Case Study
The Snickers candy bar has been the number one selling candy bar on the market for the past ten years. Mars Corporation has been enjoying this success and has had to do very little in the way of promoting the candy bar; Snickersjust seems to sell itself. Thepast two years, however, Hershey Corp., with their new types of Chocolate bars, has been cutting into the Mars lead in the market. Up until two years agoMars has had a 26% share of the candy bar market. However, since then their share has been reduced to 21%. While this has been going on, Hershey’s market share has been rising from 14% to 19%. Coupled with the Kraft Corporation and their marketing power just buying the huge British based Cadbury company obviously has Mars worried and looking for a way to reclaim their large share of the candy bar market.
The marketing department at Snickershas determined that the company should develop new candy bars to compete with the new emphasis the different types of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Hershey Corporation just seems to keep coming up with new types of Reese’s peanut butter cups and they all are selling well. Mars feelswith this new peanut butter candy bar that they would be able to reclaim their market share and even cut into Hershey’s share. At this same time, the marketing department has learned that their other main competitor, Nestle Foods,is also introducing a new chocolatecaramel bar called the Peanut Butter Energy Bar. Nestle is introducing this bar in the New England Hannaford Stores before the summer season.
Marsmanagement is not sure which path to take. Should they put renewed effort into marketing their mainstay, the Snickers Bar, or should they initiate a new product such as the Snickers Peanut Butter Bar with a very large and expensive ad campaign? They need to make this decision soon as they would like to beat Nestlé’s introduction of their newPeanut Butter Energy bar if they decide to go ahead with the national launching of their own new type of chocolate/PB bar.
The Mars Corp.has asked the Middlebury Union High School Sales and Marketing Class to do a market research project on the viability and market potential of their new candy bar. We need to find out if teenagers (the number one buyers of candy bars) like their new product and if they would buy the newSnickers Peanut Butter bar over the new Reese’s/Hershey bars and the new Nestle energy bar.
We need to come up with a survey and/or focus group that can be given to the local students in order to give the Mars companygood and accurate results. Along with these results we will need to give them our recommendations.