Case Study Kraft Foods

The Kraft Company has been around for a long time now. Personally I believe you must have a protective firm, not allowing other companies to steal your ideas and product. This will give the firm advantage over others.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the financial health of The Fresh Market and Kroger. The Fresh Market and Kroger focus on selling organic food. The Fresh Market is a 1.7 billion corporation compared to Kroger 108 billion. The information was obtained from the 2014 Balance Sheet and Income Statements for both grocery stores. . There are three different categories of ratios; liquidity, profitability and efficiency. Ratios enable one to not focus on the size of the company, but on the liquidity, profitably and efficiency and the overall financial health of the organization.

This results from the fact that it is a mature segment with many well established companies vying for market share. The industry is highly consolidated and very fragmented. To grow their businesses, companies rely heavily on mergers and acquisitions to capture additional market share. Historically, the grocery industry has been characterized by slow growth which results in strong price competition and the development of aggressive marketing campaigns between existing firms. Perceived product quality and strong brand recognition by consumers are the basis of competition among firms in the industry. The source of General Mills’ competitive advantage lies in its ability to develop innovative products and highly reputable brands. As a result, they hold cost leadership positions across a number of grocery categories. Exhibit 1 shows the top US companies according to their sale of packaged foods globally. Market leaders include Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Nestle, Mars, Kellogg, and General Mills, however, neither company possess an overwhelming share of global sales. This is in part due to the large degree of product diversity throughout the industry and the strong brand rivalry of each competitor’s labels.

The company may now be known as just Kraft Foods Group but the slogans “make today delicious” and the old statements about healthy enjoyable food still stands true. Just like everything in life, things must adapt and grow with time. So being the best food and beverage company means having healthy and delicious food.

As I mentioned above, Mondelez was created to fit a need that Kraft Foods Inc. had to increase their growth globally. Kraft Foods Inc. established their name in 2007 when they broke apart from Altria Group. Kraft became the second-largest processed food company in 2012 with annual revenues of more than $54 billion in 2012 (Gamble, 2016). However, significant growth in the company was not much different from that in 2007 when they became independent. It is the belief of the company’s upper management and board that the reason for their stagnation was due to the fact that their corporate strategy was not focused on the growth of the company.

Kudler Fine Foods is the brain child of Kathy Kudler. She envisioned a one stop gourmet food store and has grown to three locations to date. She continues to maintain direct control over large bulk purchase order items, stringent customer service policies, and hiring. This paper discusses how the organization competes in the marketplace and the strengths and weaknesses of the company according to the marketing surveys their customers completed. The following also discusses which market structure best applies to the organization and how that structure positively and negatively affects the firm, how the effectiveness of the competitive strategies in the market structure affect the

which lead  to  the decline  in sales for isnack 2.0. The lack of connection with consumers

For the analysis the packaged food company ConAgra Foods, Inc (CAG) was chosen. According to ConAgra 2013 Annual report, ConAgra Foods, Inc. is one of the USA’s leading food companies. It has a strong brand recognition and consumer loyalty. ConAgra 's products are sold both in large supermarkets and convenience stores. Company operates in Commercial and Consumer Foods segments. The food industry is especially interesting for the research as the demand on food will stay relatively stable even during economic crises and is continuously growing.

The authors stated that, “Kraft Foods was the second largest food company in the world and the largest food company in the United States,” (Kerin & Peterson, 2010). A.1. Steak Sauce is a condiment “power house” in the Kraft portfolio that made incomparable profits for the company. Lawry’s, one of Kraft’s long-lasting competitors, endeavors to get a jump on the Holiday weekend (Memorial Day) at Publix to attain the ad and market their new product. Once notified, Kraft must lucidly make calculated decisions (SWOT analysis) as to how they will counteract Lawry’s new launch so they don’t

With giants such as Walmart, and Kroger running the grocery store industry it’s difficult for companies such as Smuckers to bargain for shelf-space and prices. Brand name items drawn to the center of the store are what leverages these companies to succeed in the industry. After numerous acquisitions and strategic alliances, Smuckers developed a solid core of product lines which experienced success rapidly. Product lines that experienced the most success as a result of strong positioning in the industry included their Coffee labels, flour and baking products, Oils and food spreads. A 9-Cell Industry Attractiveness/Business Strength Matrix shows that the Industry attractiveness is relatively moderate. With many competitors and strong buyer power from large grocery chains such as Kroger, companies such as Smuckers have explored different strategies that have proved successful in what can be described as a saturated industry. The case insinuates that there may be opportunities in the industry in regards to special markets and perhaps Oils and Baking with sugar free products, but otherwise the recession, although it drove families to buy store bought as opposed to eating out, has had its effects on the food service industry as well.

Brand building, consumer health and wellness, and advertising and promotions were all critical to success in the industry. Kraft’s ability to compete with lower priced snacks showed its ability to differentiate itself from other lower priced competitors.

The Kraft Heinz Company successfully merged on July 2, 2015 when Heinz owned by Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital teamed up with Kraft Foods Group. The deal is considered one of the top most mergers in the food and beverage industry worldwide. Currently the company has its strong presence worldwide. Moreover both 3G Capital-a Brazilian Equity Firm and Warren Buffet together contributed by investing $10 billion in the deal making the company worth about $46 billion.

Sales had been flat for the first five years of the 2000s and were in decline. "In 2007, Kraft Foods China was an unprofitable, $100 million business that was not growing," noted Sanjay Khosla, Kraft Foods’ president of developing markets, in an interview published by the Boston Consulting Group. Kraft was even thinking of pulling the product out of the Chinese market completely, due to poor sales.

(a) As mentioned in the case study above, Kellogg is going through a challenging time. Perform an external audit on Kellogg. Discuss the opportunities and threats facing the company.

Enterprise recourse planning (ERP) is a business software that is a suite of applications intended to organize the business processes starting with planning to the point of shipping and payment. ERP operates in real time providing a shared database that supports the business process. It follows a consistent manner of tracking all aspects of the business across all functions and departments. offering so many levels for different management needs because it has the ability to customize the information as needed. This implementation paper will focus on HERSHEY FOODS CORPORATION by investigating and highlighting the reasons behind the catastrophe that Hershey foods corporation faced when implemented the ERP.