for Dr. Tim’s to effectively expand its business and succeed in the future, solidifying its online present is not enough (Sprinkle, 2015) hence, succeeding in a saturated pet food industry will need the company to reimagine itself differentiated online shopping destination.

Dr. Tim’s Company will mostly benefit from the convenience factor on the online pet food sales services since its location of the business has been an obstacle to the expansion of the business through distribution channels, constant maintenance and upgrade of the company’s website can be the best next thing to the distribution centers. In the website, the company can dispense information on the pet food products, vertinary services, sled dog races, product ingredients and nutritional contents where current and potential customers can share information. Also after the online ordering services, the company can initiate delivery services to the consumers to all its consumers. As a result of pet parenting attitude amid pet owners, quite a number of pet services and products has emerged present the pet food companies with a business opportunity in product and market development. According to Moldway (2014), the change in trend has been attributed to the increase in pet owners how reward their pets in human terms thus premium diets have become a bastion for the pet owners. The production of Dr. Tim’s all natural premium pet food product have coincided with this practice and when the company maximizes on this opportunity, future success can be guaranteed (Brough, 2014). Similarly, pet ownership in the US has increased significantly hence being a key element in the growth of the industry. The demand for dog ownership is expected to increase through 2018 with the focus on the single individuals and the aging population (AVMA, 2012). According to Brough (2014), pet ownership increases by 4 % annually and by 2014, 68% of the total US populations were pet ownership. From his statistics, Dr. Tim’s has an opportunity to research on customer needs, maximize on it opportunities as it minimizes the weakness and implement its growth strategies to gain competitive advantage.

For instance in the case study, the business’s location in the shore of a small bay on Lake Superior presents the company with both merits and demerits. For the merits, Marquette County has a significant number of dog owners as well as Michigan being the residence of UP 200 Dog Sled Race Championship (Gjestson, 2011). Dr. Hunt’s knowledge and experience as a musher has provided his company with competitive advantage thus making it impossible for his competitors to imitate his experience, social connections or training in sled dog competitions. Also, formulating a racing dog diet boosted his customers’ confidence in him since his participation in the racing and subsequent production of premium all natural pet food products backed his business (Boyle, 2010).

But for the demerits, the business’ location in an isolate area has limited its expansion as well as limiting the sales representatives’ access to populated areas. Despite the location limitation, Dr. Tim’s have managed to expand to other locations and countries such as The company’s distribution chain has expanded to Europe, Scotland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong. Other than risks of tarnishing the company’s brand image, the business’ location is an obstacle to the establishment of distribution centers where sales representatives will have difficulty accessing consumers due to the long distance of travel. Despite being a small business with no extensive marketing experience and various weaknesses and threats such as it remote location and saturated market, Dr. Tim’s have several business opportunities and models that its can implemented to influence success. In order to achieve further development, growth strategy should be adopted by the company

Growing and managing the growth of the firm

There are four major growth strategies that Dr. Tim can pursue in the effort to expand the business; market penetration, product development, market development and diversification. To ensure the company’s strategic growth while at the same time maintaining the company’s exclusive brands, Dr. Tim’s have two suitable options: the penetration strategy and the market development strategy. Currently, product development is the main strategy that Dr. Tim’s is using where it have developed new products basing on his knowledge and experience as a musher as well as the needs of other mushers and pet owners. The strategy’s success is evident through the various dog foods the Dr. Tim’s have developed regarding the type if the activity the dog is engaged in and the suitable food accompaniment. Hill & Jones (2010) defined market development as a strategy where the business seeks to grow and develop by expanding its current products to new markets.

Market development strategy

Kelley et al. (2009) and Hills & Jones (2010), as established in section 2.0, note that the nature of business for entrepreneurs is that it incorporates three elements including the owner, the venture and the environment. The environmental part means a critical analysis of the surrounding factors that affect the business and responding accordingly as to achieve differentiation. To illustrate this for example, Dr. Tim’s company can take advantage of the internet data tools such as the Google Ad-Words Keywords Tool to access consumers’ search trails to study the pet products that costumers need. However, for Dr. Tim’s to effectively expand its business and succeed in the future, solidifying its online presence is part of responding to the environment as an entrepreneur but this is not enough (Sprinkle, 2015. Hence, succeeding in a saturated pet food industry will need the company to brand itself though differentiation as an online shopping destination.  As Berglund (2005) adds also, it is important to maintain that harmonious relationship between the imminent need for change, the owner’s interests and the externalities dictating the change.

The position held by Ittner & Larcke (2003) as seen in section 2 is that the owner, the venture and the environment are supposed to work harmoniously towards strategic orientation, competitive attitude, utilization of the local and social networks. This can be juxtaposed with the sentiments of Hitt and Ireland (2002) where they posit that the need to be an entrepreneurial success transcends the obstacle of lacking resources. To this end thusly, Dr. Tim’s Company needs to work with the available resources – local and social networks – to create differentiation for competition. For example the store can benefit from the convenience factor on the online pet food sales services since its location of the business has been an obstacle to the expansion of the business through distribution channels, constant maintenance and upgrade of the company’s website can be the best next thing to the distribution centres. In the website, the company can dispense information on the pet food products, vertinary services, sled dog races, product ingredients and nutritional contents where current and potential customers can share information. Also after the online ordering services, the company can initiate delivery services to the consumers to all its consumers.

Further on the issue of being aware of opportunities for success, (Hills & Jones, 2010; Bell et al., 2003) believes that execution of intelligence and high performance are interrelated. (Kelley et al., 2009) added persistence and decision making to this list.  Also established in section 2.0 (Bell et al., 2003) notes that all this elements cannot be limited by financial and physical resources if the passion is present. This means that Tim’s enterprise can succeed as long as it embraces the current opportunities, such as those mentioned above, without limiting itself to financial limitations. Other opportunities include the element of pets being treated as humans. According to Moldway (2014), this trend has been attributed to the increase in pet owners who reward their pets in human terms thus premium diets have become a bastion for the pet owners. Similarly, pet ownership in the US has increased significantly hence being a key element in the growth of the industry. The demand for dog ownership is expected to increase through 2018 with the focus on the single individuals and the aging population, genersl pet ownership is up by 4% and almost 68% of US citizens own pets (AVMA, 2012; Brough, 2014).

In the case study, the demerits identified include that the business’ location in an isolate area has limited its expansion as well as limiting the sales representatives’ access to populated areas. Other than risks of tarnishing the company’s brand image, the business’ location is an obstacle to the establishment of distribution centres where sales representatives will have difficulty accessing consumers due to the long distance of travel. Regardless, opportunities need to explored as they arise by a true entrepreneur and this is because as Berglund (2005) maintains, if entrepreneurs never think in unique ways then there would be no way they can create and economic difference.

Market penetration strategy

Market penetration strategy is where the company seeks to achieve growth and development through expanding the current products to the existing markets with the aim of increasing its market share (Hill & Jones, 2010). Market penetration strategy is a suitable growth strategy considering Dr. Tim’s concerns for expansions through distribution centers. As sled dog competition is becoming more common and popular kind of sporting activity (Gjestson, 2011), more musher are seeking high quality and premium pet food product for their racing dogs. Since some sled dog competitions takes almost two weeks to finish 500 mile trail, competing dogs needed to consumer almost 12,000 calories to put up with the race.

Planning & Actions

Strategic planning is one of the major organizational management’s activities usually used when setting priorities, strengthening operations, human resource management, and management of organization’s resources, goal setting and assessment of organization’s change response (Hornsby et al., 2002). In their study, Hill & Jones (2010) stated that strategic planning guides the aim of the organization, its customers, its activities and objectives as it focuses on the future. With regard to the future, Kelley et al (2009) observed that an effective strategic planning shows where the business intend to go as well as the necessary measures it needs to take in order to reach there. Singapore so far is the suitable markets due to increase in dog food demand as a result of dog humanizing and number of pet owners. Action plans to address this issue will have paved the way for the successful implementation of the market penetration and development strategies where the company’s products could be reach the current and new market through the distribution centers (Hornsby et al., 2002).

Since the company produces its own dog food products the concern for maintaining the quality of the products, exporting will be the best entry to the Singapore market. When moving to new markets and expanding the products in the current markets, Dr. Tim expects that the business will expand intensively during the first few years of operation as he intends to implement marketing campaigns that will influence the target market. The manufacturing and marketing of pet food and toys according to the consumer specification needs is the main source of revenue which will help the company to earn significant gross margins.

The company also plans to include pet grooming services which could be provided at the vertinary clinics where the profit margin associated with pet grooming is his due to the increasing trend of pet humanizing.  To establish the company’s brand positioning, the company first identifies its direct competitors which include A & M Aquatics and Advance Pet Products for both pet and racing dog food. Nevertheless, Dr. Tim’s dog food products are unique due to the all natural premium quality and the specific nutrients included in the dog food products depending on the activity level of the dog. The value based positioning or a differentiation strategy will be to produce high end quality products within accurate consumer need specifications.

With the increasing popularity of Sled dog games as well as pet humanizing, the company’s customer profile include the mushers as well as pet owners in the market. As the target market size increasing they become more scattered thus the need for distribution centers in the new markets. Owning a pet and giving it all the necessary comfort and the knowledge of caring for the pet, high income earning individuals are the most likely to the target market in Singapore. Dr. Tim intends to maintain an extensive marketing campaign that ensures maximum visibility for the company‘s products through establishing a rapport with the pet owners and mushers in the target market as well as develop and online presence in these present technologically advanced age.

Organizational culture and people

According to Bresser (2000) the firm’s practices, values and principles forms its culture which then decides how the employee in the organization conduct themselves among themselves and with the outside. There are different kinds of organizational culture such as the market-oriented culture where the firm focuses on the results, the normative culture where the firm’s personnel strictly adhere to the firm’s principles and polices. In the pragmatic culture, the customers are the firm’s first priority thus the employees always do their best to satisfy them. A research carried out by Kraatz & Zajac (2001) showed that there was a significant relationship between organizational human resource, culture and a firm’s growth with the latter being affected by how the former is integrated and utilized in the company. The company has tried to stay ahead of its competitors by producing wide range of products with the highest qualities as possible for instance, its Momentum dog food is designed specifically for the high activity racing dogs.

The maintenance and management of Dr. Tim’s organizational culture and people has so been a cakewalk due to the small-scale nature of the business. For instance in the production of the company’s brand product the Momentum, Dr. Hunt only worked with his PHD trained canine nutritionist which saved on the production cost. The paradox of entrepreneurial management is that organizational culture and the people have to work together to achieve the firm’s growth however, both are limited by the entrepreneurial leader and external environment (Hayton, 2005; Hitt & Ireland, 2002).

Conclusion and recommendations

For all the four growth strategies, market penetration and market development seem to be more suitable for Dr. Tim’s where the company can expand its current dog food product to other markets in the US cities or internationally like in Singapore, China, Russia, Mexico and Japan. On the market penetration strategy, the company has an opportunity to expand the current products to the current market that had no previous experience with the products. From the study above, Brough (2014) and Moldway (2014) found three major business opportunities which when ventured into, might bring Dr. Tim’s business success in the already saturated and highly competitive industry. Global recovering economy in countries such as China, Brazil and Japan has increased the costumers’ spending income thus their pet product and services have increased significantly. With the pet humanizing trends, consumers in countries such as Vietnam, Brazil, Japan and Singapore are communicating their need for high quality and premium dog food products for their pets while those with dogs for races want premium dog food that enhances the dog’s performance, endurance and stamina. Ultimately, a firm’s internal environment which includes the people, process and the structure contributes significantly to the accomplishment of the firm’s goals.

Due to the high competition in the pet food industry especially from the major pet food companies and retailers, I would recommend Dr. Tim to start thinking big by devising ways in which it can introduce its product to current and new markets. Risk taking is common in business operation since with no risk, there is no reward. Dr. Hunt the founder of Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company have expressed his fears for the distortion of his company’s brand image when he expands his distribution of all natural premium dog products to low cost large retailers. Reluctance in expanding due to the fear that the brand image might be destroyed closes the business opportunities that the company has. I would recommend the company to establish distribution centers in the local supermarkets and retail store and monitor the sales and in case the brand image is being damaged, the company can pull out and if not it can continue with the distribution and even expand further.

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