Interview with James Ong

Interview Questions

a. History and management structure of the company

1. How did you come up with the brand name/ design Frolick? We contracted a design house to help us come up with possible names.

2. What is the management structure of Frolick? Is it flat or does it follow a hierarchical structure? It’s still pretty flat because we are a relatively young company.

3. What are the divisions in Frolick? Finance, marketing, operations

4. Who are the founders of Frolick? My partners and I, 4 in all. Do I have to list the names?

5. Is Frolick manufactured overseas or in Singapore? Definitely Singapore.

B. Markets (countries and customer groups) served and products & services offered

1. Are they going to change the flavor to target the Burmese in the country? Yes, we are looking at it.

2. What are the markets served by Frolick? Markets as in? Youth, adults market, or territorial market.

3. Why did Frolick choose Myanmar as its destination to expand overseas? The right partner found us! And after researching, we found new unexplored potential for growth!

c. Recent performance of the company

1. How are the various branches in Frolick performing? Not sure what you might be looking for?

2. Any better performing branches? Our best performing outlet is Cineleisure.

3. Reasons for the branch performing better (geographical locations, etc ) location J

D. Macro-environmental analysis by the company

1. Why did you choose to sell yoghurt instead of other food items? Market research on trends overseas led us to sell yoghurt.

2. What do you think are the strengths of the Frolick? Our branding?

3. What do you think are the weaknesses of Frolick? Our service level ( a by-product of hiring youthful staff)

4. What do you think are the challenges faced by Frolick in the near future? Sustainability of the product.

5. What do you think are the opportunities of Frolick in the next 10 years? Definitely interesting. We are looking to expand past just frozen yogurt and also past the singapore market.

e. Market, industry and competitive analysis by the company

1. How is Frolick doing in face of new competitors like Red Mango, Sogurt? Well… we’d be happier if they won’t around… hahaha

2. Do you feel confident of Frolick against the other competitors? We have confidence in our product if that counts for something. J

3. What are the obstacles faced by Frolick? We need to look for new growth opportunities as the market in Singapore is getting saturated.

F. Customer analysis and segmentation by the company

1. How do you segment your customers? By age, and occupation.

G. Marketing objectives of the company

1. What are Frolick’s marketing objectives? To make eating frozen yogurt fun!

H. Marketing strategy and marketing mixes of the company

1. How does Frolick differentiate itself from the rest of the company? You mean competitors? We try to stay true to our mission of making eating frozen yogurt fun and awesome!

2. It is a common perception that Frolick only hire pretty girls? Is it really true? It’s coincidental I guess, we don’t really stipulate that our servers have to be pretty. Oh! But they must have a nice smile

3. What is the image portrayed by Frolick? Youthful I guess.

4. How useful is facebook/website attracting new customers? Facebook is very useful, website less so.

5. Frolick has been portrayed to be for the health conscious such as 0% fat. However, there is also been debates about it having high sugar content. Do you think its appropriate? Need to clarify if you’re asking me if its appropriate to have debates or…

6. Different flavours at different branches. Does it work? Do customers travel to different branches to actually try the different flavours? Some do. Not many. But the whole point is to keep the yogurt flavor fresh more than making people run around our different outlets.

7. Does it actively market itself to be more environmentally conscious etc. Does “it” refer to us? Haha… we try to be environmentally conscious through our choice of materials such as paper cups. We also do sponsor environmentally conscious events, but we don’t really see the need in specifically telling people that we are a green company.