Organic Chocolate Candy Bars Application

Organic Chocolate Candy Bars

Application to Product/Service

Everyday is a new product with a goal to make the organic chocolate candy bar a ubiquitous consumer product. It will mimic the flavors of popular non-organic chocolate candy bars, but at a much lower price point than organic options and will rely on channels where most candy is purchased rather than niche naturals' stores.

Target Market

Fortunately for Everyday, just about everyone consumes chocolate. Its household penetration in America is 97.3%, and 96.7% of households repeatedly buy chocolate during the year (Chocolate candy sales start to melt, 2009). According to this same source, Americans buy candy about 19 times a year. There is an exceptionally strong seasonal component to when consumers buy chocolate with Halloween, Easter and Valentine's Day driving the bulk of customer purchases. For instance, chocolate and non-chocolate miniature candy generate more than a third of their annual dollar sales during the Halloween season, and, the total chocolate candy category makes 22% of its annual dollar sales in the same period (Nielsen takes the mask off candy sales, 2007). Therefore, Everyday needs to pay close attention to packaging of its product, promotions and sales during holidays to capture peak consumer demand.

There are a few recent trends in consumer needs that are worthy of note. Increasingly, consumers are turning to chocolate for health reasons after medical research revealed that the flavanols and antioxidants in chocolate have the potential to reduce rates of stroke, heart failure, cancer, and diabetes (Moran, 2008(This maps well to Everyday's mission to ensure that all foods, including widely consumed candy bars, are healthy, nutritious, desirable and affordable. In addition, "Tastings and sampling of chocolate is becoming more popular as the field becomes more crowded and consumers become less confident in their ability to choose a product they will like." (Moran, 2008) This supports the need for samples in Everyday's promotional strategy which will also help convince consumers that Everyday has the same taste as their current favorites.

Competitive Landscape

The organic chocolate market currently totals $70.8 million, just a small fraction of the overall chocolate market which is about $6 billion in the United States alone (Organic chocolate booming in U.S.). Everday seeks significant market in the larger overall chocolate market where it will compete head on with America's leading selling candy bars, Snickers, Hershey's Chocolate, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and M&M's (Beirne, 2006) instead of niche organic players such as Dagoba, Green & Black, Lake Champlain, Chocolove and Newman's Own.