...THE BATTLE FOR THE BREAKFAST CEREAL MARKET, by Richard Lynch 1. INTRODUCTION Corporate strategy is certainly a topic that is exciting and challenging. It makes fundamental decisions about the future directions of organisations. And it has the potential to have a real impact on people's lives. But it isn't the easiest subject to study. There are several reasons for this: *It's a young academic subject when compared to more traditional topics like economics and organisational behaviour. This means that there is a lot that we still don't understand. *It's a complex subject that involves many different aspects of organisations, all of which may be important. This makes it difficult to record and analyse. *And it's a subject that lacks a widely agreed body of accepted knowledge. Different strategists have different opinions on what is important and how strategy should be developed. All these factors make it quite tough. Certainly, some strategists argue that there is a place for strategic analytical frameworks like Professor Michael Porter's Five Forces. But the same strategists also point out the most successful strategies need to be more experimental and creative. For example, they argue that the successful strategy of Dell Personal Computers - selling directly to customers, cutting out the distributor - owed much more to innovation than to traditional strategic analysis. In more general terms and arguably to oversimplify strategy theory, strategic processes need to be both prescriptive...
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...‘United Cereal: Lora Brill’s Eurobrand Challenge’ case analysis Question 1. As Lora Brill, United Cereal European VP, would you authorize Jean-Luc Michel’s request to launch of Healthy Berry Crunch in France? Be sure to analyze both sides: Launch and Delay Launch (summarize in a table format and then discuss). Question 2. Does United Cereal represent an example of centralized or decentralized international management? Question 3. What do you think of Brill’s Eurobrand proposals? Should she authorize the launch of Healthy Berry Crunch as the Eurobrand? What concerns do you have? How do you resolve them? Be sure to analyze both sides: Launch and Delay Launch (summarize in a table format and then discuss). Question 4.a. How might United Cereal implement your recommendations? 4.b. What do you think of the Eurobrand Team proposal? 4.c. How can you make the Team work? Introduction The case gives a brief idea about the company’s confusion over a new product launch in Europe. United Cereal was first established in the year 1910 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, It also stepped in to the market of other markets such as beverages, frozen food, and baked food. But the breakfast cereal trend soon set in. And it was very necessary for the company to do a full research before launching a new product. The company had strong values and policies, which it needed for its managers to follow. Breakfast cereal market was a potential market and there was only one major competitor, Kellog. With the growing...
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...I. The positioning of United Cereal (UC) a. The vision of United Cereal We accompany you to embrace every delicious and hopeful morning. You inspire us to pursue forever innovative and vigorous winning. ------- United Cereal In a study (James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras, 1996), James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras proposed that a well-conceived vision consists of two major components: core ideology and envisioned future. Core ideology defines what we stand for and why we exist. The envisioned future is what we aspire to become, to achieve, to create- something that will require significant change and progress to attain. 1. Core ideology Core ideology consists of two distinct parts: core values and core purpose. While the strategies and practices will adapt to the changing environment endlessly, core values and core purposes remain fixed in the companies which enjoy enduring success. As a set of guiding principles, core values are the essential and enduring tenets of companies and have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization. UC’s two time-tested values-customer and market oriented, and constant innovation- which can be summarized from the company phrases, are embodied in its vision: ● Customer and market oriented (“You inspire us”): It is customers who lastingly gave UC inspiration to do innovation and led UC to become a pioneer in the use of consumer research and focus group. UC listens to the customer, spots the trend, and holds the high...
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...General Mills (NYSE: GIS) is not just a cereal maker, it is one of the largest packaged food producers in the world. Starting as a successful flour mill near the Mississippi River, it has grown to own some of the most recognizable brands, including Cheerios, Wheaties, Progresso Soup, Hamburger Helper, and Fruit Roll-Ups. Some of its #1 and #2 market-leading brands are Better Crocker, Gold Medal, Green Giant, Pillsbury, and Yoplait. General Mills operates in more than 130 countries worldwide and divides its business into three core segments: U.S. Retail (70% of revenue through major retailers), international (18% of revenue and supported by a joint venture with Swiss food giant Nestle SA), and bakeries and foodservices (12% of revenue). Currently, it’s growing its reach from grocery stores into new channels like super centers, drug and discount stores, and convenience stores. It is also expanding quickly into growing markets such as China, Russia, and Latin America. The goal of General Mills is to be among the most socially responsible food companies in the world in addressing the interrelationship of economic, environmental and social value. In 2012, they have reported continued progress in advancing their goals specifically in the health, environment, and sourcing areas. They have improved the health profile of their products again due to the increase of healthy and organic food choices, and have decreased natural resource consumption in global supply chain operations...
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...Situation Analysis/Target Market Identification Report: Coco Pops Jose Eduardo Arcila Ramon ARJED102 Curtin College December 10, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 Situation Analysis............................................................................... 3 1.1 Current Marketing Mix....................................................................... 3 1.1.1 Current Product..................................................................... 3 1.1.2 Current Pricing...................................................................... 3 1.1.3 Current Distribution.............................................................. 4 1.1.4 Current Promotion................................................................. 4 1.2 Environmental Scanning.................................................................... 5 1.2.1 Political/Legal Environment...................................................5 1.2.2 Economic Environment...........................................................5 1.2.3 Social/Cultural Environment...................................................5 1.2.4 Technological Environment....................................................6 1.2.5 Natural Environment...............................................................6 1.2.6 Competitive Environment.......................................................7 1.2.7 Demographic Environment....................
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...ready-to-eat whole grain children’s cereal called Pirate Oats. Pirate Oats will be the first cereal of its kind offering the health benefits of whole grains while still being preferred by the target market of American children under the age of five. Children will favor Pirate Oats because of the cartoon mascot Captain Grain pictured on the front of the box. Parents will love Pirate Oats because it will keep their children healthy and at lower risk to develop childhood obesity and type two diabetes. This is because Pirate Oats will be lower in excess sugar, and higher in whole grains, than the competition. Pirate Oats will be marketed through an advertising campaign on popular children’s after-school television shows on networks such as Nickelodeon and FOX. First year marketing efforts will result in revenues equalling 10% of the target market as well as a 2% total market share gain for General Mills within the ready-to-eat breakfast cereal market. Achieving these goals will allow General Mills to reliably turn a profit within the first year of sales. 2.0 SITUATION ANALYSIS General Mills has long been a standard in the ready-to-eat breakfast cereal marketplace. It has many cereals marketed to, and designed for children, and has enjoyed a healthy market share to date. With the recent health food craze, the rise in childhood obesity, and poor diet being blamed for heart disease, type two diabetes, as well as cancer; refined flour and high sugar breakfast cereals marketed directly to children...
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...FIN 6406 A Financial Ratio Quarterly Trend Analysis of: Kellogg Co. Stock Symbol: K Listed on NYSE Exchange Prepared for: Dr. Edward Lawrence Department of Finance Florida International University In partial fulfillment of the requirements of Course: FIN 6406 By: Ana Carolina De Obaldía Rogemif Fuentes Cesar Giovanni Santos Fábrega Introduction For this project we decided to choose Kellogg’s Company (NYSE: K) to elaborate a financial quarterly trend analysis because it is a big, stable company with 108 years in the market and its products are sold in more than 180 countries worldwide. The ready to eat cereals first appeared in the late 1800’s when a group of vegetarians wanted to expand their food options and decided to create the wheat and corn flakes. It wasn´t until 1906 that Kellogg’s Co. entered the market and has stayed latent through many generations until these days. It is interesting that it survived two world wars and the depression of the United States in the 1930’s. Being this long in the market also means that they have known how to evolve in this world with constant changes, adapting to the behavioral changes in people and their likes remaining competitive and appealing. It is more of a mature company rather than growing company and has many brand-loyal customers. Regarding the sources of information consulted for this report, we used some financial websites to get the financial statements of Kellogg’s and its main competitor General Mills, which we will...
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... MATES: ...................................................................... 1 3. KELLOGG’S BREAKFAST MATES’ OFFERING: ................................................................................. 1 4. TARGET MARKET: ........................................................................................................................... 1 5. POSITIONING: ................................................................................................................................... 1 6. FAILURE OF BREAKFAST MATES: ................................................................................................... 1 7. ANALYSIS OF THE FAILURE USING FOUR “A” FRAMEWORK: ...................................................... 2 7.1. A CCEPTABILITY : .................................................................................................................................... 2 7.1.1. F UNCTIONAL A...
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...Provide a detailed overview of a U.S. publicly traded company. This should be one to two (1-2) pages. Overview Pepsico is the leading global food, snack and beverage company. The brand include Quaker Oats, Tropicana, Gatorade, Lay's and Pepsi . Pepsico is a global company, it includes strong regional brands such as Walkers, Gamesa and Sabritas. Either independently or through contract manufacturers .Pepsico market and sell a variety of convenient, enjoyable and wholesome foods and beverages in over 200 countries. Its portofolio includes oat, rice and grain-based foods, as well as carbonated and non-carbonated beverages. Pepsico largest operations are in North America (United States and Canada), Mexico, Russia and the United Kingdom. All the brand are united by its unique commitment to Performance with Purpose, which means delivering sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and the planet .Pepsico’s goal is to continue to build a balanced portfolio of enjoyable and wholesome foods and beverages, find innovative ways to reduce the use of energy, water and packaging and provide a great workplace for our associates. Additionally, Pepsico is committed to respecting, supporting and investing in the local communities where it operates by hiring local people, creating products designed for local tastes and partnering with local farmers, governments and community groups. Pepsico make this commitment because it is a responsible . In recognition of its...
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...RAND Journal of Economics Vol. 31, No. 3, Autumn 2000 pp. 395–421 Mergers with differentiated products: the case of the ready-to-eat cereal industry Aviv Nevo* Traditional merger analysis is difficult to implement when evaluating mergers in industries with differentiated products. I discuss an alternative, which consists of demand estimation and the use of a model of postmerger conduct to simulate the competitive effects of a merger. I estimate a brand-level demand system for ready-to-eat cereal using supermarket scanner data and use the estimates to (1) recover marginal costs, (2) simulate postmerger price equilibria, and (3) compute welfare effects, under a variety of assumptions. The methodology is applied to five mergers, two of which occurred and for which I compare predicted to actual outcomes. 1. Introduction Traditional analysis of horizontal mergers is based primarily on industryconcentration measures. The market is defined and pre- and postmerger market shares of the relevant firms are used to compute pre- and postmerger concentration measures, which give rise to presumptions of illegality. Using this approach to evaluate mergers in industries with differentiated, or closely related but not identical, products is problematic. In many cases the product offerings make it difficult to define the relevant product (or geographic) market. Even if the relevant market can easily be defined, the computed concentration index provides a reasonable standard by which to judge...
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...The Taiwanese Market for Organic Food & Drink © Organic Trade Association 2006 This report is the intellectual property of OTA and for the use of US companies only. No part of this report may be reproduced or used in other commercial publications without written consent from the OTA. For information regarding permission, write to: Organic Trade Association PO Box 547, Greenfield MA 01302 www.ota.com Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. Market Overview & Summary 5 III. Industry Analysis 6 Industry Development Organic Farmland 6 7 IV. Market Analysis 8 Market Forecasts Market Drivers Market Restraints Product Categories 8 10 12 14 V. Sales Analysis 16 Distribution Structure Sales Channels 16 17 VI. Competitive Profiles 20 Producer Analysis Importer Analysis 20 22 VII. Pricing Analysis 24 IX. Business Recommendations 26 X. References 28 XI. List of Key Companies 29 © Organic Trade Association 2006 Organic Monitor (www.organicmonitor.com) 1 2 Organic Monitor (www.organicmonitor.com) © Organic Trade Association 2006 I. Introduction This report analyzes the Taiwanese market for organic food & drink. The report has been prepared by a combination of primary and secondary research. About 90 percent of the data was derived from primary research, which was in the form of trade interviews with leading producers, wholesalers, importers and retailers of organic products. Interviews...
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...Biofuels and the underlying causes of high food prices Alessandro Flammini October 2008 The development of this report was coordinated by Maria Michela Morese and Jonathan Reeves (Global Bioenergy Partnership Secretariat). The views expressed in this report reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Bioenergy Partnership or those of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. For info: alessandro.flammini@fao.org ACRONYMS ADB Asian Development Bank DDG Dried distillers grains DEFRA Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs EU European Union FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations GHG Greenhouse Gas OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development PRC People’s Republic of China UAE United Arab Emirates US United States of America USDA Department of Agriculture of the United States WFP World Food Programme of the United Nations WTO World Trade Organization Table of contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................i BACKGROUND.....................................................................................1 THE CAUSES.......................................................................................4 THE CLIMATE ISSUE ......................................................................... 4 INTERNATIONAL STOCK LEVELS......................................................... 5 INCREASED GLOBAL FOOD...
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...Marketing research Marketing research is the research that companies do to study consumers and other companies. Marketing research seeks to understand the best ways to connect a consumer and a product, with the hopes that the consumer will buy. This involved evaluating the current marketing already being done for that product, or similar products that are created by the same company, and determining how well the marketing campaigns are working. This also involves studying the marketing techniques of other companies. Marketers begin research with a problem or a question. They don't approach research with the goal to learn more about a particular market. Instead, they want to know why a particular market is doing well, or why it is falling and what can be done to change that. They may also want to know why consumers are not buying some products, but gladly purchasing similar products. Research is then done to answer the question, and that answer can be turned into a marketing technique that may get better results. There are two types of marketing research. The first is consumer market research. The goal is to study the purchasing habits of consumers. This can be done by tallying up how much of a product is sold, through surveys or through other means. The information gathered from consumers can be used to analyze current marketing campaigns and to create new ones. The second type of marketing research is business to business (B2B) research, which studies how businesses sell...
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...Anita Bennefield MAN6721-12 Course Project Introduction: Strategic Management for PepsiCo and Quaker Oats, determine the present strategy: unrelated diversification, scope domestic or global for each division, what move have been made recently to add new business, rationale underlying recent divestures, the nature of any efforts to capture strategic fits and create competitive advantage based on economies of scope and other resource. Present Strategy Roger Enrico the CEO of PepsiCo (1996-2001) got involved in restricting PepsiCo’s business portfolio. Company had three business segments restaurants, beverages and snack foods. He found number of problems at PepsiCo. Company fall behind, Coca-Cola, the competitor by a growing margin in both domestic and international markets. The restaurant business declining and profit margin were slim. To get the company by on track Enrico developed a restricting strategy, which is: Related Diversification: The restaurants limited investment in the company’s snack food and beverage business and severely impaired the corporation’s overall operating and profit margin. The fact restaurant which included Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell were eliminated from the company’s portfolio of business and the three main restaurants were spun off as an independent publicly traded company, the divestitures was completed with a creation of Tricon Global Restaurants. Focusing on related diversification and spun off business unit which were unrelated to...
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...Strategy Writings[1] Dr. Mary A. Hamilton MBA, Ph.D. University of Rhode Island http://www.cba.uri.edu/faculty/hamilton/ Dr. Mark Lehrer Ph.D. University of Rhode Island Module #1: Introduction by Mark Lehrer 3 Module #2: Industry Analysis by Mark Lehrer 6 Rivalry 8 Entrants 9 Bargaining Power of Suppliers / Buyers 9 Two Cases: Breakfast Cereal and Personal Computers 9 Module #3: Value Chain Analysis by Mark Lehrer 12 Module #4: Industry Value Chains by Mark Lehrer 16 Module #5a: Generic Strategies (by Mary Hamilton) 16 Module #5b: Resource-Based View (by Mary Hamilton 16 Module #6: Industry Life Cycle (by Mark Lehrer) 16 Module #7: Competitive Strategy by Mary A. Hamilton 16 Theory 16 Types of Competitive Strategy 18 Offensive strategies 18 Defensive strategies 19 Collusive Strategies 19 Strategic alliances 20 Application 21 Module #8: Business Models by Mark Lehrer 23 Beyond Strategizing 23 Business Models: A Typology 23 Business Models Beyond the Internet 25 Module #9: Corporate Level Strategy by Mark Lehrer 28 Module #10: International Strategy by Mary A. Hamilton 28 Global Opportunities 28 International Strategic Orientation 29 National Advantages 31 Mode of Entry 32 Competitive Performance 33 Module #1: Introduction by Mark Lehrer How can one introduce such a multifaceted subject as strategy? What is strategy? Why does it matter? The concept of strategy comes from...
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