Jacqueline Ip 17/12/2009
IPJ09151158
Strategic Management – BUS3110-0910

THE ICE CREAM INDUSTRY

Tutor: Tom Murtagh

Contents page

INTRODUCTION 3 1) The threat of new entrants 5 2) Bargaining power of customer 7 3) Bargaining power of supplier 9 4) The threat of substitute 12 5) The threat of rivalry 13 6) Summary 14 Porter’s model limitations 15
Conclusion 21
References 22

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* INTRODUCTION

This paper deals with the global ice cream industry.
Ice cream is a frozen dessert made of mainly milk products, sugar, egg, butter and water.
The first sort of ice cream was invented in China in 200BC when a milk and rice mixture was frozen by packing it into snow.
In the 13th century, the explorer Marco Polo learned from the Chinese method how to create ice and milk mixtures and brought it back to Europe. It became a fashionable treat in Italy and France.
Although there are a lot of stores related to the history of ice cream, historical research has found little evidence to support any of the stories. In actual sense, the history of ice cream is associated with the development of refrigeration techniques, which can be traced in a number of traces which backs up this fact.
(Clarke, 2004 p.4)

It is interesting to analyse the ice cream industry because this market has shown an important growth these few years. It has reached total revenue of $44.9 billion in 2008. So, this is an attractive sector.
The global ice cream market includes the sale of the frozen yogurt, take-home ice cream, and impulse ice cream, artisanal ice cream in Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe (datamonitor, 2009 p.7)

In order to analyse this industry, it would be appropriate to use the Porter’s five forces model. The study of forces that impact on an organisation is a continuing interest to researchers, especially those that can be applied to provide competitive advantage.

Porter has