An Overview of the Brand Rbs

1. Quick Case summary discussing strengths and weaknesses of the RBS brand.

Anna Regnante has been promoted to Domestic Brand Director’s position for Reliance Baking Soda (RBS), a market leader in the baking soda category. Reganante has to develop a 2008 budget that would result in a 10 percent increase in profit over 2007 estimates. Before she makes any decisions about her future strategies and budget, she has to study RBS’s previous marketing and promotional strategies and evaluate their positive and negative impacts on the company up to date.

Stewart was founded by James Stewart Augusta who had discovered the compound of Baking soda and branded it as RBS. Baking soda was a leavening agent and had 70 percent of the market share. The introduction of new substitutes such as self-rising flour and instant cake-mixes, however, had reduced the company’s market’s importance. Apart from the baking soda market, RBS competed with many products and became well-known for its different uses as cleansers, air fresheners, and laundry detergents. In order to understand consumer’s attitude toward RBS, One survey was conducted and its result showed that the brand had high loyalty among consumers but low advertising brand recall.

There are five key RBS marketing mix considerations that Regnante has to study before she makes her decision regarding the company’s future strategies. These marketing considerations are distribution, pricing, adverting, consumer promotion, and trade promotion. RBS has been highly distributed over different retail channels and has 150-person sales team to manage retail and wholesale accounts for all products. Despite its high level of distribution, RBS needs a lot of push marketing to increase customer demand, as the products has experienced no changes over the 100 years. In terms of pricing, RBS had raised its manufacturer’s selling price over the last few years, and had its price