6.1 Marketing objectives
Our main objective is to introduce organic finger millet flour to the United States, Michigan. Finger millet flour (Ragi flour) is gluten free flour used in making pancakes, porridge, and chapattis. Organic Finger millet flour is prepared from small, reddish-brown organic Finger Millet seeds. It can be prepare by mixing with other kind of flours for baking breads. It has a lot nutritious ingredient and digests easily; it has a high amount of calcium, iron, protein, and other minerals. It has a little amount of fat which most of them are unsaturated fats. Finger Millet flour used traditionally to bake unleavened breads, ragi dosas (such as crepes), porridge, ragi balls and various drinks. There are also 8.6g of protein
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Specifically I contacted The Gluten Free Mall, an internet based marketing and sales venture for gluten free products. They are willing to add Organic Finger Millet to their line of flours. I have also contacted Food for Living in Okemos and they have expressed an interest in adding the product to their existing flour line. They currently pay $48 for a case of 24-1 pound packages of gluten free soybean flour and $84 for a case of 24-14 ounce chestnut flour. My target customers struggle to find flour that is gluten free that has the flavor and texture to produce good breed and cookies. The cheapest flour is made from rice but is very bland. Chestnut flour has good texture and flavor but is very expensive. Finger Millet flour has good texture and flavor at a cheaper price. According to my research with retailers, their customers will be willing to pay a price somewhere between that of sorghum flour and chestnut flour because flour made from Finger Millet baked products with more flavor and texture that is comparable to chestnut flour but at a more reasonable cost to the …show more content…
Direct competitors will also include who offer a broad range of gluten free products. Our indirect competitors will be bakeries such as Back to Basics and The Bread Baker Company that sell bread, cookies made from gluten free flours. Michigan Specialty Flours, Inc., has a distribution system established to health food specialty retailers in the Great Lakes area. Eventually we plan to market our product directly to consumers via the internet but our focus for the immediate future is the wholesale distribution channel. Production will be contracted with Michigan Specialty Flours, Inc. That company will manage production workers. We plan to employ two field sales representatives after a few months of running company. These individuals will be in charge for visiting stores, erecting in store displays, meeting with the sore managers and buyers to assure that my promotion and marketing programs are effectively reaching the target audient.
Our enterprises produce and sell organic millet flour to retailers, our real customers are bakeries, stores, and cooperatives, but our final customers are individual consumers of millet flour products. The demand for Flour is rising in accordance with the increase in population. The number of existing Millet flour is not at par to meet the growing demand. However, this industry has not yet been developed to any sizeable extent in the country and as such it is not capable enough to meet the demand