General Mills Warm Delights – Indulgent, Delicious, and Gooey!

General Mills Warm Delights – Indulgent, Delicious, and Gooey!

                Park University        

General Mills Warm Delights – Indulgent, Delicious, and Gooey!

  The creators of Betty Crocker came up with an idea of microwavable deserts called Warm Delights. To implement this idea,  the team followed three phases of strategic marketing process such as planning, implementation and evaluation phases. The team took lots of personal and business risks by challenging the assumptions and expectations of accumulated cake category business experience (Kerin & Hartley, 2017). At the end of all these efforts, Warm Delights became one of the best seller cakes in the market.  Vice president of the Center for Learning and Experimentation at General Mills, Vivan Milroy Callaway, states that the baking mix aisle is a quite place in the grocery stores even though shelves are full of products with different flavors, types, and brands. Also, although prices are low, there is no consumer traffic. Demand for cakes has declined as they are a tradition  for social occasions such as birthdays, weddings, other parties. According to Kerin & Hartley (2017), in 2000  the percentage of sold baking mix to U.S. households was 80 percent  whereas this percentage in 2004 was 77 percent, showing a decline in demand curve for the baking mix products. There are a lot of choices in the market, but the differentiation between these choices is so poor. As a result, the sales of  the baking mix products started decreasing.

After analyzing the market, the Betty Crocker marketing team decided to involve food scientists to create a great-tasting, easy-to-prepare, single-serve cake treat so as to achieve its goals. And this new created product came to the market with the name of “Betty Crocker Dessert Bowls”. Even though this cake was distinguishable in the cake aisle of grocery stores, it faced several marketing challenges such as the price comparison problem, the microwave problem with taste and so on. Implemention phase for this product was not easy as the name ‘Dessert bowl’ did not capture the essence what the product delivered (Kerin & Hartley, 2017). To find new name for this product, the team focused to explore who the indulgent treat consumers are. After knowing  target customers, who are women without children, they decided to give new name. Having worked with consultants on what target customers want, the team started promote the product under the name of Warm Delights. Besides, “Warm Delights” was offered at  a comparable price among other single-serve indulgent treats. Moreover, the food message ‘warm, convenient and delightful’, which the team used to promote was helpful to attract customers.