The Orange Juice Distribution Channel: Some Characteristics, Opportunities and Threats.

Abstract

The fruit juice market is growing for several years, and will be continuing to expand, mainly because these products are aligned with general trends regarding food and beverage consumption.



Several changes are taking place in the fruit juice distribution channels environment in Europe, a growing importance of food-service, the penetration of the global beverage brands (mainly Coca-Cola/Minute Maid and Pepsi/Tropicana), the concentration in retailing and also in the FCOJ (Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice) supply. These changes are threatening and also bringing opportunities to companies.



This paper has two objectives. The first is to provide a general overview about the agents in the European marketing channels of the FCOJ, focusing on the final juice consumers, retailing, food service and the beverage industry. The framework for this part is build up of the marketing channel concepts and functions (Stern et al., 1996; Berman, 1996; Rosembloom, 1999), and data was gathered from the literature about fruit juices and provided by European companies in interviews.



The second objective is to produce a strategic analysis of these agents in the channel, listing opportunities and threats for the following years, using the strategic SWOT (strong and weak points, opportunities and threats) analysis (Johnson & Scholes, 1997). According to the Authors, “a SWOT analysis can be a useful way to summarise the relationship between key environmental influences, the strategic capability of the organisation and hence the agenda for developing new strategies (p. 174)”. The analysis will not be done for a particular company, but for the whole industry, and further, as a suggestion, each company can use the listed points to evaluate itself.



The Journal of Food Technology in Africa Volume 5 Number 2 (April - June 2000), pp. 52-58