Analysing Growth Opportunities for Marshfield Bakery's Business Plan

This report provides a detailed growth plan for Marshfield Bakery, a small UK-based bakery. The analysis begins with an introduction to growth planning and its importance, followed by an in-depth examination of growth opportunities. Task 1 analyzes key considerations using PESTLE, Porter's Five Forces, VRIO, Porter's Generic, and SWOT analyses. Task 2 explores potential funding sources, their benefits, and drawbacks, recommending an appropriate source. Task 3 focuses on designing a business plan for growth, including financial information and strategic objectives. Task 4 addresses an exit strategy for the small business. The report concludes with recommendations for Marshfield Bakery's future growth, supported by relevant references.

Planning for Growth

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1 ...........................................................................................................................................3
Analyse key considerations for evaluating growth opportunities and justify these
considerations within an organisational context.........................................................................3
Discuss the options for growth using different frameworks.....................................................12
Critically evaluate specific options and pathways for growth..................................................13
TASK 2..........................................................................................................................................14
Potential sources of funding with benefits and drawbacks.......................................................14
Justification for the adoption of an appropriate source of funding...........................................15
TASK 3..........................................................................................................................................15
Design a business plan for growth that includes financial information and strategic objectives
...................................................................................................................................................15
A suitable plan for business......................................................................................................17
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................18
Exit plan for a small business...................................................................................................18
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................19
REFERENCES:.............................................................................................................................20
Books and Journals...................................................................................................................20

INTRODUCTION
Growth plan is systematic activity help in making business goals, clear strategies and
plans for achieving them (Kim, McGuire, Savoy and Wilson, 2022). Growth planning allows
business to allocate their limited resources in adoption to change technology. Strategic plan is
part of growth planning, it helps in preparing attainable vision of the organisation and maximise
business growth. This report includes the detailed research on small or medium size company
with competitive advantages, growth opportunities by applying various models and methods like
Ansoff's growth matrix, PESTLE and SWOT Analysis. It also evaluates different sources of
financing growth with their traits and drawbacks. At last some recommendations are there for
better growth planning of Marshfield bakery. Company was founded in 2005, by Paul and Lynne
White. Marshfield bakery is small company based in UK. It manufactures handmade cakes,
snack bars and biscuits. Small business are solely owned company with less than 100 employees
working and generates less revenue in comparison with large organisations(Li, Xu, 2020).
There's need of growth planning for Marshfield bakery in order to grow their business and
operations. This report is based on growth planning of Marshfield company and future
opportunities.
TASK 1
Analyse key considerations for evaluating growth opportunities and justify these considerations
within an organisational context
Growth opportunities describes the chances to grow business remarkably (Li and Yeh,
2020). Some competitive advantages, development strategies, opportunities and their impacts on
Marshfield bakery company has been analysed through different models below:
PESTLE Analysis
It studies the factors that can influence organization from outside. It provides guidelines
to professional managers for effective decision making in order to attain future growth
possibilities.

1. Political Environment – Government policies are affecting Marshfield bakery, as they
have to make quality food with safety measures for country(Park and LaFrombois, 2019).
Government rules like corruption level, employment rates affects business of Marshfield
bakery.
2. Economic Environment – This factor includes economic factors like economic growth,
inflation rate, labour cost and consumer spending. During COVID 19, many companies
whether small or medium has to face consequences. Low demand and increased interest
rates affected the business of Marshfield bakery.
3. Social Environment – This social factor contains cultural values and expectations, age,
population growth rates and career attitudes. This factor help Marshfield bakery for
making better strategic plans for marketing through customers needs and expectations.
4. Technological Environment – This factor represents the production techniques,
communication resources, production and marketing technologies. COVID 19 gives
benefit to Marshfield by adopting home deliveries and growth in digital world.
5. Legal Environment – Health and safety laws, civil right laws, employment laws are
covered in legal factors. Marshfield has to follow rules and regulation made by
government for smooth function of company without make any offense to law.

6. Environmental Factors – This factor includes climate change impacts, natural vegetation
and green house gas emissions. Marshfield bakery has policy of recycling their waste of
plastic bags and minimizing their wastage of food.
Strengths
 PESTLE helps in analysing competitors in market, helps in keeping regular checks on
government policies and rules.
 Hygienic process of making bakery items can be considered as their strengths in legal
environment.
Opportunities
 Marshfield has growth opportunities in social and environmental factors. Social presence
of company can improve their brand value in competitive business environment.
 Elements of PESTLE help Marshfield in making strategies beneficial for growth through
digital development of their employees and can adopt new methods in production.
Porter's Five forces

1. Competition in Industry – Marshfield is small business company with many competitors
serving in bakery products. John Monaghan Ltd, William Joseph Ltd are competitors of
Marshfield. (Wann-Ming, 2019)
2. New Entrants in market – Marshfield company is dealing in only bakery products. Any
on can easily enter in companies market. This kind of food industry has many
competitors with easy approach.
3. Power of suppliers – This factor explain the power of supply chain, as it affects the cost
of input. Marshfield has many suppliers that are responsible for smooth supply of bread
items to restaurants or hotels.
4. Power of customers – It shows the power related to customers. Consumers are not
restricted to one same price as they can easily shift to another product with low price.
Marshfield should keep focus on their quality of product for retention of their customers.
5. Threats of Substitute - Marshfield serving a basic bakery products, their substitutes are
easily available in market. For surviving in market they should work on reward
customers, build trust among them, getting suggestion for improvements can help them in
surveying the threat of substitute.
Strengths
 Marshfield bakery works on improving their product quality and serve customers
according to their need and requirements.
 Number of suppliers can be strength for Marshfield company as they have better
visibility to them in terms of other competitive company.
Opportunities
 By adopting new methods of operations, Marshfield can survive in competition of new
entries.
 Marshfield can opt for new marketing strategies and plans that can be beneficial for
attracting new and retainment of existing customers.
VRIO frame work

VIRO frame work is an analysis of internal factors that help businesses to identify their
advantages and resources that gives comparative advantage(Wey, 2019). It includes different
dimensions these are
Resources Valuable Rare Inimitable Organized
Taste ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Variety of products ✓ ✓
Customer service. ✓
1. Value – It describes the resources that are valuable for company. Marshfield has its
bakery items like breads with different favours, different types of coffee, cakes and
customers as valuable resources.
2. Rarity – These are the resources that are rare and uncommon and not easily available for
other organisations. Marshfield flavourful tastes are rare, variety of products are also rare.
But Marshfield as base for customer rarity is not resource for it.
3. Imitability – This factor shows that if available resources are easy to copy by other
organisations or not. Taste and flavours of Marshfield are imitable, but products offer by
them and customers services are not covered in this.

4. Organised – It shows whether the resources are organised or not. Flavours of Marshfield
are well organised as they are the main resources of them. Customer service are not well
maintained by company.
Strengths
 VRIO helps Marshfield in anaylsing their internal strengths with their advantages.
 It also helps in identifying new methods of improvement in Marshfield company.
Opportunities
 It creates the opportunity for Marshfield by adopting new innovative ideas and
technologies for overcome the issues like customer services and providing services that
would be beneficial for Marshfield company.
Porter's Generic frame work
1. Cost Leadership – This strategy focus on reducing cost of production and offers the low
price products to gain competitive advantage in market.
2. Cost Focus – This strategy is based on when company is more focused on attracting
customers based on price.

3. Differentiation Leadership – This strategy is based on providing benefits that could help
in adding value to customers.
4. Differentiation Focus – In this strategy company focuses on offering new product to its
customers even though its price is high.
It has been evaluated that, Marshfield company should adopt and focus on Cost
leadership strategy, as it is beneficial for surviving competitive market(Zafar and Akhtar, 2020).
This cost leadership strategy of Marshfield cut down the production cost and serve products with
low cost generates more profit.
Strengths
 Marshfield can analyses their competitive advantage over competitors.
 Reducing cost of production can be a strength to Marshfield as it lead in generating more
customers and beneficial by leaving competitors behind them.
Opportunities
 Marshfield can opt for differentiation focus strategy by manufacturing new range of
product in market. This can be opportunity for them, as it enlarges the area of customers
with different tastes and requirements.
SWOT Analyses
SWOT Analyses help origination in finding out their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats. It show strategic plans and techniques used to identify strengths and weaknesses

related to business. This strategy can be used as tool for growth of company and achieve its
objectives.
Strengths
 Employees – Marshfield company has
loyal base of employees working
towards organisation goals of achieving
maximum profit.
 Operations – It has hygienic process of
manufacturing their quality product like
breads, cakes.
Weaknesses
 Limited customers – Marshfield
company only deals in bakery products
has limited customers, this would be
disadvantage to it.
 Leadership skills – Shortage of skill
person in management can lead
organisation in huge loss.
Opportunities
 Technological environment –
Adopting new methods for production
can be beneficial for Marshfield
company.
 Product differentiation – Marshfield
can also opt for offering new product in
market before analysing market
situation.
Threats
 Competitors – It is major threat to
company as they have competitors in
market offering same product.
 COVID 19 – Lockdown would be an
threat to many companies not to
Marshfield leads them in huge capital
damage.
Strength
 Employees can be a strength to Marshfield as they are very loyal and motivated and
working hard for attain goal of maximizing profit.
 Good cooperation between production and management also reflects strength of
Marshfield company.
Opportunities
 Technical advancement can be good opportunity for Marshfield company as it can help in
reducing time of production.

Ansoff's growth vector matrix
Ansoff's matrix also called Product/Market expansion grid, it is framework used by
management to analyse plan and growth strategies of organisation(Ikrama, 2019). It also helps in
actualize the level of risk connected with different growth strategies.
1. Market Penetration – It reflects the growth and sale of ongoing product in market. This
matrix shows the direct sale of product in competitive market. Marshfield company
should plan strategies to attract new market for sales growth.
Advantages
 Marshfield can apply this factors focus for more customer attraction through various
offers and discount.
 It also help Marshfield in acquiring competitors in market.
Disadvantages
 Different market penetration strategies used by Marshfield might affect existing
customers.
 Some time growth strategies does not go as plan and lead to massive loss for company.

2. Market Development – This factor represents the entering in new market with existent
products. It does not require huge capital investment and researches for expending
market.
Advantages
 It can help Marshfield company entering into new domestic or international market.
 It offers Marshfield company to serve different customers according to their market
expansions.
Disadvantages
 It has risk of failure by market expansion, Customers might like product or not.
Marshfield should analyse customers need and requirement before selling products in
different market.
3. Product Development – This factor used by organisations to improve their products and
services in current market. Marshfield can focus on changing their favours and taste of
bakery products can bring growth in sales (Spiller, 2022).
Advantages
 This strategy brings new opportunities for Marshfield company by developing new
features and changes in bakery products.
Disadvantages
 Marshfield can not predicts the results of this strategy and involves risk.
4. Diversification – This stargate includes growth opportunities through the development of
new product in whole new market. Marshfield can diversify there business by opening a
restaurant or by running new poultry farms or ready to eat food etc.
Advantages
 Diversification can bring new heights to Marshfield in terms of business growth in
competitive market.
Disadvantages
 It involves huge risk factor with huge capital investment for Marshfield to expand their
business in different sectors.
It has been evaluated that from all the above strategies, Product Development strategy
would work effectively for Marshfield company in growth opportunities. Marshfield can develop
their bakery items with more flavours and can present in unique style.