Kingsford Case Study

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1. Analyze major changes in Kingsford’s marketing environment that brought the challenges discussed in the case study. There were three possibly four major contributors that were identified that were causing the issue. One big change that affected Kingsford's business was the increasing popularity of gas grills. While gas grills were seeing a 8 percent increase since the previous year charcoal grills had dropped by 3 percent. Charcoal grill penetration was trending down since 1997 and gas grill penetration was trending up. Another contributing factor may have been a increase in price by stores to their private label brands as well as their main competitor (who also produced these stores private brands) increase their price as well. Kingsford had kept the prices the same though some stores had increased the prices on their own. Kingsford had also reduced their media presences since 1996 (because of a decrease in media spending), a direct from the text by Warren explains " The charcoal category was now paying the price for the several years of reduced advertising". Pointing out that it was not only their reduction of advertising but the absence of advertising from its competitors as well which is what was helping gas grill become more popular. Lastly the looked at weather being a contributing factor. There was more precipitation and colder weather then the previous year that lead to a reduction of to barbecuing. Optimal weather was important for barbecuing, so it made sense that with worse weather the number would decrease. 2. Suggest pricing strategy for Kingsford. In your analysis go through the stages of price setting process discussed in Chapter 12. Step 1 Pricing Objective: Kingsford was a top quality brand in charcoal, they had their competitor Royal Oak which was more of a middle brand and they were aiming more towards product-quality leadership.

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