Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Marketing Show Circuit Drozen Dog Dinner Show Circuit Drozen Dog Dinner Tyler Pet Foods currently sells a frozen dog food product in a few stores in the southwestern U.S. This dog food is considerably better quality than the major companies’ offerings. Because it was created as a food for dog breeders, it is made to very high standards. The food is made from uncooked meat and is frozen to preserve freshness. The product is successful in its current market because of the demanding nature of its customers despite being more costly than mass market pet food. The product is known to give dogs a smoother, glossy coat. In the dog food market, this product is very unique. The dog food market is enormous – a $5.6 Billion dollar market. However, this is a mass market, and the receptiveness of this market to a very different type of dog food is not at all clear. It appears that most people buy their dog food rather oblivious to its real quality or who actually manufacturers, or even what it actually is. Therefore, most dog food is simple, low quality food made by faceless conglomerates. Positioning within this market will require some careful consideration of the market dynamics. The competition is a set of massive corporations with well established distribution mechanisms. These companies have a global reach and are well entrenched. Their economies of scale allow them to have low operating costs as well as low unit costs for their products. Their products are heavily advertised. Grocery stores trust them to maintain reliable demand through their large scale advertising budgets. Advertising budgets, particularily for product launches, run into the millions of dollars. Show Circuit Frozen Dog Dinner is a new product, at least to the consumer market. It is new on several fronts. Tyler pet foods as a manufacturer is unknown to the consumer market, especially in the northeast. The product is new in that it is made from fresh meat product and premium grain products and is uncooked. And finally, a frozen pet food is completely new to the consumer market. Tyler Pet Foods is very experienced in the professional dog breeder market. It also has developed an obviously successful product with regard to the sales to the professional market in that the breeders trust it to keep their dogs healthy. The management of Tyler Pet Foods has approved $300,000 to $500,000 to launch Show Circuit in the Boston Area. No other information has been given except that this will stretch the resources of the firm. It is reasonable to assume that the success or failure of this product launch will have such serious implications for the company that it will make or break Tyler Pet Foods. Of course success for the product will launch Tyler to another level as a consumer pet food supplier (with it’s associated competitive risks) but failure could well kill the company financially. It is critical to use this marketing budget very carefully. Currently, Tyler Pet Foods is selling to kennels via selected pet stores. Their sales channel has been established without advertising and is based on a generally professional market of breeders and, it would seem, perhaps some ‘mass market’ people who have figured out what the product is and its quality. There are no sales to supermarkets as of yet. The markets huge size is both a blessing and a curse. Of course the very large market represents a large opportunity in terms of pure scale, and it would appear that there is no immediate competition, but the market size presents all kinds of new challenges that TPF has not had to deal with. Scaling production to a mass market while maintaining high quality presents new challenges to TPF. Customers in the mass market are sensitive to different things that TPF has little to no experience with: mass consumer packaging, which would have to be very different in style to be appealing and public relations, which have to be more nimble to deal with emergencies. (For example, when Intel went from a specialist to a publicly visible firm they had to learn very fast just how much it was important to react appropriately to negative consumer sentiment when it was revealed that they had a defective product with their first Pentium class microprocessor). The competition for the mass market is much more aggressive than anything that TPF is likely to have had to deal with so far. Moreover, they are likely to respond much more quickly to a new entrant than TPF may be anticipating. Just as Coca-Cola responded quickly to the success of specialist water and juice entrants by introducing a very successful line of Minute Maid juices and Dasani water, and used their powerful and established distribution network, the incumbent dog food producers may be able to mimic the Tyler Pet Food product, produce it more cheaply, and market it more effectively. Most ominous for TPF is that the incumbents will be able to spend large sums researching exactly what aspects of Tyler Pet Foods are popular with consumers and focus on providing a product with those aspects highlighted. Minute Maid juice, for example, is perceived as being good quality when in fact it’s really ordinary and even low quality and Dasani water is hardly imported from France, so it has a better profit margin, and is well marketed and distributed, so sales are strong. The newness of TPF’s product Show Circuit Frozen Dog Dinner is a strategic advantage over the competition. TPF will have certain first mover advantage if, indeed, there is a mass market for it. Moreover, the product has the advantage of being well field tested through years of real-life experience with professional breeders. On the other hand, it is possible that the needs of the mass market are so different that the experience that TPF has could even be a liability, leading management down the wrong course of action. It is not clear that TPF has any understanding of what aspects of the product are popular with the consumer market, even though they are already likely selling it to some consumers in the southwestern US. Though it is not discussed in the case, it is possible that TPF has developed some proprietary technology around the production of their dog food that may be leverageable to the mass market. Indeed, TPF is free from constraints of union or distribution relationships, at least in the northeast, thus has an opportunity to try some business practices in either, like outsourcing the manufacturing and/or the distribution, an increasingly popular technique to save costs and thus would allow TPF to focus on core strengths, like product development, marketing and public relations. The $300,000 to $500,000 marketing budget is a tiny budget by the standards of large pet food companies. Although this may be enough to pay for the advertising needs of the launch for the Boston area, the small launch area will mean that the advertisements produced (particularly the television spots) will necessarily have smaller budgets than those made by the big companies, particularly very slick national advertising campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, there is currently no money allocated to market research. The budget may not be too small, but to succeed the launch will have to be more carefully strategized. This issue will be more thoroughly examined in “Alternative Courses of Action”, below. Although the current marketing plan has a well specified market assessment and advertising plan, there is no mention of what approach to take with respect to distribution. Careful analysis of methods to get the product and development of a sales organization is crucial to a successful product introduction. It is crucial for TPF to invest in a market research study, and some of the launch budget should be used for this purpose. In order for the study to be successful, it should have an assessment of market segments with back up data, some interviews with existing consumers of the product (not professionals) Drawbacks: This will take time and be a sunk cost even if the research results are very negative. Based on the results of the further research (above) a creative firm experienced in packaging and branding of consumer goods should be hired to re-brand the for the northeastern consumer market. It’s not certain, but very likely that the current branding is more suitable for a professional market via specialty stores, and suffers from regional myopia. (messaging culturally bound to the region it was developed in, in this case the southwest). As a concept, Conberra Marketing Consulting has created the brand “Tyler Pet Foods DOGourmet, Premium Pet Food”. The creative form may come up with something completely different, however. Important elements for the brand would be 1) Notions of Premium quality product 2) Use of the Tyler Pet Foods name to establish it as a name 3) Professional quality product (reference to the dog show quality of this product would have to be dependent on the results of the market research) Drawbacks: There will be a schism with the current brand that is successful; there is the possibility of market confusion around the two brands, despite geographic separation. Later successes and expansion of the consumer product could exacerbate this problem. The fact that this dog food is frozen means that in an ‘ordinary’ scenario such as that presented by Market Ventures Unlimited, a large scale education of the market would have to be undertaken via the mass media. It is the position of this report that such an endeavor would be an inefficient use of precious capital. Moreover, shelf space in the freezers of most supermarkets is at a high premium. One way around both these problems would be to offer to install a freezer right in the grocery store. An example is shown at right. The placement in the store would make it possible to put their product right in or near the pet food section, perhaps at the aisle end-cap, where it would receive more attention. Moreover, the cabinet of the freezer is essentially an in-store billboard. Drawbacks: There will be logistical issues in branding and distributing the freezers, an ongoing cost to maintaining them that will have to be built into operating costs. Stores may resist the introduction of freezers in their stores. Because the product is new and it’s benefits are deep and real, the consumer decision process will have to be a reasoned one. One way to convey a lot of information is by attaching a holder to the freezer with information booklets that outline the advantages of DOGourmet food and have more complete medical evidence of it’s benefits and customer testimonials. It could even have information on dog shows. The booklets could have coupons to incentivitize the consumer into that difficult first purchase. The booklet paradigm can also be a way to stay in touch with the consumer about product developments and other information, and be a way of soliciting customer feedback via a business reply mail surveys. Drawbacks: There will be ongoing costs to publishing and distributing the booklets; store managers may resent the clutter in the store. Some marketing budget should be spent on a program to solicit endorsements from successful dog breeders and show people who know the product well and would be willing to endorse the product. With careful negotiation, these endorsements could be inexpensive as the relationships are likely already in place. Moreover, freezers could be installed at dog shows, hopefully capturing the attention. TPF has the opportunity to be “The Name” in dogshow and breeder food food and enjoy the full benefits of in-store promos Drawbacks: Again, ongoing costs. Because breeders are independent, there is the possibility of negative sentiment from which could hurt the reputation of the product. Coupons distributed in the booklets and in newspapers will incentivize people to buy. In addition, direct mailings to dog owners in areas near the stores that have had successful installation of a freezer in the neighborhood grocery store. This would allow very specific geographic targeting. Drawbacks: Mailings are a lot slower; rapid deployment is difficult to impossible. Because there is no proof that the mass market will accept this product, this report recommends a more organic introduction of Tyler Pet Foods’ new product. We do not know if there is a non-professional market for a frozen dog food, and common sense of gut feeling is not sufficient to justify a launch and costly advertising campaign. Moreover, educating the consumer to look for their dog food in a section of the store they are not used to is risky at best and inadvisable in all cases. Moreover, a television ad campaign while the product is not completely installed in all outlets within the television market’s reach will result in potential customers being unable to find the product because it’s not in their local store. Spending the bulk of the budget on a blanket media advertising campaign is very risky. However, If we begin with rigorous market research, segment carefully, brand creatively, cohesively and powerfully, rollout in targeted areas, monitor results continuously, and stay in contact with our customers, we should enjoy a successful launch of this high quality yet unproven product into the consumer space. Almost as dangerous is the opposite problem: a successful launch will immediately attract the attention of the major producers and they will seek to eliminate TPF by predatory pricing and channel dominance. Therefore it is crucial to establish a niche that is impossible for the major labels to compete in or distribute in the same manner. Specialization around a professional image, reputation and close connection with the market are the key to a successful rollout and defensible market position. Bibliography: Word Count: 2328
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