Marketing Research Project

This is a proposal of marketing search project that is conducted by group A. Ben & Jerry is chosen as our search target company. In the first part of this proposal, you can find detailed background information of Ben & Jerry, which gives a rough description of its four “P” (price, promotion, place and people). In addition, it also covers several issues about the European ice cream market. The next part of this proposal is mainly discussing marketing management problems.

You can find out Ben & Jerry‘s symptoms, suspected causes of its marketing management problems, Ben& Jerry’s actions and its consequences. Besides that, we listed several questions to help us analyze customers’ buying behavior and the main methods we will used in order to finish our survey. The schedule and sampling plan will give you a full picture of our project progress. Ben & Jerry’s Market Research Background Proposal 3 Plan of Approach BACKGROUND Market and Brand of Choice For the Marketing Research project 2005/2006 we chose to do our marketing research within the ice cream industry, in the Netherlands.

The Ice Cream industry in the United States developed rapidly; nowadays they have started to expand their market to other continents such as Europe and Asia. We can find so many international ice cream brands in Europe, especially in the Netherlands such as Haagen Dazs, Ben & Jerry’s, and Australian. Among the various international brands that are popular around the world, we are most interested in Ben & Jerry’s. We have noticed that Ben & Jerry’s is one of the most popular brands one can discover around big cities.

Furthermore, we decided to go for Ben & Jerry’s because we will benefit by doing research in The Netherlands since Ben & Jerry’s is under the Unilever, which is part of the Unilever Group owned by the Netherlands-based Unilever N. V. and UK-based Unilever PLC, which is also one of the biggest consumer product company. Ice Cream Market Issues Sales of impulse ice cream are set to register positive value growth of 5. 5% during 2003, reaching a value of EUR 216. 8 million stimulated by good weather at the beginning of the summer season and dynamic impulse in terms of new product development and advertising.

In volume, sales are expected to increase by 2%, indicating a marked preference for the higher value innovations introduced by leading manufacturer Unilever. Much of the growth are predicted to be driven by dairy-based impulse ice cream, which is the most popular product in the Netherlands with sales accounting for nearly 70% of total volume. Ben & Jerry’s Market Research Background Proposal 4 Plan of Approach Furthermore, the single portion dairy ice cream is expected to register higher value growth in 2003, at 8. %, which lead to improving the performance of previous years due to a combination of better weather and intense brand and product promotion. Important Issues about the Brand Ben & Jerry’s are using special characteristics for their brand that are simple to pronounce, recognize, and remember. The cow and green environment behind their logo is depicting their awareness of quality and benefits. Ben & Jerry’s tries to acknowledge their customers that they always use natural and fresh milk, always keep clean and green environment while producing their ice cream.

To promote and to prove their mission, Ben & Jerry’s uses special slogan like “From Cow to Cone”, “Lick Global Warming”, “Organic Ben & Jerry’s”, and “50 Ways to Promote Peace”. Since Ben & Jerry’s target market is ranging from kids to elderly people (Family), they have to ensure that there is an existence of brand awareness in specific segments. For kids, they would be more interested in the ice cream packages or paper with their favorite cartoons, such as Disney’s characters or Warner Bros.

For adults and elderly people, they would take into consideration more about the nutrition facts, taste, and low-fat ice cream. Thus, it will be more interesting for them to see “Organics, low sugar, or low fat Ice Cream”. Ben & Jerry’s are using brand extension to develop their brand. They have produced thousand of ice cream flavors under the name of one successful brand, which of course is “Ben & Jerry’s”. They have extended its brand to organic ice cream, original ice cream, scoops menu, bars original ice cream, single original ice cream, and single novelties with different choice of taste in each product.