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【中图分类号】G64 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089（2014）04-0020-03
Executive Summary
Unilever UK Foods, headquartered in West Sussex, is a division mainly focusing on non?鄄frozen?鄄food, which contains tea, margarine, soup mixes, and sauce products. There are 2,000 staffs in the UK branch. The core brands are Knorr, Magnum, Bertoli, Flora, Ben & Jerry;s Hellmann’s and Carte d’Or.
This written strategic marketing plan will take the company forward, by increasing market share, improving positioning and/or turnover, sales growth, and further developing and enhancing the organizations’ brand and their positions within the markets in which they operate.
The report will be structured as follows:
Firstly, PESTLE analysis (Hollensen, 2007) will be utilized to analyze the existing market—UK. Then the UK market will be analyzed their market opportunities and risks in more details through Porter’s five forces framework (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 1994) in terms of political and legal forces, economic forces, social forces, cultural forces and technology forces. Despite this, the SWOT analysis of the company (Unilever UK Foods) will be presented though core competencies analysis and organizational life cycle (Vance & Paik, 2006.). Finally, the corresponding marketing plan will be concluded based on such analysis mentioned above, and Porter’s generic strategies (Westwood, 1996; Keegan & Green, 2008) will be employed to position the brand in the market (Doole, I. & Lowe, R., 2004). This plan covers a total of 5 years with details of marketing plan for the development of Unilever UK foods in the UK market.
Market Analysis
·Preserved food could not offer stable price in 2011, since most canned suit, fish and tomatoes are imported form other countries. Consequently, such items are largely influenced by exchange rates. That is, the exchange rates on imports of raw material lead the fluctuation of commodity prices.
·Morrison’s, a UK supermarket, is willing to give more shelf space to canned/preserved food. It is reported that there are 600 promotions on such a category of product, which is 200 more that those promotions in Tesco.
·Shoppers at M&S and Waitrose are more likely to try new flavors of cooking sauces and such brand often have higher levels of quality and stay in the premium position in the UK market.
Shoppers at Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s hand to purchase low?鄄fat or low?鄄calorie cooking sauces and such likelihood will be higher when these brands are on promotion activities.
·Italian cuisines took the dominate position in cooking sauces market.
An analysis of the sector (cooking sauces)
·Given that just 22% of UK consumers used cooking sauce during the past 12 months, such a sector remains some what niche.
·Unit pieces for cooking sauces are forecasted to increase at CAGR of 1%.
·Generally, the wet/cooking sauces is forecasted to further expand in the UK market, since consumers are willing to share a new taste experience with friends, reminisce about their past travels and also seek convenience brought from such cooking sauce. Specifically, oriental wet/cooking sauces are most popular than other types of cuisine. For instance, Sichuan flavored products are popular for its distinctive spicy flavors.
·Given that UK consumers purchase curry more frequently than those in other countries, Indian wet/cooking sauces are also popular. Except for this, such cooking sauces are popular for its convenience. Take biryani sauces for instance, it can be mixes simply and left to cook without further preparation requires.
·Young urban dwellers in the UK have less time to cook foods from scratch.
·Supermarkets/hypermarkets are projected to be leading distribution channel in cooking sauce. The big four grocery chains for cooking sauces are Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrisons.
·Wet/ambient sauces accounted for the largest portion in cooking sauces sector.
·Thai sauces are consumed by 22% of total consumer in past 12 months in the UK market, and these sauces are expected to be indispensable part of cooking sauces.
·Almost half of consumer tends not to choose oven?鄄bake dishes; whereas there are 80% and 60% of consumers prefer cook?鄄in sauces and pour?鄄over sauce.
·Female consumers are more likely to try new flavor cooking sauces than male, because they do the majority of shopping and cooking in the home, catering for every family member’s taste and preferences, i.e., the degree of spiciness.
·Consumers aged 24-34 years old tend to purchase Mexican sauces.
·Consumers aged 35-64 years old prefer Indian and Chinese cooking sauces, which can match with their drinks from the same country of origin, i.e., Cobra or Tiger beer.
·An outline of the Target Market—consumer segments ·Time?鄄pressured consumers;
·Female consumers aged 25 to 39 years, who are the largest portion in the use of online coupons;
·The retired aged over 55 years old;
·Consumers with children;
·Consumers aged 24-34 years old tend to purchase Mexican sauces;
·Consumers aged 35-64 years old prefer Indian and Chinese cooking sauces;
·Consumers with higher levels of ecological and healthy consciousness.
An analysis of the Competitive Market
·Consumers have various choices in cooking sauces to choose.
·Premier Foods Group Ltd took the lead in sauces, dressings and condiments with value share of 16%, followed by Unilever Foods UK Ltd with 12% and Heinz Co Ltd. HJ with 9% share. Bisto and Loyd Grossman are most famous brands in Premier. Sharwood’s (Premier Foods Group Ltd) and Patak’s (Premier Foods Group Ltd) are popular brands for its Indian cuisine. Bothe of them offer biryani sauces, which can be easy to prepare.
·In order to achieve differentiation edge, Mars UK Ltd launched a new range of pasta sauces called My Dolmio Squeeze Me early in 2011, which is quick to prepare and relatively healthy. Such sauces target a particular consumer segmentation (single parents with small children), who have less time to cook from scratch.
Company Overview (Unilever)
Unilever UK Foods, headquartered in West Sussex, is a division mainly focusing on non?鄄frozen?鄄food, which contains tea, margarine, soup mixes, and sauce products. There are 2,000 staff in the UK branch. The core brands are Knorr, Magnum, Bertoli, Flora, Ben & Jerry; Hellmann’s and Carte d’Or. It is reported that the year 2011’s revenues are around ￡900 million.
Market share
Unilever ranked 3rd amongst manufacturer’s share of cooking sauces in the UK. The top two are Mars UK and Premier Foods, and both of them enjoyed a growth of 34.5% and 8.7% separately. However, Unilever suffered a decline of 8.3% in manufacturers’ share in the UK. Moreover, AB World Foods, ranked 4th accelerated its growth rate, at 40.3%. Therefore, Unilever have the need to achieve manufacturer’s shares in the short term future, in order to maintain its current position in the UK market.
In terms of brands, Knorr (Unilever) and Colman’s (Unilever) ranked 3rd and 4th in the UK’s brand shares in cooking sauces sector. However, Bertoli (Unilever), ranked 12th, had a brand share of 10%, which is almost 30% less than the other two brands. That is, In terms of brand share under Unilever, the company should allocate more efforts in improving Bertoli sales in the long term.
SWOT Analysis
In recent year, Unilever has allocated more marketing efforts upon sauces, dressings and condiments and soup from oils, fats and frozen processed food. Sauces, dressings and condiments contribute around 25% of the food revenues to the company.
Strengths
·Unilever’s brand name is its biggest competitive edge. Specifically, the company has many best known brands, such as Bertoli, Bleu brand, Knorr, Lipton and Slim?鄄Fast and most of which can gain over E 1 billion in annual revenues on average.
·Such a brand reputation can help the company in further market expansion.
·Strong technological support can develop their products. For instance, Knorr launched new meal makers, which helped the company to successfully enter into developing and emerging markets.
·Unilever has a wide geographic reach in many markets— Western Europe (26%), Americas (33%) and emerging regions (41%)—contribute to the total turnover.
Weaknesses
·Given that most consumers gained an unhealthy image from Slim?鄄Fast, such an experience may have a negative impact on other brand in cooking sauces under unilever.
Opportunities
·In current times, people have become more concern about health. Therefore, a growing number of consumers have showed more interest in fat?鄄free and healthy products. For instance, cholesterol?鄄free mayonnaise is very appreciated by more and more consumers.
·The decrease in the likelihood of eating out benefit the sales of cooking sauces.
Threats
·In the cooking sauce segment, Unilever faces stiff competition from Mars UK and Premier Foods. Such two companies have achieved the largest manufacturer’s share in the UK market. Therefore, such a fierce competition was negatively associated with Unilever’s market share and margins.
·Raising commodity price dose negatively affect the Unilever’s products sales. Such a rise in price is due to the raising price in grains, vegetables, sugar, vegetable oils, meats, fruits and many other agricultural product, and packaging materials as well. ·Like many global enterprises, Unilever faces the challenges of slowly recovery from financial crisis over the short to medium term.
·The future growth of private label products in supermarkets, i.e., Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose, fueled the competition in cooking sauces.
·There exist three fifths of consumers preferring to cook from scratch.
·Dining out remains the top two leisure activity even in the period of economy downturn.
·71% of consumers in the UK are willing to try new cooking sauces if it were on promotion.
Consumer promotion tool
Given that female consumers aged 25-39 years old tend to utilize online coupons, the company can use coupon as a consumer promotion tool, which can promote the new launched products and stimulate the existing products in their maturity stage. However, such a toll may bring about a drawback to retailers; there will be a decline in redemption rate when retailers use it excessively. Consequently, Bertolli should issue fewer coupons regularly to target female consumers aged 25-39. Text?鄄message coupling here will be utilized has become more and more popular in UK market.
Online marketing
Corporate website
Bertolli should further improve its corporate website, which just provides company’s history, its mission, products that it offers. Such a situation cannot attract and hold visitors. Therefore, it is recommended that Bertolli can create some video games about its product, which can be easily remembered by visitors.
Marketing website
Bertolli should create marketing website, which can provide a platform where retailers can interact with consumers for direct purchase. Such a site can also offer some promotional activities, i.e., online coupons. Despite this, retailers will update the latest new about new launched products and put on the hot deals regularly.
Advertisements can also be put on social networks/blogs because the time spent on such networks (i.e., Twitter or Facebook) account for one forth of a person’s online time.
Social networks/blogs
Given that social networks/blogs account for around 25% of internet users’ online time, such as Facebook and Twitter, the manufacturers can establish a two?鄄way communication between marketers and consumers via such networks. Such a practice can help operators to listen to after?鄄service opinions. Except for this, marketer can update latest new about new product launch and enable consumers to download ingredient’ information, cooking guidance and locate nearest retailing place. Additionally, consumers may share such latest news and feedback with their friends during their live chat. Such a practice can act as a word?鄄of?鄄month advertising.
Place
Given that Morrisons are more likely to offer more space to canned/preserved foods, Bertolli should try to achieve more prior shelf price for their products.
In terms of M&S and Waitrose, Bertollis’ new launched products can be more allocated in such two supermarkets, since shoppers at these supermarkets are more likely try new flavors in cooking sauces.
Additionally, in terms of Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, Bertolli can allocate more “green” and organic products in these supermarkets, because shoppers at such two supermarket tend to purchase low?鄄fat or low?鄄calorie cooking sauces.
Finally, in terms of Aidi and poundworld, Bertolli can allocate some products associated with promotional activities in such two supermarkets, because shoppers at these supermarkets mostly have high levels of price consciousness.
ROI
In 2013, the company will invest 20% of the previous turnover to cover the cost of UK marketing plan. Until 2016, such an investment will be reduced by 10%. Therefore, ROI is forecasted to increased form 2% to 5% during the future five years.
﹡A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.
Reference：
[1]Czinkota, M.R. & Ronkainen, I.A., 1994. International Marketing Strategy: Environmental Assessment and Entry Strategies. London: The Dryden Press
[2]Datamonitor, 2011. Country Analysis Report: The UK, In-depth PESTLE insights, London: Datamonitor
[3]Doole, I. & Lowe, R., 2004. International Marketing Strategy: Analysis, development and Implementation. 4th ed. London: Thomson
[4]Euromonitor International, 2012. Consumer Lifestyles In The United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 13 Feb 2012)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
[5]Euromonitor International, 2012. Sauces, Dressings and Condiments In The United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 16 Dec 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search Search Results List.aspx [Accessed 09 July 2012]
[6]Euromonitor International, 2011. Consumer Foodservice In The United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 04 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012].
[7]Euromonitor International, 2011. Consumer Foodservice By Location In The United Kingdom.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 04 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResults List. aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
[8]Euromonitor International, 2011. Consumer Packaged Food In The UnitedKingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 02 Nov 2011)] Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
[9]Euromonitor International, 2011. Ready Meals In The UnitedKingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
[10]Euromonitor International, 2012. Unilever UK Foods.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[11]Euromonitor International, 2012. Unilever Group in Packaged Food(World).(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated13Mar 2012) Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed09 July 2012]
[12]Euromonitor International, 2011. Packaged Food in The United Kingdom.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 02 Nov 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/Portal/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[13]Euromonitor International,2011.Canned/Preserved Food in The United Kingdom.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Oct 2011) Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/Portal/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed10July2012]
[14]Euromonitor International, 2012. Packaging Industry in the United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 03 Jul 2012)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/Portal/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[15]Euromonitor International, 2012. Frozen Processed Food in the United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/Portal/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[16]Hollensen, S., 2007. Global Marketing, 4th Edition. London: Prentice Hall
[17]John Westwood, 1996. The Marketing Plan: A Practitioner’s Guide. 2nd ed. London: Kogan Page Limited
[18]Keegan, W.J. & Green, M.C., 2008. Global Marketing. 5th ed. London: Pearson International Edition
[19]Mintel Oxygen, 2011, Pricing and Promotions in Food-UK-May2011 [online] (Updated May 2011) Available at: http://academic.mintel.com/sinatra/-academic/search_results/show&/display/id=545239[Accessed 8th May 2012]
[20]Kotler, P., et. al., 2008. Principles of Marketing. London: Prentice Hall
[21]Mintel Oxygen, 2012. Cooking Sauces-UK-December 2010.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Oct 2011)Available at: http://academic.mintel.com/sinatra//■search_results/display/?no_redirect&id=557375[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[22]Mintel Oxygen, 2012. Cooking Sauces, Pasts Sauces and Stocks-UK-November 2011.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Nov 2011)Available at: http://academic.mintel.com/sinatra/■/search_results/display/no_redirect&id=545140[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[23]Unilever, UK & Ireland, 2012. About us: Creating a Better Future Every Day.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 19 Oct 2011)Available at: http://www.unilever.co.uk/aboutus/[Accessed 10 July 2012]
[24]Vance, C.M. & Paik, Y., 2006. Managing a Global Workforce: Challenges and Opportunities in International Human Resource Management. New York: M. E. Sharpe
作者简介：
黄心如（1988年10月－），女，江苏徐州人，研究方向：教育经济。
Executive Summary
Unilever UK Foods, headquartered in West Sussex, is a division mainly focusing on non?鄄frozen?鄄food, which contains tea, margarine, soup mixes, and sauce products. There are 2,000 staffs in the UK branch. The core brands are Knorr, Magnum, Bertoli, Flora, Ben & Jerry;s Hellmann’s and Carte d’Or.
This written strategic marketing plan will take the company forward, by increasing market share, improving positioning and/or turnover, sales growth, and further developing and enhancing the organizations’ brand and their positions within the markets in which they operate.
The report will be structured as follows:
Firstly, PESTLE analysis (Hollensen, 2007) will be utilized to analyze the existing market—UK. Then the UK market will be analyzed their market opportunities and risks in more details through Porter’s five forces framework (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 1994) in terms of political and legal forces, economic forces, social forces, cultural forces and technology forces. Despite this, the SWOT analysis of the company (Unilever UK Foods) will be presented though core competencies analysis and organizational life cycle (Vance & Paik, 2006.). Finally, the corresponding marketing plan will be concluded based on such analysis mentioned above, and Porter’s generic strategies (Westwood, 1996; Keegan & Green, 2008) will be employed to position the brand in the market (Doole, I. & Lowe, R., 2004). This plan covers a total of 5 years with details of marketing plan for the development of Unilever UK foods in the UK market.
Market Analysis
·Preserved food could not offer stable price in 2011, since most canned suit, fish and tomatoes are imported form other countries. Consequently, such items are largely influenced by exchange rates. That is, the exchange rates on imports of raw material lead the fluctuation of commodity prices.
·Morrison’s, a UK supermarket, is willing to give more shelf space to canned/preserved food. It is reported that there are 600 promotions on such a category of product, which is 200 more that those promotions in Tesco.
·Shoppers at M&S and Waitrose are more likely to try new flavors of cooking sauces and such brand often have higher levels of quality and stay in the premium position in the UK market.
Shoppers at Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s hand to purchase low?鄄fat or low?鄄calorie cooking sauces and such likelihood will be higher when these brands are on promotion activities.
·Italian cuisines took the dominate position in cooking sauces market.
An analysis of the sector (cooking sauces)
·Given that just 22% of UK consumers used cooking sauce during the past 12 months, such a sector remains some what niche.
·Unit pieces for cooking sauces are forecasted to increase at CAGR of 1%.
·Generally, the wet/cooking sauces is forecasted to further expand in the UK market, since consumers are willing to share a new taste experience with friends, reminisce about their past travels and also seek convenience brought from such cooking sauce. Specifically, oriental wet/cooking sauces are most popular than other types of cuisine. For instance, Sichuan flavored products are popular for its distinctive spicy flavors.
·Given that UK consumers purchase curry more frequently than those in other countries, Indian wet/cooking sauces are also popular. Except for this, such cooking sauces are popular for its convenience. Take biryani sauces for instance, it can be mixes simply and left to cook without further preparation requires.
·Young urban dwellers in the UK have less time to cook foods from scratch.
·Supermarkets/hypermarkets are projected to be leading distribution channel in cooking sauce. The big four grocery chains for cooking sauces are Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrisons.
·Wet/ambient sauces accounted for the largest portion in cooking sauces sector.
·Thai sauces are consumed by 22% of total consumer in past 12 months in the UK market, and these sauces are expected to be indispensable part of cooking sauces.
·Almost half of consumer tends not to choose oven?鄄bake dishes; whereas there are 80% and 60% of consumers prefer cook?鄄in sauces and pour?鄄over sauce.
·Female consumers are more likely to try new flavor cooking sauces than male, because they do the majority of shopping and cooking in the home, catering for every family member’s taste and preferences, i.e., the degree of spiciness.
·Consumers aged 24-34 years old tend to purchase Mexican sauces.
·Consumers aged 35-64 years old prefer Indian and Chinese cooking sauces, which can match with their drinks from the same country of origin, i.e., Cobra or Tiger beer.
·An outline of the Target Market—consumer segments ·Time?鄄pressured consumers;
·Female consumers aged 25 to 39 years, who are the largest portion in the use of online coupons;
·The retired aged over 55 years old;
·Consumers with children;
·Consumers aged 24-34 years old tend to purchase Mexican sauces;
·Consumers aged 35-64 years old prefer Indian and Chinese cooking sauces;
·Consumers with higher levels of ecological and healthy consciousness.
An analysis of the Competitive Market
·Consumers have various choices in cooking sauces to choose.
·Premier Foods Group Ltd took the lead in sauces, dressings and condiments with value share of 16%, followed by Unilever Foods UK Ltd with 12% and Heinz Co Ltd. HJ with 9% share. Bisto and Loyd Grossman are most famous brands in Premier. Sharwood’s (Premier Foods Group Ltd) and Patak’s (Premier Foods Group Ltd) are popular brands for its Indian cuisine. Bothe of them offer biryani sauces, which can be easy to prepare.
·In order to achieve differentiation edge, Mars UK Ltd launched a new range of pasta sauces called My Dolmio Squeeze Me early in 2011, which is quick to prepare and relatively healthy. Such sauces target a particular consumer segmentation (single parents with small children), who have less time to cook from scratch.
Company Overview (Unilever)
Unilever UK Foods, headquartered in West Sussex, is a division mainly focusing on non?鄄frozen?鄄food, which contains tea, margarine, soup mixes, and sauce products. There are 2,000 staff in the UK branch. The core brands are Knorr, Magnum, Bertoli, Flora, Ben & Jerry; Hellmann’s and Carte d’Or. It is reported that the year 2011’s revenues are around ￡900 million.
Market share
Unilever ranked 3rd amongst manufacturer’s share of cooking sauces in the UK. The top two are Mars UK and Premier Foods, and both of them enjoyed a growth of 34.5% and 8.7% separately. However, Unilever suffered a decline of 8.3% in manufacturers’ share in the UK. Moreover, AB World Foods, ranked 4th accelerated its growth rate, at 40.3%. Therefore, Unilever have the need to achieve manufacturer’s shares in the short term future, in order to maintain its current position in the UK market.
In terms of brands, Knorr (Unilever) and Colman’s (Unilever) ranked 3rd and 4th in the UK’s brand shares in cooking sauces sector. However, Bertoli (Unilever), ranked 12th, had a brand share of 10%, which is almost 30% less than the other two brands. That is, In terms of brand share under Unilever, the company should allocate more efforts in improving Bertoli sales in the long term.
SWOT Analysis
In recent year, Unilever has allocated more marketing efforts upon sauces, dressings and condiments and soup from oils, fats and frozen processed food. Sauces, dressings and condiments contribute around 25% of the food revenues to the company.
Strengths
·Unilever’s brand name is its biggest competitive edge. Specifically, the company has many best known brands, such as Bertoli, Bleu brand, Knorr, Lipton and Slim?鄄Fast and most of which can gain over E 1 billion in annual revenues on average.
·Such a brand reputation can help the company in further market expansion.
·Strong technological support can develop their products. For instance, Knorr launched new meal makers, which helped the company to successfully enter into developing and emerging markets.
·Unilever has a wide geographic reach in many markets— Western Europe (26%), Americas (33%) and emerging regions (41%)—contribute to the total turnover.
Weaknesses
·Given that most consumers gained an unhealthy image from Slim?鄄Fast, such an experience may have a negative impact on other brand in cooking sauces under unilever.
Opportunities
·In current times, people have become more concern about health. Therefore, a growing number of consumers have showed more interest in fat?鄄free and healthy products. For instance, cholesterol?鄄free mayonnaise is very appreciated by more and more consumers.
·The decrease in the likelihood of eating out benefit the sales of cooking sauces.
Threats
·In the cooking sauce segment, Unilever faces stiff competition from Mars UK and Premier Foods. Such two companies have achieved the largest manufacturer’s share in the UK market. Therefore, such a fierce competition was negatively associated with Unilever’s market share and margins.
·Raising commodity price dose negatively affect the Unilever’s products sales. Such a rise in price is due to the raising price in grains, vegetables, sugar, vegetable oils, meats, fruits and many other agricultural product, and packaging materials as well. ·Like many global enterprises, Unilever faces the challenges of slowly recovery from financial crisis over the short to medium term.
·The future growth of private label products in supermarkets, i.e., Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose, fueled the competition in cooking sauces.
·There exist three fifths of consumers preferring to cook from scratch.
·Dining out remains the top two leisure activity even in the period of economy downturn.
·71% of consumers in the UK are willing to try new cooking sauces if it were on promotion.
Consumer promotion tool
Given that female consumers aged 25-39 years old tend to utilize online coupons, the company can use coupon as a consumer promotion tool, which can promote the new launched products and stimulate the existing products in their maturity stage. However, such a toll may bring about a drawback to retailers; there will be a decline in redemption rate when retailers use it excessively. Consequently, Bertolli should issue fewer coupons regularly to target female consumers aged 25-39. Text?鄄message coupling here will be utilized has become more and more popular in UK market.
Online marketing
Corporate website
Bertolli should further improve its corporate website, which just provides company’s history, its mission, products that it offers. Such a situation cannot attract and hold visitors. Therefore, it is recommended that Bertolli can create some video games about its product, which can be easily remembered by visitors.
Marketing website
Bertolli should create marketing website, which can provide a platform where retailers can interact with consumers for direct purchase. Such a site can also offer some promotional activities, i.e., online coupons. Despite this, retailers will update the latest new about new launched products and put on the hot deals regularly.
Advertisements can also be put on social networks/blogs because the time spent on such networks (i.e., Twitter or Facebook) account for one forth of a person’s online time.
Social networks/blogs
Given that social networks/blogs account for around 25% of internet users’ online time, such as Facebook and Twitter, the manufacturers can establish a two?鄄way communication between marketers and consumers via such networks. Such a practice can help operators to listen to after?鄄service opinions. Except for this, marketer can update latest new about new product launch and enable consumers to download ingredient’ information, cooking guidance and locate nearest retailing place. Additionally, consumers may share such latest news and feedback with their friends during their live chat. Such a practice can act as a word?鄄of?鄄month advertising.
Place
Given that Morrisons are more likely to offer more space to canned/preserved foods, Bertolli should try to achieve more prior shelf price for their products.
In terms of M&S and Waitrose, Bertollis’ new launched products can be more allocated in such two supermarkets, since shoppers at these supermarkets are more likely try new flavors in cooking sauces.
Additionally, in terms of Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, Bertolli can allocate more “green” and organic products in these supermarkets, because shoppers at such two supermarket tend to purchase low?鄄fat or low?鄄calorie cooking sauces.
Finally, in terms of Aidi and poundworld, Bertolli can allocate some products associated with promotional activities in such two supermarkets, because shoppers at these supermarkets mostly have high levels of price consciousness.
ROI
In 2013, the company will invest 20% of the previous turnover to cover the cost of UK marketing plan. Until 2016, such an investment will be reduced by 10%. Therefore, ROI is forecasted to increased form 2% to 5% during the future five years.
﹡A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.
Reference：
[1]Czinkota, M.R. & Ronkainen, I.A., 1994. International Marketing Strategy: Environmental Assessment and Entry Strategies. London: The Dryden Press
[2]Datamonitor, 2011. Country Analysis Report: The UK, In-depth PESTLE insights, London: Datamonitor
[3]Doole, I. & Lowe, R., 2004. International Marketing Strategy: Analysis, development and Implementation. 4th ed. London: Thomson
[4]Euromonitor International, 2012. Consumer Lifestyles In The United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 13 Feb 2012)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
[5]Euromonitor International, 2012. Sauces, Dressings and Condiments In The United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 16 Dec 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search Search Results List.aspx [Accessed 09 July 2012]
[6]Euromonitor International, 2011. Consumer Foodservice In The United Kingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 04 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012].
[7]Euromonitor International, 2011. Consumer Foodservice By Location In The United Kingdom.(Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 04 Oct 2011)Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResults List. aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
[8]Euromonitor International, 2011. Consumer Packaged Food In The UnitedKingdom. (Hitting the headlines article) [Online] (Updated 02 Nov 2011)] Available at: https://www.portal.euromonitor.com/■/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspx[Accessed 09 July 2012]
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作者简介：
黄心如（1988年10月－），女，江苏徐州人，研究方向：教育经济。