AutoStore

Abstract

The authors of this thesis have worked together with Hatteland and their partner Swisslog in order to help them to do a research on the brand AutoStore. The objective through this research was to answer the following problem definition; “What could prevent the Chinese market from adopting the AutoStore system?” To answer this, several questions were raised, both towards the market, the competitors and the product itself. The authors agreed on an explorative design as both the authors’ and Hatteland’s knowledge of the market was limited. With this situation as the fundament of the research, the authors began collecting secondary, and then primary data. The internal analysis identified several challenges for Hatteland in regard of entering China. The most important factors are localization of the production of AutoStore, organizational efficiency and the price of AutoStore. The external analysis identified several challenges including the Chinese culture and competitors. In the research, potential customers recognized space saving, which is the core competitive advantage of AutoStore, as the most important factor when investing in a new storage system. This indicates that AutoStore has a potential in the Chinese market. The authors have proposed a strategy which can enable Hatteland to introduce AutoStore to the Chinese market. The most important aspects of the strategy include a tighter cooperation with their partner, local production to reduce the price of AutoStore, setting up a test grid and adopting the price policy. Furthermore, it will be important to get the first customer in order to have a local reference. A pre-sale offer is suggested in order to attain the first customer.