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GCSE BUSINESS STUDIESS COURSEWORK
Aims and objectives Objective My objective is to conduct research into the company Walkers, which specialize in crisps. This is to enable myself to discover how the firm can improve their product and broaden the range of customers that buy walkers therefore increasing there income.
Aims are as follows:
Background of company History Mr Henry Walker came to Leicester in the 1880’s as a butcher, his company and factory was doing great, and from there they moved to cheap side in 1912, everything was going fine until the Second World War. Meat was then rationed, and the Walkers shopped ran out of meat to sell very early on in the morning. So Mr Walker turned to the potato crisp market, as they were becoming popular with the new rationing. Everyone wanted some of Walker’s new crisps. Today, Walkers is Britain's favorite crisp and the biggest crisp manufacturer, employing over 4,000 people in 15 locations. Frito-Lay’s Walkers Crisps is the UK’s number one grocery brand and has used Lander as their brand design consultancy since 1994 across the entire brand portfolio. Walkers analyzed the evening snacking category and found that 42 percent of all snacks were being eaten after six p.m., yet crisps only accounted for 20 percent of snacks consumed. Research suggested that evening snacking was a continuing growth area and Walkers decided to make crisps part of their evening snacking portfolio. The only potato snacks currently available in this segment were Kettle Chips and Pringles. The size of walkers Today Walkers are owned by Frito-lay it is a private limited company which makes it a subsidiary of PepsiCo. 13.5million bags of crisps are sold every day in the UK and walkers snack foods are responsible for helping the 300,000 or so outlets in the UK who sell the walkers product to maintain the exceptional growth rates they have seen in this market over the last few years. The market With over a 40% share of this market, walkers have advice and help in improving the range stoked also the display and presentation of the products, the space and the location of the product in store is a valuable help to the verity of outlets they serve. On the web site it is estimated that 11million people will eat Walkers products every day General business activities of Walkers crisps A team of around 400employees have responsibility for growing sales in supermarkets, which accounts for around 50% of there total sale, as well as traditional retailers such as newsagents, independent grocers and petrol forecourts. Of equal importance are wholesalers and cash and carry outlets, who supply snack foods to independent retailers. Increasingly important are new outlets that are starting to recognize the profit opportunity that savory snacks can offer as well as traditional leisure sites. Among the many ways Walkers help retailers grow sales and enhance profit the advice range selection and display equipment. This maximizes the impact that it has upon the consumers in store and through point of sale materials supports brand promotions.
The legal structure
The legal structure is weather a business is a sole trader or a public limited company and the way in which a business conduct things legally. A lot of walker’s brands were formally branded under the name Smiths Crisps The name of this company comes from when walkers, Smiths and Tudor were three main brands of Nabisco’s UK snack division; it is also oligopoly. The UK retail trade is among the worlds most dynamic and sophisticated ensuring crisps and snacks continue to be the fastest growing products is the on going challenge for the sales force at walkers snack foods. Presently Walkers Crisps brand is being given a £20m facelift by owner PepsiCo which is a public company or an incorporated company, with three new flavors and a lower-fat, lower salt recipe. This shows that Walkers are trying to improve the healthiness of there product so that they can appeal to more of the population and try and improve there wellbeing whilst improveing the size of their company. Target market Marketing and competition Walkers operates in the crisp and snacks market. Walkers sell snacks to all age groups genders religions, and all of society that eat crisps. There are quite a few competitors for Walker’s in the crisp market including: Golden Wonder, Nik-Naks, Seabrook, Kettle, Supermarket’s own brand, Doritos, Mcoys etc.
Market segmentation There market is segmented in this is true for walkers as well they prove this in the different ways that they package there different sorts of crisps. This difference and similarities depends on a number of factors including:
The walkers company is split up in to 3 main ranges of crisps they are
Customer Targeting
Market segmentation There market is segmented in this is true for walkers as well they prove this in the different ways that they package there different sorts of crisps.
The walkers company is split up in to 3 main ranges of crisps they are · Core range · Healthier snacking · Sensations Crisps have a far more adult consumer profile than snacks The bias towards adult consumers in Foodservice means that there is a 72% vs. 28% sales split between crisps and snacks and the core range should reflect this balance
This chart shows the number of male and females who consume walkers the data is taken from the primary research we did in class (crispy analyser).As you can see walkers targets both male and female in their target market. More males then females that we asked eat walker 14% more males eat them than females. I suggest to walkers that they mainly focus on the female market a bit more to make the percentage of females that consume walkers grater they could do this by having a celebrity to indorse their product that is well known to females. Product
A product mix is the different products or services one company provides e.g. Walkers marketing mix is the regular walkers brand along with wotsits, sensations, Doritos and etc.
From this graph it is evident that most people advice Walkers to promote BOGOF type of promoting strategy, when the costumer buys one of their products and gets another one for free. This type of promoting strategy has many advantages. Firstly, it attracts the costumers to buy their product. Secondly, it makes the costumers return after a while and buy some more of their products. And lastly, it creates a very good image for Walkers crisps, which makes it more competitive comparing to the other companies. It’s very interesting, that the second most popular advice for Walkers crisps was to give out free DVDs. This method is quite, because, again, it attracts the costumers. However, this method also has a very big disadvantage, because the cost of this method might increase the costs of the Walkers Company it spends on promotion. From my own point of view, method of using coupons is more effective and I have a number of reasons for that. First of all, it doesn’t cause high costs to the company. It attracts the costumers to collect a certain number of coupons in order to win the prize, which could be anything. It is a good method of promotion, because as people as it attracts people to collect more coupons, it attracts them to buy more of their products. This might cause an increase of the popularity of Walkers crisps as well as the increase of profits. Giving people samples is also a good way of attracting the costumers, but it might be a very costly method of promotion for the company. Use of scratching cars as a method of promoting Walkers products, could also be seen very attractive, as it gives people a chance to play the lottery and probably win something. For some people, even though they haven’t won anything yet, the fact that they can win something is already attractive. Further more, these people might also like the taste of Walkers crisps and become addictive to it, because they will want to buy more and more crisps with its scratching cards , which give them an opportunity to play and win something. With scratching cards, the process becomes cheaper, because not every card gives a costumer an opportunity to win something. However, if they company advertises and says, that the number of prizes they can get is limited, this might create even more interest from the side of costumers, as they will want to be one of those lucky people who can win something. This can also be a very good method of promotion, because most people will be interested in buying Walkers crisps rather than any others, which might make Walkers more competitive on the market. Methods of competition might be very suitable and effective for Walkers crisps as it shares more than a half of the amount of snacks market. Although, Walkers has a number of very good promoting methods, which people know about, there are still some weaknesses. Due to its popularity, Walkers sometimes doesn’t advertise their products as much as the other brands do. On one hand tt is very logic to do so, because this decreases the costs of promotion but people still buy the crisps. On the other hand Walkers needs to remember that there’s still a number of people who come from the other countries or parts of England who don’t know much about Walkers crisps. This lack of advertisements might decrease the popularity of Walkers crisps in the other parts of England and throughout the world, which might have effect the profits of Walkers crisps in the future.
Because it’s not very comfortable to use pie chart to show the percentage of people who like Walkers, I decided to plot this diagram. The diagram below shows the percentage of people who like Walkers and other brand crisps.
The product life cycle is the development and launch of a company and over time how it has matured and grown, also it is the saturation of a company or the decline and withdrawal.
Walker’s product life cycle:
As you can see in this diagram walkers brand has many different products out all in different stages of the product life cycle. Quavers, Doritos, Wotsits and salt and shake all are in the maturity stage because there now at the height of there popularity, having been out for a bit of time and working there way up the lifecycle. Potato heads and cheese head are the newest things that have just been establish as a member of the walkers family so they are in the maturity stage of there life. Sensations have been out for a while but are still growing in popularity at the moment so there in the growth stage of there life. Monster munch, French fries and frazzles have been out for ages and so there popularity id slowly decreasing because they are getting pushed down by either other competitors or the newest product released by walkers. This table shows use basically that walkers has a large range of different product that it produces and new product are being brought out regularly with existing one that are still reasonably popular.
As you can see walkers has 58% of the market share compared with the other brands on the market. KP follow close second behind walkers with a percentage of 22.2% share in the crisp industry. I recommend that walkers if walkers wanted to up there percentage even more they could lower there prices even more than they have already or they could bring out more product and flavours than any other brand.
Walkers packaging The function of walkers packaging is to attract people to buy it and to also keep the crisps secure and as UN crushed as they can Here is an example of a package that walker’s crisps are contained.
We carried out a analysis with walkers and also other well known brands e.g. Pringles and Seabrooke The results were that walkers packaging was effective in keeping the crisps in and kept the weather conditions out well such as rain but there were a lot of the crisps broken inside. Also the package effectively opens with not much effort required. Other brands that wee looked at were Seabrooke and Pringles theses product were better and worse in different way for example Pringles containers were very good at keeping each crisp in shape with only maybe the last one broken but its hard to get the bottom crisps out because it takes effort and also it s non weather resistant because its made out of cardboard so it would not be good for DoE for example. Seabrooke uses the shape style of packaging for there crisps but there are a lot less broken than walkers because of the ridged design and stiffness of the crisp and all the packaging designs are the same effectiveness I thought this maybe an indication to walkers that maybe there packaging is not the most effective way of maintaining the crisps. I would recommend to walkers that they try to improve there packaging by making a packet which means there are a lot less of the content broken.
Price The different method of pricing that can be used to put a price on a product is the following:
Walkers could use the method of Competitor pricing so that walkers stays on top of the market. Also it may use promotional pricing so that if roe example they bring out a new flavour they don’t want all the other products still out there, they want as many people as they can to buy the new flavour. Walkers charges about 35p for one bag of walkers crisps. A competitor of there’s nick naks which charge around 30p but the content inside the nick naks packets is smaller than the amount in walkers.
Supply and demand for walkers looks a lot like this:
If suppliers cost went down for some reason or an entry of a new supplier came then this would lead to a shift in supply.
The higher the price (usually) the lower the quantity demanded and the higher the price is the higher the quantity supplied
In conclusion I think that walkers should keep the same pricing strategy until the products that they make start to have a dramatic decline in sales. I would recommend that walkers just keep the same pricing strategies until the popularity of the crisps go down.
Promotion
Walkers use Advertising on TV and on billboards. They also do sponsorship the walker’s stadium for Lester city football Club Sales promotion is also used as another method that of promotion by giving free sample at supermarkets when they get new flavours out and also putting prizes in there packets e.g. pogs and money. Walkers dose not do public relations as a promotional method.
Advertising
This is a chart that shows how many people new that Gary lingerers the celebrity endorser for walkers Even though there is a large number of people who knew that Gary was there spokes person (61%) but of the 39% that don’t they could be losing customer. I suggest that they could use a more well known person to promote their crisps for example David beckan that way more people will know about their crisp and be more inclined to buy them. Strengths of Walker’s promotional material:
Weaknesses of Walker’s promotional material:
I recommend to walkers that they continue with there methods of promotion and to maybe try and target a different group of people e.g. use a more famous celebrity to indorse there product this will make people want to watch and see the different adverts that walkers produce. But they should only do this if they can afford it with no threat of their profit going down.
Place Walkers distribute there crisps in supermarkets using free sample and the purchasable packets also. They are also sold in smaller corner shops and magazine stands as single packets. This is good because it means that walker’s product is being sold in a number of different types of areas.
FMCG stands for Fast Moving Consumer Goods and the types of outlets their products are sold in are retail outlets such as businesses which sell food and clothing.
Walkers were available in all outlets this shows that walkers are well known and how a large amount of their products sold. Their competitors such as Pringles don’t sell their product in all outlets so this means a greater number of people buy walkers rather than Pringles which is a benefit for walkers.
People that I have asked using primary research the majority of them said they buy walkers mostly from super markets the second most places in which people buy walkers is from newsagents. This research has been done buy asking all age groups and distributed equally between male and female members of the community. (See appendix)
Strengths of walker’s distribution strategy The fact that their product is sold in all different types of places and shops is a strength because it mean that more people will buy there product and will be more aware of it, even if they weren’t planning on buying any crisps, the fact that there in most store means that more people will see them and think um I would like to buy some crisps. And also the fact that walker’s crisp has remained so long as a popular crisp must mean there right in what there doing in the way it distributes its product. Another strength that walkers has is that there are so many competitor that are in the crisp business so that mean that sometimes a company may slip behind on what’s the newest thing out there, but walkers has I think manages to maintain a reputation as one of the best crisp company’s.
Weaknesses of walker’s distribution strategy Walker’s doesn’t have very many weaknesses because the walker’s brand and distribution is very good with, I don’t think any faults.
Recommendations I think that walkers has done a good job to hit every marketing place available but I think that one thing walkers could do is to higher people to hand out free samples of there newest crisp to the public in grocery store because even if the person was not intending to buy any if they tried them then they might have second thoughts and think “yum there good I think I might buy some more”. This way walker’s will gain more customers in grocery store.
Date: 2015-01-12; view: 2036
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Evaluate the present marketing mix for walker’s crisps and make recommendations for the development of the marketing mix in the future
Walkers Wotsits are a firm favourite with the kids. There bold designs and bright colours appeal to kids because it s what their drawn to almost. Walkers target children a lot because most of their market is based around children and them consuming the walker’s product.
Sensations, another brand within walkers is known as the posh crisp implying that this particular crisp is sophisticated and is mainly targeted at a more mature consumer maybe aged around 20+. The packaging it is presented in is a very simple yet classy look not a bold and out standing as wotsits but more plainly presented.
This chart shows the popularity of all the different flavours of walkers that people eat of the people we survey in the crispy analyser. You can see that by quite a large percentage that salt and vinegar is the most popular flavour out of all of them closely second is cheese and onion. I recommend that walkers eater focus on improving the promotion of the most unpopular flavours for example roast chicken at 3% or they could discontinue the unpopular flavours and focus on selling more of the most popular flavours by for example raising to price of them so that they can get more profit, but this could affect the popularity of them and people would buy less of those flavours.
The salty snack category has grown by 14% since 2000, with Walkers contribution at +127%
This is the kind of packaging that I would recommend walker manufacture so that it keeps the crisps in better condition and also there can be 2 different flavours in the packet at once. When the consumer opens the packet it can be closed and then opened again with would mean that consumers can eat them later. The down side to this design would be the heaviness and the inconvenience of the shape, and I would also suggest that the box not be made of metal it be made of another material which is less heavy and cheaper.
If the popularity of the product increased this would lead to the increase of promotion and an increase the number of potential customers. All this would lead to a shift in demand.
Promotion is used to get the companies product or service known to the public the different methods of promotion are:
TV adverts- On the adverts that walkers produce they use lively music and brightly coloured images to keep the people watching it interested in what their selling. Also having an appearance of Gary linger in their adverts help to make budding footballers or fans of his watch more attentively. Humour is also used affectively in there adverts to keep the tone of the commercial upbeat and interesting.
