Sara Lee Case

When Sara Lee is brought up most only think of Sara Lee pies and deli meat. After learning more about Sara Lee in the reading it is now known that Sara Lee is a much more diversified company. They are more than just pies, they are household products, cleaning products, grocery store chain and even undergarments at one time, just to name a few. Sara Lee operates under different names for all their different items, which is one reason many may not associate Sara Lee with it. Smuckers is the same way. When most people think of Smuckers they think of jelly and all the different flavors of jelly. Little do we know we should also be thinking of Crisco, Jif, Pillsbury, Hungry Jack and Folgers. Again, we know them all by their own brands, so we don’t associate them with being all under the same company.

Sara Lee and Smuckers have common brand and name reputation, common customers and production-related activities. They also have similar technology/R&D and common distribution, sales and marketing. With these similarities they are competitive rivals in the industry.

Both companies have focused their strategies to reduce cost in production and distribution. Sara Lee sold 8 businesses that were seen as no strategic. Smuckers did what they could to buy several other brands to get into a larger market. Smuckers saw it easier to buy a successful brand than to try and build a new brand from the ground up. They were doing all of this to also help to increase market share and build a stronger brand loyalty among American consumers.

With in the Sara Lee Corporation, the Stars are the North American Retail division and the North American Fresh Bakery. The North American Retail divisions offered retailers high margins and were growing faster than the overall industry. It also showed consumer preferences for branded products verse the private label. North American Fresh Bakery was the best-selling brand of packaged bread sold in the US with an 8.3% market share. As for North American Foodservice it was a cash cow with its declining sales while still holding market share in key product categories.

For Smuckers, the stars are the US Retail Coffee Market, which are Folgers and Millstone, along with US Retail Consumer Market, which are Jif, Smuckers and Hungry Jack. They are stars because there is high demand and market share for their business units. As for the US Retail Consumer