Oscar Mayer: Strategic Marketing Planning
Question 1
Mc Tierman’s report on Oscar Mayer actually changed the perspective of the president. Actually, his report projected the expected fundamental changes in processed red meat market and warned Oscar Mayer that it might face some serious threats in next 3-5 years if it continued with the same strategy. By focusing on strategic decision making process model, Marcus McGraw actually started working on the “Identification of Options”. He asked his four executives to recommend the best possible options to work on. These options included: discounted pricing, branding, product innovations and some investment proposals.
Question 2
Oscar Mayer established brand name, current market share and acquisition with Louis rich actually is now their strength but in the case Oscar Mayer does not go for further product innovations and other investments; then they might lose their strength in the industry. At this stage, they are not having any diversified range of products and the market trend is now changing in a very prompt manner; which is actually resulting in their weakness now. Due to tremendous R&D work going on across the globe, people are getting extremely health conscious now. Therefore, being an established member of the industry, Oscar Mayer must come up with new healthy and trendy product line by investing more on R&D and brand awareness.
Question 3
In this situation, Mr. Eric Stanger is recommended of coming up with discounts, focus on brand growth, analysis of capacity utilization, reinstitute promotional programs and to get
enough R&D resources so that innovative and healthy products can be introduced as per the trend and the Mc Tierman’s report’s predication. Second best option can be the option presented by Jim Longstreet, who proposed the idea of introducing fourth major category that is the frozen food products; which will be ready to eat in 60 seconds and lunchables that will actually help the working moms in providing their children’s and loved ones with new as well as more hygienic lunch item range. The least viable option is presented by Jane Morely of acquiring 3 more companies, which will definitely be costly and more risky because now the market trend is changing in a fast manner. This option somehow also restricts one to be more innovative on his own.
Question 4
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 on. Focusing on the capacity utilization will in fact help Oscar Mayer to reduce the additional cost, which will result in incremental effect on profits. Coming up with promotional programs always benefits on short run success. 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...........................
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Director of marketing for Oscar Mayer faces a number of strategic options in respect of the marketing and new products, including budget decisions and bandwidth allocation. "Hide
by John A. Quelch, Dan Kotchen, Robert Drane Source: Harvard Business School 14 pages. Publication Date: January 22, 1997. Prod. #: 597051-PDF-ENG
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