TABL2731 Marketing and Distribution Law

TABL2731 Marketing and Distribution Law Use MIRAT technique to answer the questions Do not provide the facts of cases you refer to unless they are relevant to your argument. Part A Greenbus, Brownbus and Whitebus compete in the market for the manufacture and supply of buses in Australia. Between them they have an 80% share of the market. Some of them have overseas holding companies that manufacture and ship the buses to them in Australia for sale and some of them manufacture the buses in Australia from parts either made in Australia or sourced from overseas. They supply all sizes of bus including double- deck, single- deck and smaller buses used by schools, aged care facilities and tour bus hire companies. Their major customers are, of course, the State transport authorities in each State. They also compete in the bus repair business, which is more lucrative than the sales market, and have market shares of 15%, 25% and 30% respectively in that market. Newbus is a minor competitor, trying to increase its market share in both the sales and repair markets. However, it is finding it difficult to do business. No matter how it tries to discount the buses it manufactures, which are of a very high quality, it loses tenders, as the other competitors have dropped their prices significantly. Newbus is finding that it can only successfully tender to schools, aged care facilities and tour bus operators. When Newbus wins maintenance contracts, it is very difficult to source the parts needed to repair any buses that are not its own. The main reason for this is that its competitors charge Newbus 5 times the “normal” price for their parts and take an unreasonably long time to supply them. Newbus is losing revenue and its good reputation as a result. Tom Newhouse, the CEO of Newbus, received a call from one its customers, Barry, who wants to cancel a contract to buy three buses because he received an email from Brownhouse’s manager, Jim, stating that Newbus buses have major safety issues. You are the compliance officer at Newbus and Tom has asked you to look into what rights Newbus may have under the Competition and Consumer Act and report to the Board. Refer to legislation and case law to support your advice. Part B You are a group product manager working for K Co Pty Limited (K Co). The product development team at K Co has just developed a new version of the electric kettle. Instead of using an element, the K Co kettle uses a heat exchanger. This means that its power consumption is very low, but that the kettle takes 30 minutes to boil two litres of cold water. In order to overcome this disadvantage, the K Co kettle can be switched on remotely using an iOS or Android app. This app can be configured to allow manual remote switch-on or remote switch-on based on distance from home. K Co intends to use three distribution channels. The first is direct sales from the website. The second is in bricks and mortar stores and online. The third is by leasing the kettles to hotels, motels and long-stay health facilities. You expect export sales to be about 30% of total sales and the product is being manufactured in Guangzhou. The retail pricing of the product is likely to be about $A100. You do not want this price to be discounted excessively and the trade association, the Australian Boiling Products Association, takes the view that feature rich kettles should cost above $100. The marketing people at K Co are ecstatic that they have the cheapest (to run) kettle in the world and the sales team already think that the running costs are so cheap that they’re almost free. You have to write a short report to the Triple R Committee of K Co. The Triple R is “risk and risk remediation”. You have attended all of the lectures in TABL2731 and have read all of the required material. The take home project is to write the report, providing all of the reasons for the views that you express.