Richie Gale Business Administration Marketing Marketing Case Analysis van der Steen Candy Company I. Identification and Explanation of Underlying Problems and/or Issues a) Issues: Running a business, like that of van der Steen Candy Company is never a particularly easy task, especially when there are external macroenvironmental factors that become issues that impact the success of the company. For instance, the fact that van der Steen Candy Company was selling candies to a select group of customers is significant to note. Although van der Steen’s word-of-mouth marketing “strategy” was initially successful with their select group of regular customers, this group of customers then became an external force due to the fact that any kind of marketing of the company was placed in the hands of the loyal customers that van der Steen carefully maintained. If the repeat customers do not have a broad range of friends and family, the promotion of van der Steen Candies becomes very limited and this lack of broad customers can impact the success of the company. To continue off of this, the location that van der Steen candies is located means that the company depends entirely on walk-in traffic at their retail store. Not only is the company putting promotion in the hands in the customer, they are also hopeful that those walking by their store on the corner of the street in downtown Baltimore will see the store and venture in for some candy. This kind of hopeful thinking will only get you so far. Only so many people walk by the store and, acting on a whim, enter the store and purchase candies. The placement of the product can be potentially detrimental.
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van der Steen Candies are also susceptible to the economic environment in the sense that national income, economic growth, and inflation are all things that affect patterns of consumer and business spending. A few years
