A Cheese Producer Pursues A New Market Through E-Commerce: The Case of Mohamed Bakkar
Mohamed Bakkar, an entrepreneur running a business called Besma ("joyful" in Arabic), fled to Turkey in 2016. Bakkar had been an electrical engineer in Syria, but he was unable to find a job in his field upon arrival in Turkey due to the Arabic-Turkish language barrier. He decided to pursue a cheese business instead, making the cheese the same way his mother did when he was a child. He produced the cheese in bulk and prepared it for distribution to local Syrian-owned dairy stores.
After about five years, Bakkar had built a customer base of 10 Syrian-owned stores in Istanbul, but the Syrian-style cheese market had become increasingly crowded. He needed a strategic plan for growth, and was considering selling directly to individual customers and creating an e-commerce website to expand his reach to include Turks.
a) Given that Bakkar is just new in the market, what would you describe as his best distribution channel? And what marketing options does he have to advertise and popularize his product while leveraging on the advantages of technology given that he is still operating on small scale?
b) Design a strategy for Bakkar on how he can employ e-commerce to improve the performance of his business