Saxonville Sausage Company Case Summary
SAXONVILLE SAUSAGE COMPANY
CASE SUMMARY
Saxonville sausage, a privately held company has been doing business for 70 years. In 2005, the company had revenues of approximately $1.5 billion from a variety of its fresh pork sausages. The company is producing three main types of products namely: bratwurst, breakfast sausage and an Italian sausage Vivio. The main source of revenue for the company is bratwurst (70%) followed by breakfast sausage (20%). But since 2004, the company is experiencing problems: bratwurst and breakfast sausage has been facing a 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 of the industry. The major reason for the decline of the company’s two main products was that the trend of eating sausages was changing; people started to eat sausages on more special occasion (weekends) and preferred to eat sausages at their homes.
But the product line which is still experiencing growth is Vivio (the Italian sausage), available in 16% of the supermarkets only. The flat sales which the company is experiencing influenced it to try and expand the market they were offering their Italian Sausage products to. The company was unsure of the way they were positioning their product and before launching a new marketing strategy to a possibly new market they needed to do some very essential research and analysis of consumers. For this purpose the company hired Ann Banks to thoroughly evaluate the “Italian Opportunity” and to develop a national product under the same brand (Vivio) or develop a new one.
The research methodology was determined by Ann Banks. The company had no idea who their target customer was and the research methodology was chosen to learn this. Ann knew that to back up her research and convince the management that her research is valid, she needed quantitative data. Ann needed to find the target customers and to link
CASE SUMMARY
Saxonville sausage, a privately held company has been doing business for 70 years. In 2005, the company had revenues of approximately $1.5 billion from a variety of its fresh pork sausages. The company is producing three main types of products namely: bratwurst, breakfast sausage and an Italian sausage Vivio. The main source of revenue for the company is bratwurst (70%) followed by breakfast sausage (20%). But since 2004, the company is experiencing problems: bratwurst and breakfast sausage has been facing a 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 of the industry. The major reason for the decline of the company’s two main products was that the trend of eating sausages was changing; people started to eat sausages on more special occasion (weekends) and preferred to eat sausages at their homes.
But the product line which is still experiencing growth is Vivio (the Italian sausage), available in 16% of the supermarkets only. The flat sales which the company is experiencing influenced it to try and expand the market they were offering their Italian Sausage products to. The company was unsure of the way they were positioning their product and before launching a new marketing strategy to a possibly new market they needed to do some very essential research and analysis of consumers. For this purpose the company hired Ann Banks to thoroughly evaluate the “Italian Opportunity” and to develop a national product under the same brand (Vivio) or develop a new one.
The research methodology was determined by Ann Banks. The company had no idea who their target customer was and the research methodology was chosen to learn this. Ann knew that to back up her research and convince the management that her research is valid, she needed quantitative data. Ann needed to find the target customers and to link