Munchee – A Critical Review

1. Introduction

In Marketing Management, branding, segmentation and targeting, positioning, and other

marketing strategies play unique but very critical roles. The interconnection of these key
elements makes role of a brand in the contemporary market a success or a failure. This report
has being prepared on the theme “Are they doing right?” to survey about a brand that can be
found in the Sri Lankan market and look into those factors with regard to that brand. The
report also shall provide a brief insight to the terms and bring out the examples from the
selected brand. Therefore the best biscuit brand in Sri Lanka “Munchee biscuits” has been
selected for the survey. Munchee biscuits are a collection of biscuit products under the
company named CBL or Ceylon Biscuits Limited. CBL markets its prime product –
biscuits, under the brand name Munchee & is the dominant market leader, of the biscuit
industry in Sri Lanka, with a market share in excess of 50%.

2. Product Line

Product line is a marketing strategy of offering several related products for sale. A product
line can comprise of related products of various sizes, types, colors, qualities or prices. There
are many products under the brand name of Munchee. The main product lines are

Munchee Sweet Biscuits

o Hawain Cookies - Munchee's crusty; golden-rectangles with the irresistible
toasted-coconut taste are baked using a generous helping of local coconuts.
o Munchee Nice - soft and light with scalloped edges.
o Tikiri Marie - Lightly sweetened and baked & milky.
o Ginger - Baked using 100% natural local ginger.
o Milk Short Cake - A soft buttermilk exterior, rich milky taste.
o Gem - baked with a rich helping of milk and butter and are mini lip-smacking
delights
o Chocolate Marie - Soft, smooth and chocolaty brown.
 Munchee Cream biscuits
o Lemon Puff – lemon flavored cream sandwiched between two biscuits.
o Chocolate Cream - Baked with rich thick chocolate.
o Chocolate Puff - covered with drops of sugar are crispy and creamy.
o Milk Cream - thick milk-cream soft centered munchies.
 Munchee Savoury Biscuits
o Cheese Buttons - small round and full of a sprinkling of natural cheese.
o Snack Cracker - Baked until the enticing crusty surfaces turn golden-yellow.
o Savoury Nuts - Baked in the shape of cashew nuts.
o Onion Biscuits - deliciously aromatic and promise a distinct flavor.
 Munchee Cracker Biscuits
 o Super Cream Cracker - Layers of rich creamy flavourful flaky textures pressed
together.
o Kurakkan Crackers - light and smooth cracker offering a one-of-a-kind flavor.
 Munchee Tiffin
o Tiffin Original - baked with a slightly salty and slightly sweet flavor.
o Tiffin Onion - unique savoury onion flavor.
 Munchee Cookies
o Cookie Dane Assorted - Baked with sugar, milk, chocolate chips, thick milk
chocolate, and local vanilla essence.
o Rice Raisin - rice and the fruity zing of raisins.
 Wafers
o Munchee wafers - Three thin and crisp wafer biscuits, two layers of cream.
 Gift Packs
o Tea Time Assortment - include – Hawaian Cookies, Nice Biscuits, Chocolate
Squares, Daintees, Lincoln Biscuits and Chocolate Rounds.
o Gift Assortment - include – Hawaian Cookies, Nice Biscuits, Chocolate
Rounds, Lincoln Biscuits and Flat Finger Biscuits.

3. Segmentation & Targeting

When concerning Munchee brand, as it is rather new product when comparing to Maliban, it
uses the technological segmentation on developing products. They do not depend in the
traditional product lines; instead they introduce various new tastes into the consumers. For
example, the introduction of Tiffin, savoury nuts, onion biscuits made the taste of biscuits
into a novel way. When considering the geographical segmenting, Munchee is successfully
covered almost all the country with its products & also all the products of the Munchee are
not specific user oriented instead they can be used by anybody. Which means the
demographic segmentation is a wide band covering all the ages.
When it comes to targeting the market, munchee biscuit is targeting the general public. The
targeted consumers are more generally the people who are dealing with the market usually.
Because Munchee is a consuming product which is being used in day today life very often,
the priority is given for general public. Of course they are targeting the youth by introducing
various novel products to keep the popularity in the top.

1. Positioning Strategy

Positioning is the process which is used to build an image and self-identity in the minds of
the target market by the marketers of an organization. In this process, the marketers should
identify the segment of market withwhich the product or band is competed. In this case,
Munchee launces several brands which are relevant to various group of customers. For an
instance, Munchi Chocolate biscuits products are mainly targeted for the children and youth.
As well as their competitors also launched a product that has similar kind features with
Munchee Chocolate biscuits also. In this scenario, Munchee has to do a vital process to
establish their image on the targeted group of customers. Then the organization has to collect
information about the perceptions of product and its attributes by a sample of customers.
After organization has to evaluate how their advertisements and promotions are effective to
customers for positioning. Munchee launched several big advertising campaigns for
introducing new products (Tifin, Milk short cake biscuits) and promoting the existing
products (Chocolate, Savoury biscuits). Because of that, they have to identify the
effectiveness of these customers. The concept of Value proposition describes that what the
benefits that customers get by consuming that particular product. It simply means that why
consumer should by that specific product and what additional services and better solving
problems mechanisms provided than other similar product offerings are. Munchee facilitates
customers by offering several services with better quality than its competitors. They mainly
focus on the best quality of their products with doing a number of quality testing and
experiments. They use the best quality corn flavor, manufactured by Prima (Trincomalee) to
make the mixer of the biscuits. As well as they use the ingredients and chemicals approved
by the government in a proper methodical manner. Munchee drives the minds of customer to
consume their products by carving the best quality of their product than the competitors.
Positioning statement is some of a description of the target audience to whom brand is
directed and it should make a clear image on the customers’ mind about how the marketers
needs to customers to view the brand. It is necessary that all the significant marketing
decisions should be supported by the positioning statement without any inconsistencies. The
positioning statement should describe that the target audience, the competitors, benefits than
other offerings and reason to believe (proof that this products give what it promises. “A
crowning success” is the Munchee Positioning statement.

2. Marketing mix strategy

Marketing mix strategy, coined by Neil H. Borden in the late 1940’s means that combination
of the key elements which affect to marketing process in a correct manner. It consists with 4
P’s and 7 P’s concepts. In 4 P’s concept, first P is to refer the product elements like quality,
brand, styling, safety, packaging and warranty etc. As mentioned above, Munchee has lots of
concern about the quality and safety of their food stuffs. They use attractivepackaging which
has ability to keep the food stuff for a long time period. In Price, decision, they focus on
several pricing strategies, retail price, discounts, wholesale price and bundling etc. One of
main fact is that nearly all the popular Munchee biscuits products have the same price level as
their competitors. They do not market to the supreme class of the society but the middle and
lower classes. So they remain their prices with competitors and increase the quality of the
products. Munchee has several agencies which are attached to their distribution centers
located in Anuradapura and Kurunagala like cities. The product stores which are
manufactured in Pannipitiya and Ranala, distribute to these centers which are having the
facility to store large number of product. In addition to that, Munchee exports their products
to other countries like Australia and Guyana. So they should have several transportation
channels like shipping and cargo services. Munchee has several promotional campaigns like
advertisements, sales promotions, public relations and publicity etc. They use visual and print
Medias to advertise their products. As well as they do some welfare services like granting
scholarships, education equipment’s to students and donating to the religious centers and
schools to improve the good will of their company/brand. For marketing services, the 7 P’s
concept which has three additional features than 4 P’s is used. CBL uses a proper recruiting
and training mechanism for their staff. After recruiting, company gives 2 week training to
them inside the factory before working. They do lots of relaxing programs like trips, musical
shows and seminars for the staff. That is how they preserve the Peopleof 7P’s. The sixth P,
process is used by Munchee by providing a very efficient delivering service to every city in
Sri Lanka and other countries with the usage of their transport agencies. As the physical
evidence, they maintain their factories and distribution centers which have lots of machinery
cleanly and friendliness manner for employees.

3. Strategies for Competition

The main strategy of Munchee for the competition is providing the best quality products to
customer with the market price level as much as possible.Introducing new products and re-
introducing the existing products in distinct manner is also one of the strategies they used. By
using those strategies, Munchee improves their market share by acquiring 57% of the biscuits
market in Sri Lanka.