27 Novembre 2012
This thesis has been done in collaboration with a Canadian company that owns the website www.soscuisine.com. This website offers online meal and grocery planning service for a wide range of target clienteles, most of which are Canadian. SOSCuisine’s founders now plan to expand their market to include France and, eventually, other Francophone countries of Europe. To evaluate properly their market opportunities on this new market before launching the service, it was decided to do a market research and analysis. This thesis presents all the process that led to identify and measure the possibilities of market penetration for SOSCuisine in France.
To do the market research, it was necessary to start from what already exists: the business. This thesis analyzed its history, its mission, its offering, its distinctive characteristics and its acquired clientele. Then, it was essential to look at the French market. It was achieved by studying three major aspects: the consumers, the industry and the competitors. To understand the French consumers, the culture, local eating and grocery shopping behaviors were looked at. Then, the research focused on the French food industry in which SOSCuisine would evolve. Finally, all eventual competitors were researched and their company and services scrutinized. This first phase gives an original overview of the actual French food market.
The second phase focused on identifying SOSCuisine’s demand and target clienteles, both acquired and eventual. This information did not exist yet. Therefore, part of this thesis consisted in creating, sending and analyzing a range of surveys to evaluate SOSCuisine’s subscribers’ satisfaction towards its services. Plus, a specific survey was done to interview all European members already using SOSCuisine, in order to get a more precise profile of that specific target clientele. It aimed at understanding better how the service could be adapted for them, since their needs and desires are, at least partly, different from those of the Canadian target clientele.
Once the most complete range of data had been collected, it was intersected and analyzed to produce recommendations for SOSCuisine about how to better approach the French market and orient properly its marketing activities, taking into account the local peculiarities. Plus, aspects of the French market that resulted more attractive for its business development, such as health, know-how, money, time, religion, sustainability and new technologies, were deepened. Thus, this thesis can now be used as a basis on which to build the next steps for SOSCuisine’s business development in France, such as producing the marketing plans. Furthermore, thanks to its unique, holistic and actual analysis, this thesis could be of great use and interest to anyone concerned by the markets of food and nutrition in France.
