Measuring market orientation of Muscle Pharm Corp. (MSLP:US) May 2014 | Page 25

Equity Research - Company Valuation: Diamondcorp PLC 13. MSLP hardly ever ignores changes in our customer’s product or service needs (2/7 POINTS): MSLP offers quite unconventional box sizes in its product. For example MSLP sells Whey Protein in 4lbs boxes while most of its competitors sell it in 5lbs boxes. Many customers wished to have also 5lbs boxes as it is easier to compare products and prices. However, this has not happen so far and will most probably not happen in future (Bodybuilding.com, 2014). 14. MLSP periodically reviews its product development effort to ensure that they are in line with what customers want (5/7 POINTS): MSLP employs a numerous research specialists and is equipped with a full institutional review board that ensures that the products in the pipeline are in line with what customers are looking for (Gregory & Pyatt, 2013). 15. Several departments of MSLP get together periodically to plan a response to changes taking place in our business environment (3/7 POINTS): MSLP concentrates on doing things that the supplement industry has never seen before. They have numerous trials on the way and MSLP is very focused of being a true industry leader (Gregory & Pyatt, 2013). It can be assumed that MSLP periodically sits together to discuss newest trends as it is one of the crucial things to become an industry leader. 16. If a major competitor launches an intensive campaign targeted at MSLP’s customers, we would implement a response immediately (5/7 POINTS): See answer 12. 17. The activities of the different departments within MSLP are well co-ordinated (4/7 POINTS): The huge marketing campaigns, ability to extend of the distribution network and recent product launches such as FitMiss and Arnold Series demonstrated that MSLP is a well-structured and well organized company (Gregory & Pyatt, 2013). 18. Customer complaints never fall on deaf ears at Muscle Pharm (6/7 POINTS): Gregory and Pyatt are present at all campaigns direct on stage to interact with the customers and fans. It can be assumed they will listen carefully and customer complaints will not fall on deaf ears. In addition MSLP has established a customer service/consumer relation department in order to deal with consumer complaints and queries (Gregory & Pyatt, 2013). Moreover, Bodybuilding.com has established CRM that serves customer complaints by mail and chat anytime (Bodybuilding.com, 2014). 19. If MSLP comes up with a great marketing plan, the firm probably would be able to implement it in a timely fashion (7/7 POINTS): As several times described, MSLP offers an excellent marketing mix that is well coordinated around the 4P’s and has its sponsored athletes and strong distribution network. MSLP has demonstrated to implement the marketing plan timely with the recent successful launches of its sub-brand extensions such as the Arnold Series and MissFit (Gregory & Pyatt, 2013). 20. When MSLP finds that customers would like the firm to modify a service, the departments involved make a concentrated effort to do so (3/7 POINTS): MSLP established several social media platforms in order to find out what customers would like to modify. However, there is a significant lead time from communication to new product development which can act as a barrier to satisfy this customer needs immediately (Gregory & Pyatt, 2013). 21