Page 52 - DMGT551_RETAIL_BUSINESS_ENVIRONMENT

Unit 2: Structural Change in Retail Environment

make your own chips by peeling and cutting up potatoes. However, with growing affluence Notes
people prefer ready prepared oven chips.
Responsible eating and healthy exercise encourages everyone’s health and well-being.
McCain has risen to this challenge by creating a range of varieties e.g. McCain’s Straight
Cut Oven Chips, Home Fries, roast potatoes and wedges, to appeal to a variety of customers.

Political factors
On political factors, the UK government has increased the pressure on food suppliers to
come up with healthier foods. The government publicises and supports healthy eating by
creating initiatives such as ‘Healthy Schools’. This encourages pupils to think about the
choices they make when choosing what to eat.

McCain supports the government’s initiative. It believes that the foods that it provides,
including potato based products, are nutritious provided that they are prepared in a
healthy and simple way.
Echnological Changes
Challenges of Food Technology
Food technology is one of the most dynamic technologies in the modern economy. Food
technology involves researching and developing new techniques for making products as
diverse as ice cream, probiotic yoghurt, frozen oven chips and muesli bars.

Each of these products involves finding technical solutions to problems such as how to:
Freeze while retaining flavour
Maximise natural nutritional characteristics

Turn a frozen product into an oven heated product.
McCain is continually being faced by new challenges from technological factors. It should
be no surprise therefore that McCain’s food technologists were only too happy to rise to
the challenge of making its potato products even healthier. McCain needed a solution that
not only reduced fat and salt, but also kept the sort of flavour that would delight customers.
Solutions

The solution was to use sunflower oil which reduced saturated fats by 70% across the
whole potato product range. Food technologists know that by working with real potatoes
they are dealing with a product with a very strong nutritional pedigree.
For example, it is a little known fact that potatoes are a major source of vitamin C for the
UK diet. As a product, potatoes are the second most important staple food in the world
today (rice is the first), providing essential carbohydrates that help us to generate energy.
Potatoes also have tremendous future potential. In 1995 the potato became the first
vegetable to be grown in space. NASA worked with top scientists to develop super-
nutritious and versatile potatoes. These can be used to feed astronauts on long space
voyages and NASA hopes one day that these will feed space colonies.
Conclusion
Change comes from a number of sources Social, Legal, Economic, Political and
Technological. Change is the one constant in the business environment.
This case study has illustrated how these changes have affected McCain, particularly in
relation to its core products.

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