FP Corporation: Marketing-Mix Strategy
dr. RizaPutriAulia H. B.MedSc dr. PradiptaSuarsyaf 120820150507 120820150544
On February 2, 2017, we had an opportunity to visit a FP Corporation’s recycling plant in Ibaraki prefecture along with our classmates from MM FEB Unpad. FP Corporation, or, FPCO, manufactures recyclable food containers and converts the used ones into new recycled trays using FPCO’s unique recycling system. Not only manufacturing and selling the trays, FPCO also makes different proposals on how the trays should be utilized. The customers (end customers or supermarkets) are advised with several suggestions for ways of using the containers to emphasize the deliciousness and freshness of the foods contained. This company was established in 1962 and currently has over than 700 workers with several recycling plants and sorting plants throughout Japan. During this visit, we were able to have a better understanding of how FP Corporation produces and recycles trays through an introduction from the company’s representative, video, and direct view on how their recycle process was operated. This report contains our analysis of the company’s marketing-mix strategy of their recycled tray products.
Marketing-mix strategy
According to Kotler et al, marketing-mix strategy is the last step in segmentation process, which contains all aspects of the marketing mix in order to gain market segments and survive in the competition. Marketing-mix has four aspects including the product, price, promotion, and place. This article is written to report our analysis on three aspects of marketing-mix by FPCO, which are its products, promotion, and place.
The products
FPCO differentiates their products with other trays by producing trays which are recyclable and this features adds so much goodness to the products and help them surviving in the business (point-of-different). Recyclable trays do attract many people who have high concern in keeping the earth healthy and nowadays the issue of ecofriendly-products has been widely discussed. FPCO claims the use of recycled Styrofoam food trays have many environmental benefits, such as only small amount of petroleum used (because the trays are made by expanding the polystyrene from petroleum), little contribution to only 0.2% of household garbage (because approximately 95% of the trays are air), no chlorofluorocarbon used thus has minimal impact on ozone layer depletion, little consumption on energy and no toxic materialis generated, and reduced CO2 emissions as compared to manufacturing new or virgin trays by 33 to 35%.
The place
FPCO makes the sorting and recycling process much more convenient by having several plants throughout Japan. FPCO has sales operation bases in 10 locations, distribution centers in 10 areas, small-lot distribution centers in 12 locations, 3 recycle plants, sorting and volume depletion centers in 10 locations, and over 15 production plants from Hokkaido until Kagoshima. High number of production plants results in high number of productions on a timely basis, as all plants may supply 10.000 products to people living in Tokyo area. These locations also make the operating process much easier and decrease the risk of having a bottleneck in the distribution and picking up processes. To make the picking up process easier, the transparent trays and PET bottles are compressed into bales in the sorting plant before being picked up by trucks to the recycling plants.
located in the cooperated stores or specific bins provided by local authorities. This policy also makes customers more convenient in participating in the recycling process. Furthermore, this also helps the store establishing a good relationship with customers as they will have frequent visits to the stores.
As being in a country with high frequency of natural disasters, FPCO maintains the continuity of its production by having risk management in all of its plants. According to their annual report, FPCO implements several policies such as evacuation and firefighting practices on regular basis, supplementation of emergency kits, regular meetings of the safety and health committee, regular information or data backups, and construction of seawalls for the plant in Fukuyama. published on their official website.According to the annual report, FPCO has set a goal to visit its customers 100 times a month. FPCO has been maintaining its relationship with vendors or customers (supermarkets or stores) by organizing events such as workshop and co-creation sales activities. The workshops are intended to giving reports on market survey and carrying out simulations of selling approaches or selling spaces by several means, including having a kitchen studio where the audience may see how the containers are utilized. There is also a FPCO Fair which is held every March to give presentations on the proposal and advertisements to the customers, wholesalers, and other customers. FPCO also gains interest from end-customers by having a plant tour where visitors can see how the containers that have been picked up are being recycled. This tour may motivate customers to collect their used trays to be recycled.
packages so the customers are interested in buying and using them without confusion. FPCO also maintains a good relationship with the communities by several actions, such as building commercial facilities, accepting interns to study about science and engineering, holding visiting lectures to elementary schools, accepting teachers for training, and participating in local community activities such as the local festivals.
Beside the environmental-friendly aspect of the products, FPCO also contributes to the society by hiring disabled employees. FPCO claims that at the end of March 2014 there had been more than 600 employees working at FPCO with disability employment rate of 16%. The disability ranges from many diseases with Down Syndrome is being one of them, as there is considerable value of number of people with Down Syndrome in Ibaraki prefecture. Employees with Down Syndrome were placed in forming, packaging, inspecting, and sorting areas of the recycling plants. The disabled employees are also involved in their social events such as Hockey games. These social responsibilities held by FPCO gives much more values to the products.
