Oscar Mayer Foods Corporation was founded in 1883 and is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. The company operates as a subsidiary of Kraft Foods Group, Inc (Bloomberg, 2016).
Product: variety of processed food such as cold cuts, hot dogs, bacons, lunch combinations, sliced meats and other packaged food products.
Price: retail $6.58 per Oscar Mayer Lunchables, Variety Pack (6 ct.)
Place: food brick-and-mortar retail chains (Walmart, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, MORRISONS, Waitrose) and e-commerce stores (Amazon.com).
Promotion: OM uses different communication channels (TV, in-store advertisement, digital channels, mobile apps). One of the latest Oscar Mayer mobile apps is a dating app “Sizzl” which was created to help bacon lovers meat one another. The genius part of the free iOS app is that the company learns new information about its customers in a very easy way for them. They are doing research using the tools of gamification. (Waxman, 2015)
According to InfoScout.co research (2016), females buy Oscar Mayer products more often than males. People aged 35-44 buy more than all other age groups. African American purchase OM products more than Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian and others. Due to the research, ⅔ of the customers have kids. People with income of $80k-100k, $100k-125k, $125+ buy more company’s products than people with lower income. Most OM customers have finished college. Brand value per median basket of $67.14 is $4.00. It means that Oscar Wiener products take 6.0% of Basket costs on average.
Impulse purchase: 27% decided to purchase OM product in-store. The brand is associated with: Quality, Easy, Kids, Quick, Lunch, Convenient. Testimonials: “It is great because it is portable and my kids like them!”. “My kids love it but it is not the healthiest thing”. Customers rate the product 8.7 on average. The OM products are mostly purchased on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Customers use different payment methods which are Cash, Credit, Debit, Food stamps. If an item was out of stock, 30% would have purchased another brand, 24% would have gone to another store to purchase it, 29% would have waited until his/her next trip to the same store, 14% would have bought a similar Oscar Mayer item.
In the next parts of my research paper I will discuss working moms as a target market. The best and the most convenient option for them are ‘Lunchables”.
Consumer Influences
In my opinion, the following three aspects of consumer influences are the most relevant: Attitude, Family, and Personality.
Attitude is a feeling towards an object or an idea you have before to act in a certain way towards it. Attitudes let person develop a coherent behavior against a class of similar objects or ideas; they are well-anchored in people’s mind and can hardly be changed.
Family is one of the most influencing factor for a person as it creates a social environment where the person grows, shapes personality and form his own values. In this environment he/she also develops opinions and attitudes on everything surrounding him including his consumer habits and brands perception. People tend to have the same buying habits as the ones that existed in their families. Thus we can say that family has a strong influence on the consumer buying behavior.
If a child has never drunk Coke during his childhood, his parents were always describing it as a not-good-for-health and full of sugar product, there is far less possibility that he will buy it when he grows up unlike someone who has drunk Coke since childhood. For FMCG and Consumer Packaged Goods brands successful “family integration” is both a great opportunity to develop a strong consumer loyalty among the whole family. It is important for brands to have an image of a family brand if they want to develop a consumer habit for both parents and children (who will later become adults).
Personality is a set of traits of a person; it materializes into responsibility, leadership, curiosity, adaptability, etc. To attract customers, a lot of brands are doing their best to create an image that expresses real or desired traits of target audience. For example, Apple has created an image of innovation to attract people who identify themselves as innovative and who feel valued by buying their products. Consumers not only buy products based on their needs; they are also looking for products that have the image they already have or would like to have.
Marketing Strategy
Current issues that may need consumer behavior research are:
Nutritiousness of the products. Mom's main goal is the goodwill of her child. Food is one of the key aspects in our life.
Wasteful packaging - CSR
They should appeal to the mothers in their ads and make the emotional attachment. For example, they could create the ad where working mothers would be choosing OM products for their healthy children.
What is the target market’s attitude to the brand name and image?
We need to know what the target market thinks about our Product, how people feel about it.
What are the target markets current perceptions of the packaging?
Packaging of the Product can really drive sales. We are to make sure we use it 100%.
What role do our products play in the everyday life of the customers?
What are the family attitudes towards brands advertising?
Family plays a big role in our consumer habits and brands perception. Consumer habits(=sales) are formed with the help of advertising and we need to know if we use this tool effectively.
How can personal customer experience be improved?
People learn through experiences. We need to create perfect customer experience which customers will want to have again and again.
Conclusion
These findings could be the basis for a larger research project to be conducted by the brand.
The issue of attitudes towards brand packaging should be investigated as it seems not clear now how much attention consumers pay to it. Company should have a larger study conducted. CSR is a hot topic now and the giant manufacturer like Oscar Wiener should consider it. Focus groups are recommended as the company will be able to learn what customers really think about its packaging.
References
Consumer Data and Infographics. (2016). [Graph illustration Oscar Mayer Dashboard, 2016] InfoScout. Retrieved from http://infoscout.co/brand/oscar_mayer/
Company Overview of Oscar Mayer Foods Corporation. (2016, Apr, 30). Bloomberg. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=1440137
Waxman O.B. (2015, Sept. 16). There Is Now a Dating App For Bacon Lovers. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/4035044/oscar-mayer-bacon-dating-app-sizzl/
