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Marketing Infant Cereals And Biscuits
Posted By: kannabiran on 11/7/2009 12:48 AM (CST) 125 Points
My name is Kannabiran, marketing baby cereals and baby biscuits under brand name Mother's Choice, in Middle East & North African region.

Marketing of baby foods are governed by UN/WHO guidelines & individual country laws and advertisements, PR, open promotions, giving samples, etc., are being prohibited.

Baby foods in general are sensitive, highly brand loyal and narrow segment. Additionally baby cereals and Infant teething biscuits are supplementary food category.

What alternatives are possible, other than medical detailing and covert sampling to increase market share and increase sales.

The company is equipped with state of the art production facility with ISO Food Safety Certification and based in the Oman.

Looking forward to receive suggestions from members of MarketingProfs.

Thanking you,

With regards,

Kannabiran

Posted by: Puru Gupta Member Response
11/7/2009 1:05 PM (CST)
Hi Kannabiran,

Just couple of questions before I give my perspective:

Who are your competitors currently? How are they marketing their product? or is this a complete whitespace category that you have entered into?

Also, what are the products/sub-categories under the Mother's Choice portfolio?

Looking forward to your response

Regards
Puru
 
Posted by: W.M.M.A. Member Response
11/9/2009 7:13 PM (CST)
Why don't you create an online buzz using various parneting web forums?
 
Posted by: kannabiran Author Response
11/10/2009 1:26 AM (CST)
Hi Puru,

Major competitors are 'Cerelac' from Nestle, Milpua from Nutricia, Heinz/Farley's, Hero & Saha on the cereal front. Dieterba & Milupa are competitors on teething biscuits.

Competitors are MNC's mostly from Europe with decades of market presence and have range of baby products including infant formulas, which makes 80%+ of baby food trade, which gives them economy of scale in operation.

Our company's products are limited to baby cereals and biscuits, with variants like wheat with Milk, wheat with fruits, honey, vegetables, rice with milk, and rice with carrots, etc.

Baby biscuits / teething biscuits are hard biscuits available in 3 flavours. These are the current product categories that we have.

We have priced the product at par with International brands, provide higher margins for trade and distributors.

Also, we have developed samples in 30g in different variants that could be bundled with the product to induce trial.

Communication to the customer is curbed and that is where I am looking for suggestions.

Regards,

Kannabiran
 
Posted by: Puru Gupta Accepted Answer
11/17/2009 8:18 PM (CST)
Hi Kannabiran,

Few thoughts -
If you are 'not' an international brand, a new entrant in the market, you would need to do focus on 2 things according to me -

Firstly, you need to get credibility in the market to get your products accepted by the shoppers and make the mothers shift from their 'existing' tested brand to your brand. They would do that IF there is some additional benefit in your brands (like more credibility, extra variety, or simply a novelty factor)

Secondly, in order to shift from an existing brand to your brand, you need to induce trials for your brand - even though you provide higher margins to trade, you should look at having one-time consumer offers as well, to help trials. There needs to be one push required from you so that the shopper is willing to try it out once.

Also, few more ideas that you could consider -
1 - have you tried any accredition with the local medical association? Once you have it, you could 'shout out' these in the stores
2 - You could organize a PR activity, with child checkups or a local seminar on "eating habits" or "nutrition requirements for the mother and child" or "recommended diet for the child" and hand out free samples of your products
3 - Have you looked at bundling your samples with other FMCG non-competitors, who have better reach in the households?

These were few areas you could look into.
Please feel free to get in touch in case I can be of any help.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Puru
 
Posted by: kannabiran Author Response
11/17/2009 10:52 PM (CST)
Hi Puru,

Thank you for taking time to give me right direction for my question.

We are currently following our activities in line with your suggestion.

Accreditation is one area where for baby foods non of the medical associations are willing to endorse. They are willing to do all medical products except infant foods. May be this is due to UN/WHO guidelines and IBFAN.

The second , regarding the PR, and child check up, we had done similar exercise earlier, together with a private hospital group and had some good response.

We had also done a bundling offer with Baby Diapers sometime ago, but did not have much impact. Is there any other product category that you could think?

Thank you for the valuable suggestions and time.
Regards,
Kannabiran
 


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