CONCLUSION
The strategy of the company refers to providing solutions on how the company can transfer the operations
from the current position into the desired future position, and achieve the desired end results. The need for
strategy formulation is motivated by the need to set the strategy direction, to enable the company to maneuver
through turbulent business environment. It is necessary to rationally use resources and to promote coordinated
development of the ongoing activities, i.e. to trace the development and the way of its accomplishment. The
necessity of market research is also confirmed as a function of the strategy that provides an efficient and
effective decision making for marketing on a particular market. Market research, according to the value of
market research industry worldwide, is one of the key instruments of marketing - management used to find,
collect and analyze basic data that lead to valid information for decision making and increase competitive
advantage. The significance of market research essentially stems from changes in business conditions that lead to
technological change, increasing complexity of managerial work, increasing complexity of the external
environment, increasing the spread between decisions and outcomes. The need of enriching the knowledge and
enabling managers to possess the right information at the right time, which helps in creation of a business unit
strategy or corporate strategy in general calls for devoted action of changes in the managerial way of thinking
and therefore the way of doing business. Food industry is one of the industries that intensively and in large
amounts invests in market research. In the Macedonian chocolate industry and market, the domestic companies
feel a lack of market information featuring: customer needs, requirements and preferences; market size; market
potential; market growth; the available and suitable types of research techniques; etc. This situation results in a
vague business strategies and weak market position in relation to foreign competitors with a market orientation
in the work. Changes in the work of the domestic companies can be made with the proper use of market research
for obtaining all the necessary information about the chocolate market (size, potential growth, profitability of a
particular market/industry,
consumer preferences). The companies can choose from a variety of techniques for
analysis of technological, economic, political, legal, sociological, cultural factors outside the company
environment (PEST/EL, SLEPT, Porter’s 5 – forces model) and internal company factors - strengths and
weaknesses (SWOT, Six Sigma Marketing, etc.). The competitive marketing strategy for chocolate products
should be a strategy of differentiation of the products, with prices higher than the ones of the competitors that are
attacked, but lower than the ones of the leaders on the market. The product should be placed on the market
through intensive distribution and supported with integrated marketing communications consisted of economic
propaganda, sale promotion, PR and publicity. On the end, a system of control should be implemented in order
to insure the proper execution of the marketing activities.