Market Audit for Pickle's in South Korea

Executive Summary

South Korea has emerged as the powerful and developed economy with high per-capita income (Gini Index: 31.5) Refer Appendix. Some of South Korea’s workers are highest paid in the world (Refer Appendix). Pickle is the most important part of the food course. Most of the pickle demand is fulfilled by China through import. South Korean eating habits are quite similar to the other Asian countries. Koreans are eating with chopsticks therefore the food needs to be cut in proper shape and size so that can be eating through chopsticks. South Korea has very low individualism and people built strong relationship among them and are taking collective decision. South Korea distribution channels are quite complicated and developed in long course of time and mostly based on the strong relationships.

There is substantially high western influence on the South Korea, in larger cities like Seoul, Busan, Daeju, and Inchelon and other major cities have developed distribution channel. Big malls are spreading throughout cities and whole country. More than 80 percent population is living in city. People in South Korea give more emphasize on the quality of the products and also how it is being prepared. There is a controversy happened with China over food quality and South Korea has put ban on the food import from China.

Transportation in South Korea is highly developed and well spread throughout country with the presence of high speed train, broad express ways, and airports (CIA, 2009).

Our product needs high advertisement initially to create awareness and persuade people to try our product. For this purpose we will do sampling so that Koreans could make their opinion about our product. Through advertisement we will try to project the variety, taste, and quality with the image of India. As the product is not made in Korea, it become necessary to hire an agent to sell the product initially and later will setup our own units.