Kingsford

Background and Introduction:

We learned from the case study that in 2000 two new brand managers, Marcilie Smith Boyle and Allison Warren were assigned to the Kingsford Charcoal brand. They arrived at a time when the forecast for summer sales was lower than expectations. The summer of 2000 was the first time in several years that there was not growth in the charcoal category. Smith Boyle and Warren needed to figure out what caused this dip in sales and make recommendations to correct it. Their initial ideas were to consider changes in Kingsford’s pricing, advertising, promotion, and capacity.

Our written critique analysis will discuss whether or not they made these changes. If they did, what did they do and were the specific changes successful? We will also examine where Kingsford is at today.

Based upon Internet research, as a whole it appears that Kingsford did make changes and that they were successful. The parent company for Kingsford has reported a steady increase in revenues since the time of the case study. Before Smith Boyle and Warren implemented their ideas, revenues were dropping and were at $4.1 billion in 2000. Soon after Kingsford implemented new marketing directives which resulted in a steady growth of revenue: 2004 - $4.3 billion, 2005 – $4.4 billion, 2006 – $4.6 billion, and 2008 – $5.3 billion.

Kingsford did make changes to the pricing of the charcoal since the case study. In fact, they also decreased the amount of charcoal in two of their standard bag sizes by 1 pound; meaning that consumers were now paying more for less charcoal. In the case study a 10-pound bag of regular charcoal was $4.25 and a 20-pound bag was $6.78. Today, a 9-pound bag of regular charcoal is $4.99 and an 18-pound bag is $7.99. (Clorox Website, 2008) Despite this increase, Kingsford continues to be the leading charcoal provider.

Another change that Kingsford has made since the case study is expanding their product line,...