Situation
Pillsbury is a Canadian manufacturer of the baked goods, whose products, at the moment, are not very well received. Moreover, the cookies that are especially unsuccessful form 75% of the entire Refrigerated Baked Goods (RBG) division. Both strategic and practical aspects of the company’s performance need to be brought to the new level (Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson 378). The marketing manager of the RBG Ivan Guillen experienced an increasing amount of pressure before making a decision. In this case, the decision was to carry out a study and create an entirely new marketing strategy. The tool defining the details of the strategy was a consumer insight research (Gamble and Thompson 37).
Usually, a team of researchers is to conduct an analysis of the consumers’ attitudes towards different variations of the goods and identify the reasons for the lack of marketing success (Hill, Jones, and Schilling 171). The analysis discovered that some types of traditional baked products introduced to the market a long time ago were more popular than the brand’s new refrigerated cookies “Kisses” launched in 2005. The latter ones were adapted from the Pillsbury’s parental company. However, they did not succeed in the competitive Canadian market.
Competition
The market for baked goods in Canada has a great variety of such products as bread, pastry, and cookies. Nevertheless, there are only a few major competitors for Pillsbury, including Loblaw, Sobeys, and Metro. Pillsbury has an advantage over its competitors because the company provides its products for all the country’s main retailers. This aspect is important because it facilitates the managerial element since the company does not have to administer their own retail (Williams and Lewis 655). However, there is always a risk that the supermarkets will dismiss their products if the customers’ demand decreases.
Situation analysis
The marketing analysis is aimed to discover certain strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the company (Eden and Ackermann 110). The first strength of Pillsbury is its name recognition since it manufactures 85% of all the refrigerated baked goods in Canada. Another apparent strength is the support of the paternal company in America. The weakness that resulted in the demand and flat growth was the unsuccessful advertisement campaign.
Another discovered weakness was the lack of knowledge of the Canadian market. In other words, the refrigerated cookies were not successful because baking from scratch is more popular than from the pre-cooked dough. Nevertheless, Pillsbury has an opportunity to reintroduce their products due to the support of the paternal company. However, the threats lie in the risk of choosing incorrectly the new marketing campaign and losing the retailers.
Stakeholders
From the perspective of Pillsbury and its management, the reintroduction of the refrigerated cookies is better than launching a new product as the company already has resources and designed methods of production (Rothaermel 80). From the perspective of the parental company, the new marketing campaign for “Kisses” is more profitable too because the cookies are based on their original product. From the perspective of consumers, the situation is less clear. They deemed the refrigerated cookies convenient, but most customers prefer traditional baking.
Problem solutions
Pillsbury has all the chances for successful re-entry of its refrigerated baked goods. The main weakness of the previous marketing strategy was a weak appeal addressed to no particular social group. However, with the re-branding of the product and formulating the campaign to which people can relate, the goods may achieve success. Given the fact that people prefer baking from scratch, the campaign has to demonstrate that the refrigerated cookies are as good as the traditionally made ones.
Works Cited
Eden, Colin, and Fran Ackermann. Making strategy: The journey of strategic management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013. Print.
Gamble, John E., and Arthur A. Thompson Jr. Essentials of strategic management. New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill, 2014. Print.
Hill, Charles, Gareth Jones, and Melissa Schilling. Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach. New York, NY: Cengage Learning, 2014. Print.
Hitt, Michael, R. Duane Ireland, and Robert Hoskisson. Strategic management cases: competitiveness and globalization. New York, NY: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Rothaermel, Frank T. Strategic management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2015. Print.
Williams, Wil, and Duncan Lewis. “Strategic management tools and public sector management: the challenge of context specificity.” Public Management Review 10.5 (2008): 653-671. Print.