Development of Tango, an organic health fruit drink

Nutrition

Development of an Innovative Healthy Food Product

Abstract (or Summary)

This is a proposal for the development of an organic, pasteurized, health fruit drink for the client, Mapco. The client has presented a need for a product that would appeal to the 41% of its customers who wish a delicious, refreshing, organic health drink. This proposal shows how the health drink described fits all of the qualifications outlined by the client. Scientific research guiding development of this product revealed a natural process that utilizes all the parts of the apples and oranges, which it uses, including the fruit's skin and pulp, which are full of nutritionally valuable minerals and vitamins that other squeezed juices must leave out, normally discarded in processing. The proposal also identifies key factors in marketing this health drink and presents a bold plan for product development. The scope of the proposal includes the process involved in the production of the health food drink, and the results of research on the benefits of the all-natural process that will be used that allows the health drink to retain all the beneficial elements of whole fruit, without adding chemicals. It also includes issues that may be encountered in marketing in regard to advantages for the manufacturer and consumer.

Development of an Innovative Healthy Food Product

Tango (a temporary pseudonym), the organic, health fruit drink, is unique in its creation and benefits to the consumer. First, it uses the entire fruit, including skin and pulp of the apple and orange, in a process that has no waste and includes all vitamins and minerals normally gained by eating a fresh piece of fruit (but lost by drinking a squeezed juice from these fruits). Secondly, it contains a known anticancer ingredient. Thirdly, it has been pasteurized to create pleasing appearance and color, as well as guaranteeing destruction of a deadly bacilli that sometimes develops in fresh fruit juice.

The benefits to health in the process of growth are based on mass effect of diffusion. When a fruit is growing, chemical elements making up molecules of living things pass through food webs and are combined and recombined in different ways. At each link in a food web, some energy is stored in newly made structures. Continual input of energy from sunlight keeps the process going. Atoms often join with one another in various combinations in distinct molecules or in repeating three-dimensional crystal patterns. The configuration of atoms in a molecule determines the molecule's properties and shapes are particularly important in how large molecules interact with others. The structure of these molecules creates each nutrient found in a growing fruit, such as Vitamin C or calcium. (MOLO, 2006)

Intellectual Property

The ingredients, by law, must be listed on the label of the product, but the special processes by which the juices are extracted from the whole fruit are considered intellectual property and will not be disclosed. The value of the intellectual property, including patents and trademarks on the process of enzymatic extraction belonging to Tango, is intrinsic, but can generate significant financing options on their own. As such they could be used as collateral for securitization or lending and as such they need to be safeguarded and kept confidential. This must be taken into account when hiring production managers and workers in the plants where Tango is produced.

Government Regulations Regarding Ingredients and Labeling

All ingredients in the product have been approved by the FDA. The breakdown of vitamins and minerals in the health drink are listed on the label. The information in the main or top section on the nutrition label on the product contains product-specific information such as serving size, calories, and nutrient information. The bottom part of the label contains a footnote with Daily Values (DVs) for 2,000 and 2,500 calorie diets. This footnote provides recommended dietary information for important nutrients, including fats, sodium and fiber. (Nutridata, 2004)

Consumer Acceptance and Education major advertising and consumer education campaign will accompany the introduction of this health fruit drink to the market. The benefits of organic gardening and how it differs from conventional fruit growth will be explained in several key ways: Relationships with producers, who generally benefit from contracting a large portion of their crop are cultivated and producers are urged to meet quality standards in growing, fertilizing, bagging, storage and delivery processes. To avoid contamination and preserve organic integrity, growers document measures taken to maintain organic standards from planting through harvest. Varietal selection and harvest dates are recorded. Equipment used for harvesting and transporting the fruit is watched and recorded; care is taken not to commingle or allow physical contamination of the product. The fruit is cleaned and the equipment is sterilized before production even begins. subject=Marketing%20Organic%20Grains" (Born, 2005) Once the consumer knows how carefully preproduction efforts are maintained, they will begin to understand that the producer is a serious, large-scale agent and fully capable of creating a top-quality product and maintaining the highest standards while doing so.

The production of the fruit juice itself will be highly regulated, through the enzymatic process and pasteurization and into the bottling and labeling processes. A tinted, glass bottle will be used to keep harmful rays from penetrating and changing the composition of the health fruit drink. The bottle will be made of glass to avoid any kind of decomposition possibilities that plastic or other biodegradable products may contaminate the product.

Advantages to the Consumer

Creating a tasteful, healthy fruit drink has obvious benefits for the consumer in terms of the consumer's senses (sight, taste and texture) and health (no harmful ingredients, full range of vitamins and minerals that may be derived from whole fruit, and an additional anticancer agent). All this in a moderately priced drink that is nutritiously advantageous and superior to other fruit juice drinks in every way.

Advantages to the Manufacturer

The advantages of producing Tango, a nutritious health fruit drink, to the manufacturer, is that the process can actually be more streamlined than a mechanical squeezing processing in terms of plant outfitting and can actually be produced in a relatively inexpensive manner. Contract production will allow favorable pricing of both ingredients and finished product. Sampling will allow for marketing controls and for targeting national and export markets. The product will meet the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), European Union, and other specific certification requirements, so may be exported. The Internet will be considered as a target for purchases, but will mainly be used for advertising the product. Mapco stores will be the exclusive client of this product, and will be the outlet to other organic health food agencies that may elect to sponsor sales of this product, as well.

The increased product range will depend upon acceptance by Mapco clientele and consumers, with sampling in other areas and acceptance in the health food market.

Success in product marketing starts by finding the point of difference - the cluster of strengths and selling points that are unique to this product alone. The next step in the point of difference process is to scour many markets to find the ones that are clearly in need of this particular product. Market analysis and sampling is a way of determining this.

Tango marketers go beyond the superficial elements of the industries in which they specialize to analyze the products and services, functional disciplines, technologies, managerial philosophies and business issues where their experience in this particular market is superior.

Tango is a product whose time has come. The public is ready for a nutritious, healthy drink that both tastes and looks good, and provides some anticancer ingredients, as well as the full range of necessary vitamins and minerals needed daily. It will employ, for the future, a marketing strategy that cannot fail.

Future Directions

Tango will employ a 5-step differentiation process. First, it will "discover" the point of difference about the product that can be translated into a unique consumer benefit, that of unique processing, uniquely beneficial health ingredients and a known anticancer agent. Second, it will define that difference in terms of a brief statement (which we call a differentiation statement), hinging on the unique processing, ingredients and health benefits of this drink. Third, it will prove the truth of the statement through a logical argument of facts and illustrations of its superior choice of ingredients, processing and the benefits of imbibing Tango. Fourth, it will proclaim the statement everywhere and project the point of difference through every aspect of the business. Finally, and fifth, it will proliferate and protect the point of difference by installing differentiation-builders, on an ongoing basis:

Differentiation-builders are products, services, promotions, and methods that expand a point of difference and, in some cases, also protect it from competitive imitation. This is not to say that every new product, service, promotion, or method is a differentiation-builder. Indeed, most are not. And many are actually differentiation-degraders -- they contradict, cover up, or obfuscate the point of difference, thereby weakening it. An innovation is only a differentiation-builder when it expands or enhances the company's stated point of difference. Lacking that, an innovation might achieve some benefit, but that benefit is not that of point-of-difference proliferation. (Trout and Rivkin, 2002, p. 1)

In other words, an on-going reminder of the unique, obvious benefits of this product, is part of the marketing strategy. The facts that it is healthy as well as delicious can carry the product on through to a successful market, but wide acceptance, world-wide distribution and consumer education are the goals in the marketing strategy.

Conclusion

Tango is the product that will be presented by the client, Mapco, to the world as the first delicious, completely healthy fruit drink. No added sugars or fillers, not even water, are added to this pure and complete fruit drink. Incrementally, the unique process by which Tango is created and the addition of an anticancer agent, paclitaxel, should make it the most sought-after health drink in the world. Production, from the moment a fruit tree begins to grow till the moment Tango comes out of the factory in a golden glass bottle, is secure and regulated to create an organic and natural drink product. After the introduction of this product through the Mapco stores, the marketing should put the drink in demand so much that its range will increase throughout the United States, this continent, this hemisphere and eventually Europe and Asia and the Middle East, and all over the world.