Abstract:
The main purpose of the study is to determine strategies for retaining valuable
current customers and acquiring attractive new customers for Corobrik; therefore, the
problem to be investigated is the reason for Corobrik’s inability to gain significant
market share in the brick market over the last five years. Although there has been
tremendous growth in the building industry, Corobrik has not been able to fully
capitalise on the situation despite increasing its own capacity.
A competitive-strength evaluation will form the basis of this study in order to
determine customer preferences, as well as competitor performance relating to these
preferences.
The study will be limited to the Gauteng Province owing to the enormous number of
customers in South Africa as well as to time constraints. The market in Gauteng is
substantial enough to yield a fair representation of what is to be achieved with the
study. A questionnaire will be distributed to Architects, Contractors and Distributors,
which represent the different market segments, and the data will be collected by
means of telephonic interviews.
McDonald & Dunbar (2004) expounded on a method of competitive-strength
evaluation, entailing a method of understanding the customers’ preferences and
understanding their views of competitor performance in relation to the customers'
own preferences. Based on this method, a questionnaire was drafted which will be
distributed to role players in the market in order to collect the required data.
This research study can be seen as exploratory, since future research tasks could be
discovered during the study. This study will be a ‘snapshot in time’ because of time
constraints, and could possibly yield different results if repeated at any other time.
The questionnaire is such that the data could be analysed and certain propositions
could be compared with the ratings. Therefore, a semi-quantitative study is possible,
i.e. people’s perceptions can be measured. It is important that the study be done in a
‘field setting’ to reflect what would occur under actual conditions. In addition, exactly
the same questionnaire was used for all respondents, minimising the possibility of the
respondents or the researcher manipulating the ratings reflected in the survey. The main findings revealed that sales to Distributors and Contractors constitute
approximately 85 per cent of the total product sales of Corobrik and that Distributors
and Contractors perceived Corobrik as expensive, Price being rated as their most
important DBC.
Architects rated Quality and Aesthetics as the most important DBCs and they rated
Corobrik the best performer in these categories. This finding implies that Corobrik
manages to satisfy Architects’ most important needs; however, Price was also
Corobrik’s worst performing DBC in terms of the Architect ratings. Corobrik does satisfy the needs of Architects fairly well; however, this study was
limited to the brick industry and did not attempt to compare face bricks with rival
materials such as glass, aluminium, wood, plaster and paint and others.
Consequently, Corobrik’s performance was not compared with that of the
manufacturers of these rival products with regard to the relevant DBCs. It is,
therefore, recommended that such a study be conducted in order to determine how
well Corobrik performs in comparison with the rival companies. In addition, Corobrik
should consider a marketing objective of developing new products for existing market
segments (Architects), i.e. products that are able to compete with glass, aluminium
and other rival materials, or that could even be used to compliment one another. This
initiative could lead to increased market share, not only in the brick market but also in
the bigger construction market.
It appears that Corobrik has to date followed the marketing strategy of supplying
existing products to new segments such as the residential market, and the
researcher’s impression is that this new segment does not really want the product
because of its affordability. Therefore, Corobrik needs to consider developing new
products for the relatively new residential market, but with the emphasis on
affordability.
