Our sincere thanks to Me-ann To for authoring this paper and for her generosity in sharing this paper with future Strama classes.
P.S. Please be sure to include the Cover Page and Table of Contents (Sarap Table of Contents.doc) in your own Strama paper.
Executive Summary
This strategic management paper aims to develop a viable strategy for the Sarap packaged soups business retail business in the Philippines. The global brand ‘Sarap’ first came into the Philippine market in 1972, with packaged soup cubes as its pioneering and flagship entrant in this high-potential Asian market. Sarap is a relatively familiar brand known not just for packaged soups but for Sinigang mixes, liquid seasonings, recipe mixes, powdered flavorings, packed soups and pasta as well. To date, packaged soups is the biggest contributor in volume and value amongst the products in the Sarap portfolio. With 90% market share in a Php 2 billion market, Sarap cubes revenue in 2004 is estimated at Php1.6 billion and still managed to grow by 7% with an estimated Php1.7 billion sales in 2005.
However, the packaged soups category is experiencing flat growth and has reached its maturity at the dawn of powdered flavorings. The brand’s strategic objective is to defend the relevance of packaged soups by positioning it as ‘best for soupy dishes’ whilst establishing its presence and leadership in the powdered flavorings segment. With the use of several strategic management tools, it was identified that it is best to employ market penetration.
It was established through Project Pinoy that the market for packaged soups still has a lot of room to grow, especially in soupy dishes where only 12% of all soupy dishes is penetrated by packaged soups. By utilizing brilliant marketing, campaigns on soup can help arrest a possible decline in the packaged soups category.
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