Saxonville Sausage Company

SAXONVILLE SAUSAGE COMPANY

In order to fulfil her mission to assess the "Italian opportunity" of Vivio and to develop it into a national brand, Ann Banks needs to understand the current situation of the brand. Vivio was launch very "roughly" 4 years ago, with no prior real planning for its positioning: an "Italianised" name was chosen, an Italian flag was put on the label, and the price was benchmarked on the regional similar products. Vivio was launched in the Northeast of the USA, region known to have a Italian background community(NY), and no real promotional support. The product seems to have been doing well, 2005 sales show a total turnover of $74.3 million (we do not have any competitors or market data). The growth of 15% of sales, in 2005, can be attributed to the effort of other regional brands to grow the market through local advertising. Nevertheless, Saxonville has not conducted any market research on Vivio, and the Italian sausage market since its launch in 2002.

Banks has to assess the opportunity and determine how to move Vivio from a regional to a national brand. Saxonville is losing market shares and sales on the combined markets of brats and breakfast, so they need a new driver for their sales. To achieve that Banks' objectives are to understand "target consumer's needs and behaviour". Banks has designed a four-step market research to determine Vivio's future positioning. She is apparently replicating the framework she used to use during previous jobs. Her approach is exploratory, focusing on qualitative primary data collection, to profile the target customers, test positioning ideas, and test possible new brand names.

Even though no thorough market research had been conducted, Banks had already decided on the targeted customer, and detailed his profile, in her one page summary of the company business.

A prior comprehensive market research would have given quantitative market segmentation and potential, customer profiling, detailed competitors positioning and customer base, along with market potential and competitor's market shares. - I am assuming that Banks has the quantitative market data through the online market database - . She is using the assumption that Female Head of Household (FHH) are the buyers and the decision makers, other influencers are not mentioned/considered. The husband (weekend cook) is another possible customer, as the national sales manager thinks. Choosing only the FHH sounds correct according to her intuition and the fragmented data that Banks has (mainly the 2001 Attitude and Usage research, A&U, done prior to Vivio's launch), but that remains guess work, not backed up by any up-to-date data. That lack of accurate definition of the market, means that customer segments could be too narrow or limited, and you may not be targeting other potential