Commercial strategy for traditional and innovative products

摘要

The world is changing fast; attitudes, and life-styles are moving quickly due to the demographic evolution, the new commuting life between countryside and cities, the reduction of family size; we are moving from a logic of production to a consumer'slogic. So our traditional products have suffered two decades of development of new values of practicality, such as diversity and cosmopolitanism. Can our traditional goat and sheep products rebound and find their place in the market which is mostly consumer driven? First of all, we have to think about the real roots, the "soul" of the product; what makes our products a "legend"? what are their attributes? What are the common values of our products and how to match with the new consumer's requirements given we know the consumer wants everything: homemade and well cooked, fresh but storable, tasty but quickly eaten. Are we able to compete with marketing products in terms of image even if we have a longer history than new products, in terms of distribution, when most of our products are sold in traditional stores or in the cut-and-wrap stand in supermarkets, in terms of drastic product specifications (hygiene, raw milk spees...), in terms of selling price when we know that complete areas are specifically living from the goat or sheep industry? We definitely have to think about our strengths, and how we can make our products progress to match the consumer's needs and compete with new marketing products without losing our soul. It does not mean we refuseany innovative product. But from our core business, which is our real traditional product (perimeter of excellence), if we can really find the fair marketing mix, we can extend our range of products to other products in our field (perimeter of expertise), and later to products the consumer is waiting for from us (perimeter of competence), and eventually to products we just know how to produce (perimeter of knowledge). The key point is to define precisely what kind of product we do not want to produce,because the consumer will find it inconsistent in relation to the general idea he has about the sheep or goat product. There is a great future for our products in a society where consumers are looking for more sense; finally as Hyppocrate said: "the bestway to cure himself is to eat well". So if we know how to comply with the consumer's functional requirements without losing our "soul", our industry of goat and sheep milk will definitely win.