10-11-2012, 03:34 PM
HOW MAGGI - BECAME A BRAND
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INTRODUCTION TO MAGGI
Maggi is a nestle brand of instant soups, stocks, bouillon cubes, ketchups, sauces, seasonings and instant noodles. The original company came into existence in 1872 in Switzerland, when Julius Maggi took over his father's mill. It quickly became a pioneer of industrial food production, aiming at improving the nutritional intake of worker families. It was the first to bring protein-rich legume meal to the market, which was followed by ready-made soup based on legume meal in 1886. In 1897,Julius Maggi founded the company Maggi GmbH in the German town of Singen where it is still established today
Maggi Comes to India
teething troubles Maggi noodles was launched in India in theearly1980s. Carlo M. Donati, the present Chairman and Managing Director of Nestle India Ltd, brought the instant noodle brand to India during his short stint here in the early eighties. At that time, there was no direct competition. The first competition came from the ready-to-eat snack segment which included snacks like samosas , biscuits or maybe peanuts, that were usually ‘the bought out’ type. The second competition came from the home made snacks like pakor as or sandwiches. So there were no specific buy and make snack! Moreover both competitors had certain drawbacks in comparison. Snacks like samosas are usually bought out, and outside food is generally considered unhygienic and unhealthy. The other competitor, ‘homemade’ snacks overcame both these problems but had the disadvantage of extended preparation time at home. Maggi was positioned as the only hygienic home made snack! Despite this, Nestlé faced difficulties with their sales after the initial phase. The reason being, the positioning of the product with the wrong target group. Nestle had positioned Maggi as a convenience food product aimed at the target group of working women who hardly found any time for cooking. Unfortunately this could not hold the product for very long. In the course of many market researches and surveys, the firm found that children were the biggest consumers of Maggi noodles.Quickly they repositioned it towards the kids segment with various tools of sales promotion like colour pencils, sketch pens, fun books, Maggi clubs which worked wonders for the brand
Brand story
Launched in 5 flavors initially – Masala, chicken, Capsicum, sweet & sour, and Lasagna –Maggi had to fight hard to be accepted by Indian consumers with their hard-to-change eating habits. The packaged food market was very small at this time, Nestle had to promote noodles as a concept, before it could promote Maggi as a brand. It therefore devised a two-pronged strategy to attract mothers on the ‘convenience’ plank and lure kids on the ‘fun’ plank. Gradually, the market for instant noodles began to grow. The company also decided to focus on promotions to increase the brand awreness. In the initial years, Nestle promotional activities for Maggi included schemes offering gifts( such as toys and utensils) in return for empty noodles pack
According to analysits the focus on promotion turned out to be the single largest factor responisible for Maggi’s rapid acceptance. Nestle’s Managers utilized promotions asmeasured to meet their sales target. Gradually, sales promotion became a crutch for Magginoodles sales. Later many of the Maggi’s extensions also made considerable use of promotional schemes. The focus of all Maggi’s extensions was more on below the lineactivities rather than direct communication. In addition to promotional activities, Maggiassociated itself with main stream television programme and advertised heavily on kids programme and channels. After its advertisements with taglines like “mummi bhookh lagi hai,
bas do minute” and fast to cook good to eat Maggi’s popularity became highly attributed to its “extremely high appeal to children”. As a result, Maggi’s annual growth reportedly touched15% during its initial years
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
•Market leader in the noodles category. Anytime anyone prefers Maggi as noodles.
•It has a huge brand loyalty.
•It has developed the huge distribution channel network over thousands of distributors, retailers etc. hence Maggi is available in every shop right from the super market till food malls.
•Innovative products for Indian taste buds such as Maggi, Maggi masala, chicken Maggi, tomato flavor which helped them grabbing more market as customer needs variety and they loved those flavors as well.
•The advertising strategy for Maggi was a super hit as their tagline itself was very effective and grabbed the consumer’s mind.
Weakness
The weakness of the product was it was earlier heavily dependent on only one flavor which consumers get bored after a time and stops buying the product which hits the market sales of the product. It contains Maida, so there are some health related issues for this product such as constipation and it does not give sufficient required proteins and vitamins to children.
Opportunitie
The greatest opportunity for the product Maggi is their
Unexploited rural markets as so far they have mainly targeted cities anddeveloped areas.
•Number of youths working nowadays are increasing rapidly, so they can open new branches and employ these people and increase production and their by sales and profits by targeting rural markets.
•Increased affinity of Indians towards chinese cuisine creates new opportunity for Maggi to improve its taste further and capture large market share