Culinarian Cookware: Pondering Price Promotion

Culinarian Cookware: Pondering Price Promotion

Group 5

Melinda Fostey

Elana Kobernick

Khoa Pham

Yuecheng Tang

October 27, 2014

BA 627: Marketing, Section 1

Question 1: List three reasons why Donald Janus dislikes price promotions for Culinarian and three reasons why Victoria Brown likes them.

• Donald Janus’s three reasons:

1. Price promotion didn’t bring profits according to the experience of 2004
2. Price promotion could dilute Culinarian’s premium image and spoil customers
3. Sales promotion will increase ads expense

• Victoria Brown’s three reasons:

1. Retailers like the sales promotion and become more willing to sell Culinarian’s products. A couple of agencies even ran local advertisements featuring the discount.
2. Customers like sales promotions (can create stronger customer ties)
3. Sales promotion will boost overall brand awareness

Question 2: Identify Culinarian’s strengths and weaknesses and explain why the company has been successful.

Company Strengths

Products

Some of Culinarian’s strengths have been a superior brand image, excellent performance technology, and great product quality.  This has led to their success as they are focused on selling to serious cooks and high-end consumers.  According to their market research, 70% of their consumers had household incomes over $75,000 and product performance and durability were stated to be the most important aspects when buying cookware.  Culinarian Cookware was the industry leader in cooking technology (metallurgy technology) and the first company to sell copper products with effortless cleaning and maintenance. In addition, according to the Orion Market Research Study of households with incomes over $75,000, Culinarian has strong positions in 3 of the top 4 important criterion: quality, features, and brand name.

Sales/Distribution

Another strength was Culinarian’s relationship with their dealers. Culinarian Cookware dealers were incentivized due to higher profit margins (52% for Culinarian products vs. 48% for Le Gourmand and Robusto products). Culinarian also employed experienced account managers (with an average of 7 years’ experience) who visited accounts monthly, twice as many as their competitors who only averaged 6 visits a year.  The account managers also provided comprehensive training to retail sales professionals and implemented an incentive program that compensated high-performing sales professionals with free products.