Sustainable Management And Marketing Of Mondelez International Essay.

Discussion

Discusss about the Sustainable Management and Marketing of Mondelez International.

Mondelez International is a widely known American confectionary, food and beverage company that produces gum, powdered beverages, confectionery, and biscuits (Berg 2016). The employee strength of the company is about 90,000 and it has been headquartered in USA. The product portfolio of Mondelez International includes several billion-dollar brands like Stride, Trident, Oreo, Cadbury and Halls and with the same; the brand has consumers from 165 different countries (Fernandes, Gupta and Vidyasagar 2016). This paper is going to elaborate on analyzing its macro and micro environmental factors through marketing mix and SWOT analysis. It shall further shed light on the sustainable marketing initiatives taken by this company and will suggest few strategies and principles that it could be used by it in order to improve its business.

Marketing Mix

Product

The company has large array products and maximum of its products are been gained by its merger with the brand Cadbury. Cadbury has generated a large number of cash cows in its range of products. Perk, Dairy Milk, Bourneville, Five Star, Cadbury éclairs are some of the popular products in the chocolate business (Pai and Subramanian 2014). Under the segment of biscuits, the company has launched Oreo in the year 2010 that is indeed gaining a market share at a very rapid pace, covering up more than 100 crores in the revenues. Under the beverage segment, bournvita again is the major leader in the milk additives. Along with that, the mouth freshener or the remedy for cold and cough- Halls, is used by the people all over India. Because of such a huge range of products in its portfolio, Mondelez is one of the leading names in the field of chocolates, all over the world.

Price

Along with the quality of the product, there comes the price that Mondelez too considers to a great extent. Since the quality of all its products are high as well as the Oreo biscuit and bevarages too requires a continuous marketing in the market to remain on the top, the product price of the Mondelez is also quite high for some products of it (MacGregor et al. 2016). However, for the other products that need less or no marketing, the prices are much low and reasonable enough. Because of its positioning, Dairy Milk is regarded as one of the most premium brands of chocolates, but as its price is much low than the other premium chocolates, it is accepted by near about each of the target segments (Shrivastava 2016). There are varieties of product of Mondelez and depending on the type of consumer who are going to buy them, their pricing are set accordingly.

SWOT analysis

Distribution strategy- The distribution strategy of the company is really fantastic and is at the same time, widespread as well. The product of the company is available in all the urban areas including the A, B and C category of towns. It also follows the same strategy of FMCG. The products are available globally at every vending machines, grocery stores, wholesale clubs, drug stores, malls, hospitals and department stores. It could be bought from the online stores like Big basket, eBay and Amazon as well. It has a very effective distribution network. It has distributed all its products in foreign markets including India. All the major developing countries and cities are covered by the distribution network of the company.

Promotion

The product promotion of the company is done through television advertisement, magazine advertisements and through billboards. The main aim of the company is to manufacture such products that would be enjoyed by everyone (Mythily 2015). It targets the kids aging from 2 to 15 years to the youngster and old people as well. Most of its advertisements are animated so as to appeal the imagination of the kids. However, the promotion of different product is different. For the promotion of Bourneville, the company has kept a position that- “You don’t buy a Bourneville, you earn it.” The Cadbury celebration has a good customer base, where the chocolates are brought in huge amount and are given to the employers, vendors and clients (SB and Sailaja 2014). marketing.

Strengths

1. Mondelez has built a strong dealer and distributor community within few years of its emergence and this has made the dealers to invest in training their sales executives for pitching different consumers in different unique ways.
2. In has recently invested in the Global Research and Development Hubs in Poland, Brazil, Mexico and India, that is helping them in recruiting better candidates as well as retaining and developing talents across a huge range of fields.
3. As discussed above, it has billion dollar brands such a Cadbury Dairy milk, Oreo, Milka, Trident gum, Halls candy and Toblerone etc. These brand are aiding to revenue for Mondelez (Pai and Subramanian 2014).

Weaknesses

1. There is a fluctuation in the EPS (Earning per Share). The EPS was decreased by 76.4% in the year 2016 and was increased by 246.9% in the year 2015. Such a fluctuation suggests that there is unevenness in the execution of the strategies.
2. From the below mentioned graph, it can be depicted that there was a notable decline in the total revenue in the year 2016 by 10.5% and in the year 2015 by 13.5% (Das nair, Nkhonjera and Ziba 2017).

Graph: Revenue history of Mondelez (Das nair, Nkhonjera and Ziba 2017)

Opportunities

1. There is a significant reduction in the sales of biscuits in Latin America. In the year 2016, it was reduced to 734 million dollars from 1605 million dollars, which was about 54%. Hence, the company can increase its sales of biscuit in Latin America..
2. The company can also diversify its product portfolio by adding into it other segments such as that of snacks.
3. Mondelez can expand its business in other developing nations (Leonidou, Katsikeas and Morgan 2013)

Threats

1. The growing strengths of the local distributers
2. Increase in competition in the modern business market among the competitors, some of its major competitors is Mars, Hershey and Cargill and they truly have a powerful brand reputation in the market (Leonidou et al. 2013).
3. The cost of the products used to make the company products is rising along with increase in fuel cost, labor cost, distribution cost etc (Tate et al. 2014). This is resulting in reduction of the margins of the brand.

Among Barry Callebaut, Hershey and Cargill, Mondelez is ranking number two after Hershey. It is the second leading chocolate manufacturing companies after Hershey.

The company has launched a website for its customers called the DearCadbury.com, with an aim to make its customers aware regarding ethical sourcing and the environment (Sakas, Vlachos and Dimitris 2014). Targeted at the customers, schools and its own workers, Mondelez is making sustainability as major part of its long-term strategy with a hope that the website will reflect this.

The company also considers the needs of each of its customers, right from the kids to the older ones or say, from the impulse purchase to the family treats (Casadesus, Masanell and Zhu 2013). Mondelez designs its products to coincide with the Easter, Christmas, Father’s and Mother’s day and various other calendar landmarks. Cadbury also uses the Choose Cadbury marketing strategy in order to encourage a relation between these events and the chocolates.

Company position among the other three

Furthermore, the company follows distribution strategy. Though the company is following FMCS, still it is unable to make its products available in some of the urban and rural regions. However, it makes its products available through the C&F from the wholesaler or the retailers to the end users and this is a three tier distribution approach.

Conclusions

From the above analysis it is clear that Mondelez is indeed a leading American confectionary, food and beverage company that has the potential to become the top most company in the list of the best food and beverage companies. However, based on the above analysis there are few recommendations made below:

Single marketing strategy is not sufficient in order to achieve the strategic objectives in such a contemporary business environment. Hence, Mondelez should apply the mixture of strategic marketing models whose optimal combination would rely on individual conditions in particular to targeted markets of the individual.

It must differ in its strategic approaches depending on different individual market.

References:

Berg, B., 2016. As sweet as it gets: Corporate social responsibility in the confectionery industry (Doctoral dissertation, Quinnipiac University).

Casadesus?Masanell, R. and Zhu, F., 2013. Business model innovation and competitive imitation: The case of sponsor?based business models. Strategic management journal, 34(4), pp.464-482.

Das Nair, R., Nkhonjera, M. and Ziba, F., 2017. Growth and Development in the Sugar to Confectionery Value Chain.

Fernandes, S.F., Gupta, P. and Vidyasagar, A., 2016. Cadbury India–Sweet Turning Sour. Ushus-Journal of Business Management, 15(4), pp.37-54.

Leonidou, C., Katsikeas, C., & Morgan, N. 2013 "Greening" the marketing mix: do firms do it and does it pay off?. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(2), 151-170.

Leonidou, L.C., Leonidou, C.N., Fotiadis, T.A. and Zeriti, A., 2013. Resources and capabilities as drivers of hotel environmental marketing strategy: Implications for competitive advantage and performance. Tourism Management, 35, pp.94-110.

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Pai, V.S. and Subramanian, R., 2014. Kraft Foods, Inc. in India—The Cadbury Acquisition. Asian Case Research Journal, 18(02), pp.371-399.

Sakas, D., Vlachos, D. and Nasiopoulos, D., 2014. Modelling strategic management for the development of competitive advantage, based on technology. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 16(3), pp.187-209.

SB, P. and Sailaja, M.V., 2014. Consumer Involvement in Brand Positioning (A Study on ITC FMCG Products at Organized Retail outlets). International Journal of Scientific Research and Management, 2(6).

SHRIVASTAVA, A.K., 2016. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF CADBURY AND NESTLE. Global Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 5(3).

Tate, W.L., Ellram, L.M., Schoenherr, T. and Petersen, K.J., 2014. Global competitive conditions driving the manufacturing location decision. Business Horizons, 57(3), pp.381-390.