Saxonville

A. Current Situation

Saxonville Sausage Company is a company that produces three varieties of pork sausage products; bratwurst, breakfast sausages and Italian sausages. The company needs to assess the growth in the Italian sausage retail market to complement its current robust offerings of bratwursts. They also need to develop a national product in the Italian sausage category under the Vivio name or a potential new name. Their current Vivio brand has grown at an annual rate of 9% in 2004 and 15% in 2005, which is comparable to the competitive marketplace. However, their product was only available in just 16% of the nation’s largest supermarkets. They need to expand the market so the Vivio sausage is available for every customer at every supermarket and increase the customer base through comprehensive brand marketing strategies. They hired Ann Banks as the new product marketing director to tackle this.

B. “Finalists” Strategies

Saxonville Sausage Company conducted focus group sessions with 103 women that were primary purchasers and preparers of Italian sausage. These women concluded that they received great satisfaction if their family was happy after a great dinner, thereby avoiding a “dinner disaster”. They stated that because families were so busy these days, getting the whole family around a table was very difficult, but they knew that a good meal could be the magnet to accomplish this. These women wanted to do a good job as mothers and homemakers, holding themselves to higher standards. The focus group felt that they needed to trade off time and skill to make a dinner for their families. Therefore, Banks knew that she needed to focus on six different initial positioning territories for their Italian Sausage product. Of these six, we have concluded that my two “finalists” will be the Family Connection and Clever Cooking. We felt that the consumer response in favor of these versus the other options was too great to ignore. Family Connection...