McCain Foods Strategies

Strategies of McCain Foods
There are several marketing and distribution strategies employed by McCain Foods in order to keep themselves up with the market. Marketing strategies are the core strategies that define how the product and service reaches to the customers. McCain foods comes under the highly competitive Food and Beverages Industry for which an effective marketing mix is employed making the company successful and one of the leading company in its domain (Essays, 2018). The 4ps of the market; price, promotion, place and product, are the most effective tools to ensure the brand loyalty and customer retention. Marketing mix ensures overall effectiveness of the company’s strategies as they are the building blocks of marketing strategy
First and foremost, McCain Food’s unique competency is ‘Calories in/ Calories out’ (how-mccain-responds-to-changes-in-the-external-environment, 2019) concept which awares the consumers of the products’ healthy attributes. This makes the product highly suitable for its target audience since its audience is mostly moms who buys the company’s products for their kids. Moms are sensitive for their kids and would obviously opt for healthy food. McCain Foods have efficiently marketed its product through the tagline of ‘It’s All Good’ (how-mccain-responds-to-changes-in-the-external-environment, 2019) to imply that taste as well as the food’s ingredients are all good for the consumers. The company also ensures its quality of food through its own potato seed development. This is again, another unique selling point for the company to increase their brand loyalty. The pricing strategy of the McCain Foods is in such a way that it supports customer centric approach where any one price model is not kept in place, instead, various strategies are employed and consumers are given various perks and promotional pricing benefits to encourage them to buy the product (Essays, 2018).
The place of the marketing mix refers to the channels employed by company for positioning its products. So the point of sales of McCain Foods is the wholesaler and the retailer who channelize it in the supermarkets, making it a business-to-business organization (Essays, 2018). This way the product reaches to the consumers through these wholesalers and retailers, increasing the network of reach.
McCain promotes its products on its unique tagline and selling points i.e. ‘It’s All Good’ and transparency of the ingredients involved (Essays, 2018). The consumers are informed about the ingredients of the product so their trust level in the brand increases. Advertising campaigns are designed for children under 12 years of age, to attract them towards the product while the company uses emotional advertising (Essays, 2018) for its consumers to increase brand knowledge and brand recall. All the strategies are directed to increase the convenience and customer base using the core competencies which differentiates the company from the competitors. The target audience is kept in mind to understand and direct the strategies towards them.
Analysis of External Environment
Social, Legal, Economic, Political and Technological analysis of the company’s external environment shows that the environment is fast changing and with these strong external forces. Firstly, social forces are the ones that affect any business through new emerging trends. There has been recent trends in consumer’s changing eating habits as the rise of junk food consumption and obesity is increasing (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). People are moving towards healthy eating and prefer healthy food for their loved ones.
Another factor that affects the business externally is the legal factor. There are certain standards and values that the company needs to closely follow in order to deal with this external force. The Food Standard Agency of the government has suggested that the company put red and green lights for the higher and lower levels of the ingredients for the consumers to better understand the quality of the product, while also indicating amount of saturated fat, fat, sugar and such ingredients are present within the product (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015).
Economic factor affects the decision-making of the business, thus impacting the strategies that the company employs. Income levels is one of the main economic factor that determines the buying behavior of the consumer. Other economical factor like recession can also affect the demand of the product, so McCain has to understand the impact of these economic factors on the business operation and the demand for its product.
Politically, there are various policies, interventions and other factors that affect the businesses hugely. Tax policies, price policies and other policies that protects its citizens affects the firm’s operations and the demand. There are governmental campaigns to ensure that the citizens are consuming healthy food like awareness drives and initiatives like ‘Healthy Schools’ (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). These campaigns promotes physical and mental well-being through healthy consumption and exercising. Also, all the strategies from pricing to packaging, should comply with the governmental policies, affecting the strategies of the business. This crucial aspect cannot be neglected while making the internal decisions.
It is a highly competitive business environment since the advancement of technology and businesses are employing technology in their business operations to be cost effective and increase their productivity. Technology is one of the other important external factor that affects the businesses decision making as it dictates competitor’s behavior and the company’s success in adopting and strategizing their business around it. Technology in Foods and Beverage industry is also very important as it provides solutions for various problems, like maintaining the taste and flavor in the frozen product, increasing the nutritional content, transitioning the product from frozen to oven-heated (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). McCain has to make sure that the employment of technology is as such that it provides an easy way for the business strategies to be working.
Due to these external factors, McCain Foods have various threats and opportunities that it can use and counter in its business strategies. There are certain opportunities for the business as due to technological advancement, the use of internet and social media has increased which McCain Foods can use it to their advantage (Williamson, 2018). They could increase their online presence and increase customer engagement through it, which will enable the company to understand what is the customer’s demand and concern related to their product and the competitor’s. Due this technological advancement, certain technologies can be used to decrease the cost, making the company for cost-effective which will in turn benefit the consumers as well through the new pricing strategies. Population is also growing, providing McCain Foods with more consumers to deal with (Williamson, 2018). The inflation rate is also expected to be low in the coming years posing an opportunity for the company, while the interest rates are also low proving the company with opportunities of expansion (Williamson, 2018). Since there has been rise in education, McCain Foods can have skilled labor and employees to maximize the company’s benefit.
As there are opportunities, there are threats to the business as well. The changing consumer’s eating habits and the government drives (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015) pose a threat for the company as consumer’s can misjudge the frozen food as unhealthy food. Political uncertainties and sudden changes can heavily impact the current operations of the firm (Williamson, 2018). There has been rise in frozen foods industry (Williamson, 2018), increasing the competitors of the firm which will affect the pricing and the promotional campaigns carried out by the firm. The interest rates is also very fluctuating threatening the financial and economic decisions of the firm (Williamson, 2018). There are various threats that are present for McCain Foods in the external environment. Other than this, McCain Foods have successfully countered and responded to the external environment.
Adjustments to Current Strategies
The external factors that pose threats and opportunities for the organization causes few changes within the strategies. The strategies of the McCain Foods have successfully benefitted the firm but there can be some new changes that might help the firm in increasing their customer base and dealing with the external factors. Once of which is to enter into the e-commerce industry. Online point of sales not only increases the convenience of the customers but it will help the company to directly engage with the consumers to understand their feedback or concern. Online presence and digital marketing can help the company increase their customer engagement. This industry has been increasing and the target audience which are young moms who are busy, can be effectively targeted through the online presence since it gain saves their time and increases brand loyalty.
Effectiveness of Response to the External Environment
McCain foods have to keep a close check of what their target audience’s concerns are since McCain provides ready-made meals for their consumers to save their time. Since the concern of healthy eating has increased and trends have been changing, McCain Foods had responded to them through making their ingredients nutritional and ensuring that their food falls under the healthy consumption by pre-cooking their chips in sunflower oil to reduce saturated fats (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). They have reduced excessive salt in their products.
McCain has followed the guidelines and has been transparent with its ingredients so the consumers can have faith within the quality of the product (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). McCain also makes sure that they comply with the advertising standards given out by the government to avoid any discrepancies. There are so many legal external factors that the company has to keep a close check of, like Food Safety Law, Trade Descriptions Act etc. to ensure that the business can successfully operate in the country (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015).
To respond to the economic factors, McCain has kept consumer profiles to understand their income levels by which McCain Foods derives its strategies. McCain Foods develops the product that fits the consumer’s purchasing power and their convenience of use, to counter these external factors (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). The political factors are also responded by McCain Foods effectively through supporting the health campaigns initiated by the government. It claims that its products are potato-based and are processed and cooked in a very effective and simple manner as to ensure their consumer’s health (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). Since the government is a very powerful body, all its rules and laws are compiled in all their strategic level decisions where they derive their basic strategies.
McCain Foods has successfully employed technology within its business operations. To reduce the salt content which is highly detrimental to health, sunflower seed oil is used by extracting it from the sunflower seeds using technology (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). Also, with the use of sunflower oil, they were able to cut 70% saturated fat, making the potato based product healthier for its target audience (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). Analyzing through SLEPT, the company has been effective in countering and responding to various external factors and changes to the external environmental as external environment is vulnerable to changes which can either be opportunity for the company or a threat for it. The important part is how the company handles and responds to such changes and McCain Foods have been apparently quite successful in responding to the dynamic market.
References
(2019, September 17). Business Case Studies. Retrieved from https://businesscasestudies.co.uk/how-mccain-responds-to-changes-in-the-external-environment/#axzz2m8hClVBn
SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods. (2015, April 03). PDF Slide. Retrieved from https://pdfslide.net/documents/slept-analysis-of-mccain-foods.html
Williamson, D. (2018, December 05). McCain Foods SWOT Analysis. Eassy 48. Retrieved from https://www.essay48.com/term-paper/13961-McCain-Foods-Swot-Analysis