2.6. Quality assurance

In accordance with the quality assurance policy, the clients, as they buy SOKOŁÓW products, must be confident that the products are healthy, tasty, durable and convenient.All plants of the SOKOŁÓW Group produce in accordance with good production practices, under constant supervision of the Veterinary Inspection, applying the HACCP control system. The Jarosław plant already meets ISO 9002 requirements; it has also obtained the AQAP-120 certificate, allowing production of goods for the needs of NATO forces. The implementation of the ISO 9001 Quality Assurance Systems in other plants of the Company is at the completion stage (award of appropriate certificates is expected this autumn). SOKOŁÓW S.A. has export licenses to EU countries, USA, Canada and Korea.
The quality and durability of the Company’s products is owed to modern technologies and well chosen recipes. All the plants are equipped with modern packaging lines (including MAP technologies), which allow the products to be delivered up to the growing expectations of the market.All this, however, would come short of ensuring commercial success, if the products were not simply tasty. Therefore, a product development centre has been established, which not only develops new product technologies, but also to assess and improve their taste qualities – also on the basis of consumers’ opinions.13

2.7. Marketing

Because marketing focuses on customer needs and wants, this requires that companies identify these needs and wants and then develop marketing programs to satisfy them as a route to achieving company objectives. 14
Sokołów S.A. is one of the biggest meat company in Polish meat industry, with share capital amounting to 100 ml USD, sales volume - about 160 000 ton, sales value - USD 500 million and market share about 15-16 %.15
Sokołów S.A. is very popular. How much it is presented on graphs below.

Graph 1 Spontaneous Sokolow S.A. brand awareness


Source: Own study based on http://www.sokolow.pl

Graph 2 Awareness and buying of Sokolow S.A. brand


Source: Own study based on http://www.sokolow.pl
Sokołów S.A. is very innovative; the company offers costumers a wide range of product assortment. There are four brands of salami: Gold, Salami z Dębicy, Gratka, Sokolik,