In this case study the main research objective is to find the most appropriate plan for launching a national Italian sausage brand for the Saxonville Sausage Company. The company intends to use this market launch as a strategy to achieve their profit objectives in the fiscal year. The company’s main source of revenue has been from two branded products,the bratwurst and breakfast categories contributing 70% and 20% revenue respectively. These two products have reported zero increase in volume for 3 years and show no expected increase.This trend is what has caused the company management to seek professional help in establishing a winning brand.The brand is expected to be sold nationwide and to be readily available in major outlets.
The third product is an Italian sausage known as vivio,which has been contributing 5% of total revenue.The category of vivio which is mostly served during dinner was the only one showing small but gradual growth both for Saxonville and for other retail sausage producers.Saxonville had vivio available in only 16% of the nationwide market the rest 84% remained untapped.Saxonville majored in production of fresh sausage. The research was aimed at either developing a completely new national Italian sausage brand or re-brading an already existing one .
The case has specific questions in order to understand the company’s position and activities both in the past and also in future.Most importantly the questions are meant to facilitate a clear understanding of the customers whom Saxonville was targeting with the new product launch. The questions were administered to selected sausage consumers by a team formed under the lead researcher.They followed steps where each subsequent step utilized the results of the preceding.
The first thing was for the established team to have a common understanding of the current situation of the company and its products.The Saxonville brats were mainly cooked over the weekends by males,they had also received advertising and campaigns annually.The breakfast sausage was mainly cooked by females and had received a small print campaign.The five had a lot of unexploited potential and was mainly cooked during dinner it was not supported by any advertising.
The next issue was to understand the customer needs and behavior. The researcher through questions understood that there were three groups of Italian sausage consumers, the heavy, medium and light users. It was clear that the vivio was perceived to be of high quality in terms of color,taste, texture and ratio of solids to fats.Most of the families used this sausage to prepare dinner as it was easy to make and also almost all family members enjoyed the meal. Questions on the brand name revealed that the customers believed in the ability of Saxonville to consistently produce high quality sausages. However the customers had reservations about vivio as the brand name and preferred other names.
Questions on what target consumers valued most showed that they were all concerned about giving the best to their families as mothers and good homemakers.Several positioning concepts were built with each trying to meet different emotional and functional needs. The finalized concepts were then presented to the target consumers and the Family Connection positioning concept was ranked highest by getting 54%. The final questions addressed issues on the method of advertising to use, the packaging, point-of-purchase materials, product attributes to enhance, in-store graphics and support from temporary display units.
Work cited
- Moore, Kate.”Saxonville Sausage Company” Harvard Business Publishing, 2007.
