CASE 8: General Mills (B)

PRODUCT AND BRAND MANAGEMENT

Faculty: Suresh Paul Anthony

Group 10:

Abhijeet Mohandas – 1701061

Deepak Kumar – 1701014
Gaurab Mandal – 1701019
Pavani Kavala – 1701037
Subramanya Nayak – 1701166
Becker’s Choice was “mini-market” test. It doesn’t make much sense to use “mini-market” test as the
U.S yogurt market was highly regional, it’s not the best method to gauge and generalize Yoplait one
region’s performance/requirements to national requirements.
BASES test makes more sense as the test market is more diverse and has taken into consideration cities
from all 4 regions.
It also takes into account effects of variations in key market variables on sales figures. Customers
feedback from various regions was considered, this is more insightful as customer preference may vary
from region to region.
BASES test also gives the liberty to evaluate and experiment on other market and consumer parameters
like media weight, distribution build, size of the target market.
Additionally, it costs lesser compared to “mini-market” and also requires much lesser time. None of the
choices are obvious choice as both choice have inherent cons and both of them don’t take into
consideration all market variables

Mini-Market Results and Becker’s Learnings:

 Introducing Custard-style will result in capturing market share some of the major
competitors like Dannon.
 Launching custard-style will also help in increasing the sales of original-style as well.
 Overall share of Yoplait in market increases
 The no of units of custard-style brought by the repeaters per buying session was same
as the number of original-style units and Dannon but more than no of Old Home and
Gaymont
 Among custard style buyers, 70-80% of purchase were custard style which similar to
Original-style buyers and Dannon buyers, proving that it was not merely a secondary
brand among its consumers.
 Customers reason for repeating purchase of the brand (Custard-style) was natural fruit
flavour, firm-thick structure, smooth creamy texture and among the rejectors the
frequent reasons for rejection was don’t like custard, no chunk of fruits, too thick etc.
 In a nutshell, they expected doubling of total Yoplait sales volume by introducing
custard-style to the market.
The specific issues that mini-market results could relate to were:
 How will addition of Custard-style affect overall market share of Yoplait?
 Will addition of Custard-style lead to cannibalization of original-style?
 How much market share can custard-style alone Generate?
 Consumer Dynamics
 The pros and cons of custard style based on customer responses
 Estimating national volumes of Custard-style Yoplait.

BASES Test: BASES is the Stimulated Test Marketing tools, which is used for the evaluation of New
Product Ideas, Line extensions, and relaunches. It develops a Concept Potential Score summarizing the
results and indicates whether the concept goes into product development or not based on
 Value Rating
 Purchase Intent
 Purchase Frequency
 Purchase Volume

General Mills has implemented BASES test know the national and regional estimates of Custard-Style’s
volume potential and its impact on Original-Style’s volume since the US market as too localized.
BASES has stimulated three national spending plans : high (Plan A), medium (Plan B), low (Plan C).
Since the Custard-Style’s performance has varied by region, it is better to have regional spending plan
to effectively use the resources. Also from the spending plans we can see that the consumers preference
was highly regional in this case. The most frequently stated reasons which were considered for the
dislikes of the product also vary across regions. It can be interpreted from the spending plan that where
we need a PULL strategy, we should go for higher media spending plan to increase our market share.
On contrary, the market which was dominated by the own brand can accommodate higher level
spending on promotions. In this way, we are optimizing the marketing expenses of the product by
spending the money in the appropriate regions.

Regarding launching of the product, we feel that Custard-Style yogurt must be first launched in East
region because:
 According to the Potential Steal of BASES model, Custard Style steals staggering 22% of
the market dominance of Danon in the East region. This capturing of the market by the
product will be very help in reinforcing the footholds of the brand in the region
 There was highest purchase intent after use in east region. Also in this, relatively large
percentage of customers found the product better than expected.
 Custard-Style’s price/value rating is high in this region.

Regarding the pricing decision, below points needs to be considered:

 Custard Style should be positioned as Yoplait premium product and hence should be priced
higher.
 Also it has to be noted that in the BASES test before trial, price was the secondary option
for consumers for disliking the product and its relevance has decreased after the use of the
product. So we can interpret this market as less price sensitive and utilize this opportunity
for maximizing profits.

Regarding Media/Promotion Spending:

 East Region: In this region, Market share of Yoplait is weak and highly dominated by
Dannon. Hence we can go for Plan A media/Plan B where it makes necessary to spend on
media advertising to gain market share. Also under this plan, Year 2 consumer volume is
very high.
 West region: As the market is dominated by Yoplait, more can be spent in Promotions to
steal away Dannon Yogurt users. Hence they can go for Plan B Media/ Plan A promotion.