Case Analysis: Sealed Air

Sealed Air corporation’s (SAC) Freelance R&D practise was in line with the strategy of the company. Their primary goal was in innovation and diversification of their offerings. Hickey, CEO of SAC realised in his earlier days that SAC had promising opportunities outside the packaging market. And on top of it he realised that with the booming food industry there was a greater oppurtunity for SAC to come up with a product which will help the food processing industry in identifying and tracking the origin of meat. This would inturn increase the operational efficiency in the event there is a food recall. SAC innovated this product called Video tracking and Identification (VTID). Though the product was a success SAC had a difficulty in marketing it as a Tracking and identification product in the food processing industry. SAC also failed to penetrate into the market which monitored safety of workers. Hence SAC decided to move into food service industry especially in the QSR(Quick Serve restaurant) space. 1. Should Sealed Air still try to market VTID in the QSR space? Which fast food chain should it go after? What value proposition would be most compelling to highlight? In the QSR Segment, SAC can position itself around food safety, theft detection and waste reduction. Johnson’s strategy to position itself around food safety was to enter the market which was quite a serious concern amongst government organizations . As per Exhibit 7, the cause of Shigella outbreak was due to a person to person transfer of fecal matter. This target market has a greater potential to obtain government support as this kind of outbreaks could lead to pandemics. In terms of value proposition, the highest will be food safety. As indicated in the case, VTID is capable of detecting the hygenic standards followed by servers of QSR’s. This ability to detect and report non compliance of food standards served by restaurants should be used to position its product as a Food