Introduction:

Oscar Mayer Company, a subsidiary of Kraft Foods, is facing decreased market share in the meat
market because of the recent shift of customer towards nutritional and convenient food products.
Although the company has acquired a white meat company Louis Rich few years back, but the sales
have again started decreasing and market researcher McTiernan suggests company to do something
before it’s too late. Company’s president McGraw has asked all his team members to come up with
proposed solution for this situation. All the four members have made recommendations that best
favour their own department. So now it’s time for McGraw to either choose one of them or combine
all four of them and come up with the strategy that is not only best for each department but for the
entire company.

Pros & Cons:

1. The very first action is to present a new item line related to healthy food and beverages. The
business should introduce a broad range of much healthier products by using its significant
research study and advancement expenditures.
2. Another alternative option to accomplish the possible development and decrease the
criticism is to get the health associated companies at a high level. Financial investment in
these types of companies would enable Oscar Mayer to introduce a large range of much
healthier products within a short time period without any need of significant research study
and advancement expenses.
3. Another alternative for Oscar Mayer is to change all its harmful items with much healthier
items. The replacement of hazardous items with healthier items would completely change
the market position of the company and would require many necessary steps to be taken.

Ques 5:

The company needs the Growth Strategy either by adding variety to the existing products to capture
more share in existing market, or by selling existing product into the new market. Company can also
grow through acquisition of small companies like Chicken Rite Inc., Turkey Time Ltd, and Carabbles
Inc. Zappetites are less likely to succeed because of various reasons:

 It requires more R and D cost.

 OM has already failed in a particular ‘frozen food channel’ that was Stuff and Burgers which
left negative impact on consumers mind.
 The other option ‘Lunchables’ is more convenient option for working women and kids, as
they are targeted through this product category.

OM have passed through the steps of growth and created a best brand image among the readymade
food industry. Having complete understanding of its past, present and future position will lead OM
to the successful market strategies. But still there is some room for improvement:

 They should upsurge the OM Brand to increase the market share and should promote LR as
flanker brand of OM. It will assist them to introduce better ideas for packaging and
positioning their product lines. It will also strengthen the distribution of their products and
will create a superior brand image.
  OM must reduce the prices because of the increasing threats from US imports of consumer
ready food products and given their product details
 OM should reduce communication gap to be covered to overcome the problems such as
failure of chicken dunks due to the wrong labelling.

The reason for selecting the last option, which was presented by Mr. Eric Stanger is that, it basically
provides an opportunity to work on different options that cover almost all the important aspects.
Discounted pricing may help in acquiring new customers and may result in bulk sales. Similarly,
working on brand growth will result in strategic success that will eventually help the Oscar Mayer to
gain more market share, later. Focusing on the capacity utilization will in fact help Oscar Mayer to
reduce the additional cost, which will result in incremental effect on profits. Spending on R&D for
Oscar Mayer is basically not an expense because for sure it will result in identifying consumer needs
and wants, which will help them to introduce the desired product line as per market demand.