Why: Unilever is a one of the largest consumer product companies that put its innovation as the core value of the company and introduced the Vitality mission to create a stronger focus on the needs of consumers. The SlimFast experienced a considerable decline from 2004 to 2006 after it has been acquired by Unilever. The company is expecting to have positive growth for the first time in three years during the first half of 2007 with a significant increase on marketing share and sale volume. However, the brand manager of SlimFast realized the positive growth was mainly due to the extensive adverting and promotions.
The Weight management market is fad driven and consumers tend to be fickle and want quick results as consumer switching to healthy and convenient product such as snack bars, meal replacement and so on. While both direct competitors and indirect competitor creating significant threat to SlimFast. For instance, Atkins who defines its diet as a revolutionary way to switch the body from a carbohydrate-burning metabolism to a primarily fat –burning metabolism became very popular. As a result, this caused SlimFast lost 20% of its market share alone during 2004. Also there is other indirect competitor like Weight Watcher that provides a various dieting products and services to help their customer lose and maintain weight and has already been known to the market.
The market share of SlimFast has dropped from 37% to 28% during 04-06 periods, but it is estimate to be bounced back to 32% in 2007. Meanwhile the company is also putting a significant effort into advertising and promotions which adds up to $3,185,000 which is relative huge compare to the Selling price of SlimFast product. The average of good sold as mentioned is approximately 68%