Saxonville

Question 1: What is the current situation?

Saxonville Sausage is a privately held 70 year old company that in 2005 hadapproximately 1.5 billion dollars in revenue from a variety of its fresh pork sausages. 70% of these products were bratwurst, 20% were breakfast sausages, 5% were an Italian sausage namedVivio, and store brand product accounted for the remaining 5%. Industry wide, bratwurst and breakfast sausage had stagnant growth, however Saxonville, due to poor performance with breakfast sausage, had a double digit decline in revenues which resulted in being ranked 6 out of 8 in market share for the industry. However, in spite of stagnant growth by the industry theItalian sausage market had a growth of 9% in 2004 and 15% in 2005. At the time Vivio was onlyavailable in 16% of the nation’s large supermarkets. Senior management was happy with thegrowth Vivio was receiving due to the national demand increasing but did not want to risk positioning the brand and cannibalizing the sales of their other products. Some felt it was anuntapped market in a rising market so Ann Banks was hired as the new product marketingdirector to come up with a market strategy to launch a new national Italian sausage brand so thatthe company could achieve its profit objects for the coming year.

Question 2a: How was the research methodology determined?

Before starting, Banks knew that eventually she would like to have quantitative finding to back up any of the research that she had done. However, she also knew that quantitative researchis often limited in its ability to accomplish some research objectives in launching a new product.For example, to develop a useful and valid survey a deep understanding of the concepts beingmeasured must first be discovered. Banks also knew that she would need to convince senior management that her research was valid by using numbers. To overcome this dilemma she optedto initially use a qualitative approach to develop her understanding of the...