Vitamin Shoppe Inc. was founded in 1977 with its headquarters located at North Bergen in New Jersey. The firm operates as a direct marketer and specialty retailer in nutritional products in the United States. It provides its customers with Vitamins, Herbs, Minerals and homeopathic remedies such as fish oil, glucosamine, probiotics, and Co Q10. It also offers weight management, sports nutrition, natural beauty and bath, and pet supplements.  The firm sells its products under its BodyTech, True Athlete and Vitamin Shoppe all located in the USA.  The specific products that it sells under the broad categories are Ultimate Women, Optimum Nutrition, Solaray, Whey Tech Pro 24, Cytosport, and Garden of Life among other products. The company have located its stores and sells its products in a number of US states. It forms one of the small growing companies in America.  The paper provides a detailed description of a proposed recommendation for the future growth strategy of the company and its expansion internationally.

As one of the top management employee of the company who aspires and working diligently towards the future growth of Vitamin Shoppe Inc., I would recommend provision of incentive strategy to the company’s employees. The incentive that I would propose to be offered to the employees to help improve the future productivity of the company is a pay raise as per the performance of each employee. The CEO of the company in collaboration with the board of directors should work towards encouraging the employees by giving them an additional stipend to make them focus on the growth of the company. By doing so, I believe all the employees will be triggered towards delivering fully to the organization’s progress(Gregg, P., Machin, S. and Szymanski, S. 1993, 5 ).  The strategy having been employed will yield a lot of advantages and value to the company.  There are many schools of thought concerning pay raise incentive to the performance reviews of employees. To the growing small business like Vitamin Shoppe Inc. that is still in the competitive industry path, pay raise provides an essential edge over the competitors. The advantages of the provision of the pay rise incentive towards the future growth of the company are as follows.

The pay raise as per performance strategy improves employee completion. Connecting employee raise in pay to their performance reviews most at times encourages a workforce that is competitive. It means that each employee has to deliver his or her best in the workplace to earn additional better pay. Thus, this results in an increased level of productivity as every employee would strive to perfect their area of duty and department (Gregg, P., Machin, S. and Szymanski, S. 1993, 7). For instance, the sales department would go for high client acquisition or increased sales to achieve the highest level of the next performance review. The performance-based scale of pay needs the effort to reach the set rung of increase in pay. Therefore, this is a specific strategy that would make Vitamin Shoppe Inc. grow at high speed in the future. The pay raise that advocates for seniority may decrease the competition level in the company.

Connecting Pay raise to performance would also increase the employee’s delivery to enhance the company growth because they feel their worth in the company’s growth. Most of the employees respond positively with improved worth ethic and show of attention to the task he does (Conyon, M.J., and Leech, D.,1994, 231).  It is because their pay increase is directly proportional to the level of performance. The connection makes the employees understand better what it takes to earn decent pay. It also makes them understand that your company mostly values employees who work hard to outperform others. It also makes the new employees in your company see that you don’t only reward on the basis of longevity, instead reward the productive members. The culture will make them also to consistently work to improve on the operational and production techniques hence the growth of the company in the long run.

Pay raise in the company is a quantifying factor to the employee’s praise. Money is mostly a quantifiable means to show appreciation to the employee for a work well done. Consequently, this sheds light to the employees that the company’s management values productivity, therefore willing to reward effort. This will increase the morale of the employees leading to their entire dedication to the work of the organization including marketing and retailing (Baker, G.P.1990, 57). The strategy, therefore, in this case, will lead to improved productivity and marketing as the workforce feel the sense of loyalty to the firm. Apparently, from the loyalty originating from both sides the company, there will be a synergy that automatically leads to the growth of the company.

The pay raise pegged on performance strategy will lead to eliminates the under-performing staff which is a plus to the company’s growth. If an extra pay doesn’t motivate an employee to work up the boots in achieving the achievable, then nothing else can work successfully for the fellow. Therefore, pay raise based on performance is the better way to eliminate such as employees who are underperforming. Not able to make even a single improvement means that, the employee has no desire make the company progress or devoid of skills to produce at a high level (Conyon, M.J., and Leech, D.,1994, 243).  Therefore, such an employee should be retrained to be apt or laid off for another fellow who can focus on the continuous growth of the company.  From Dan Price Gravity Solutions case study of the pay rise that made the small and struggling company triple its growth. We learn that employee’s pay rise is a significant factor in the growth of the company. From statistics, it has been found that happy employees are more productive, in fact, 12% productive than unhappy employees.  Companies with happy employees can easily outperform their competitors by 20% or more in productivity. The concept, therefore, is the best strategy to improve the performance of the Vitamin Shoppe Inc.

The disadvantages to the pay rise for performance strategy to the growth of the company include deterioration of quality. Some employees might focus much on the quantity than quality which could lead to deterioration of the quality of service delivery. For instance, a marketing or sales employee who is concerned in making more of the product sales for the bonus may fail to confirm if the stock of the product is in place before putting the order (Moyo, T.P., 2010, 97). Others might also overlook filling out of paperwork hence making clients get wrong product. Lack of teamwork is another demerit of the strategy. In this case, workers who are attempting to meet the individual targets might not have time to help other coworkers who are struggling. They may see this as a waste of time that they would better use to improve their line productivity. In other cases, the conflict might ensue between workers due to lack of cooperation or the perception that the other does not want to help him also to achieve.  Evidently, this might reduce the marketing, sales, production among others hence leading to the reduced growth rate of the company. The final demerit to the pay raise for performance for the growth of the company is insufficient motivation. If an employee feels that the company is offering an incentive that is too low for instance in the marketing department, they might be discouraged. Some of the employees might even blame the employers for setting a low reward standard that does not meet their living standard. This may make them demotivated to work only to retain the employment but not for the productivity of the company hence derailing growth.

There are a few challenges to the use of the pay raise for performance strategy. Some of the challenges of this approach to the company growth include the challenge of regular sourcing of the bonus to pay. With the growing economy at a constant or low price of the products being sold, the company might find it difficult to reward the large number who have met performance target. The increase in outflows makes the company grow at a low rate. The other challenge is the criteria used to measure performance (Supardi, S. 2018, 173).   If the performance standards are not objective, for example raising the pay for a salesperson for meeting the predetermined level. It is difficult to determine if the merit meets a given bonus. This is a challenge to most of the supervisors as some might inflate their performance, for instance, a marketer carrying out community awareness or calling customers. These challenges may also thwart Vitamin Shoppe Inc. fast growth.

After the detailed research that I carried out on foreign market entry and internationalization, I found out that the suitable foreign market that I would recommend for our company isJapan. This is because Japan offers 87% attractive market for nutritional products. This will allow our company to be established in the market as fast as possible hence enhancing the continuous growth of the company. The most suitable product of our company to start within the Japanese market is Coenzyme Q 10 (Ikeda, K., Suzuki, Y. and Yoshimura, I. 2005, 45). The most creeping and selling nutritional product that that dominates the market of Japan is Coenzyme Q 10.   From statistics, the popularity of the product is proliferating in this market. Health Industry News of Tokyo reported that Coenzyme Q 10 has been growing in double digits for the previous three years. Currently, it is at 100 million dollars and is expected to rise to 200 million dollars in the next two years.

The other issue that I considered is the long term plan of our company after entering the market of Japan. From a number of studies, it is hinted that Japan controls most of the Asian markets. Therefore, having entered the Japan market, our company will easily buttress roots to other parts of Asia. This would mean bringing in other products that we produce in America but not in Japan due to their needs in those areas (Katsuki, A., Sumida, Y., Urakawa, H., Murashima, S., & Adachi, Y. 2004, 632).  Besides, because of the bilateral relationships between the USA and Japan, there exist a good flow of investment and trade between the two countries. From the close monitory and research, I also found out that Japan uses nutritional products like Coenzyme Q 10, vitamins and minerals, unlike the US citizens. Therefore, it would make a suitable market for faster sales however the presence of other established companies. The other factor I considered was the rate of population growth in Japan. The countries population rate is growing so fast and the higher the population, the larger the market. Therefore all these considerations made me settle on Japan as the best foreign market for our product.

The best-recommended strategy to use in getting in Japan’s foreign market is Partnering because our company is still growing and we do not have the full knowledge of the market of Japan.  From the research and engagements, I found out two companies that have accepted to partner with us in the market. They include Nisshin and Kaneka (Duysters, G. and Hagedoorn, J. 1996, 9). The two companies have been in the market for a more extended period and are ready to partner with our company as we orient to learn the market. Some of the reasons as to why I resolved to partnership strategy among the many other strategies of internationalization are.  The partnering strategy will help our company to share global business risks. Japan is known to be one of the countries with rapid research and development ideas. Research and development are needed in our company line, due to the nature of the market and giant companies like Asahi who have established roots in the market. Therefore, having partnered, we will have halved the total amount of money we would spend in the research and development field to keep us in the market. Partnering would also help us divide the risks into other areas like transportation and distribution costs which will enable quick delivery of the products and savings.  Joint marketing will also help our company spread risks while increasing the returns. The partnership will allow us to plan on how to advertise the product, do promotional campaigns in the newly established ventures thus reinforce each other as we maximize returns.

The partnership would also help our company to enter the new foreign market easily.  Strategic global business alliances are one of the effective ways of getting into the foreign market. Partnership with any of the two companies will help us establish marketing and the knowledge of the market that they serve. From them, we will know how to modify any of our products to meet the market preferences and the standards of the local regulations (Lu, J.W. and Beamish, P.W. 2006, 471).  Because most of the company members do not understand the language spoken in Japan, they will assist us in the translation of the documentation. It will also help in conversions from the standard metric to imperial measures, compliance with the package requirements and power conversions. The alliance mode of entry may also help us produce other forms of goods where government policy have put entry barriers.

Partnering would also help us acquire new skills and resources.  The portion of our staff to be relocated to Japan will gain knowledge of the market expertise of the region, help our company to achieve credibility and to get service networks in the market. On the resource side, it will help our staff to gain the unique technological expertise and the ability to adapt to the rapidly evolving technology market in Japan. The strategy of the partnership will help our company to form economies of scale. Partnering will help us generate economies of scale in that our members will apprehend the complementary skills of expertise to be employed later when we come out of the merge (Hagedoorn, J., 1996, 604).  This will help our company to save the time and resources that we might have spent independently develop what has already been achieved.

The strategy will also help in overcoming competition in the global market. An alliance that is strongly formed may help the merge to develop strategies to prevent other competitors from entering or ousting them from the market (Todeva, E. and Knoke, D., 2005, 137). The establishment of the partnership with these major companies may reduce other big companies that would be a threat to our company in case we entered the market alone. This is possible with the Japan laws which allow competition between the two companies that have partnered but not a cartel. The skills that the two companies will have achieved over the others will be kept in-house only to help the partners prosper and not to be broached to the competitors.

In conclusion, for a firm like Vitamin Shoppe Inc. to grow then the company management and the employees need to work in utopia to make ends meet, loyalty should come from both ends. The employees are also the key to the failure of success of the company. A motivated employee develops morale and dedicates all his or her efforts to see the company grow. Thus incentives like pay raise for good performance needs to be considered. The pay raise might pose challenges and demerits to the companies, but the merits outweigh both, therefore, leads to the growth of the company. After the company’s growth in global diversification is necessary. When choosing the foreign markets, several things should be considered lest the company dwindle. Therefore, for the growing companies like Vitamin Shoppe Inc. Partnership strategy of internationalization is suitable due to its advantages and ease of foreign market entry.

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