Marketing Channel Management & Improvement Of LBY Company

The export volume of China glassware industry reached 4.8 billion US dollars in 2013, which is 19.3% more than the 2nd largest export volume country-France, as per China Customs’s statistics. Glassware is a typical technical, capital intensive industry, which also carries the obvious characteristics of economy of scale. Certain barriers to get into this industry involved, for instance, entry, technical, sales and marketing, brand building, huge fixed-assets investment, exclusive technology, "know-how" of production management and control experiences, ect. Although China glassware industry has achieved great progress after several years of rapid development, difficulties and challenges exists:many manufacturers, few medium to large scales of manufacturers, low industry concentration; unbalanced sales and marketing management levels. And most crucial issue is that intense competition since 2012, caused by glassware export declined. Each glassware manufacturer faces the production capacity pressure, pricing competition and product homogeneity occurred, profit of each marketing distribution channel oversees obvious decline trend.LBY company’s marketing distribution channel includes professional foodservice, retail, B2B (business to business) and others. The thesis states specific details of each marketing distribution channel, including, end-user, distribution model and level. Of them, professional foodservice is the most important and core distribution channel, the reason is that foodservice generated incredible volume of glassware accompanying by foodservice’s rapid development around 2008, when Olympics was held in China.The thesis makes analysis of problems and challenges in marketing channels of LBYcompany. Based on the detailed analysis of specific issues, certain suggestions or advices are given for reference and improvement, also gaps, potential opportunities are listed as well.