Marketing and Product

Allstar Brands’ brand management team will make decisions based on the assumptions gained from corporate standings and market research. Allround cold medication will capitalize on its high brand awareness and solid market share to increase revenue through promotional allowances, product diversification and bigger direct to consumer promotions. Our primary focus is direct channel distribution to mass merchandisers, large grocery stores and chain drugstores. New product reformulation for children’s medicine and adult capsule are expected to increase market share and long-term profitability. We predict a reduction in advertising costs due to strong brand awareness.

After a period of declining sales for Allround, we increased the advertising budget to be consistent with our competitor’s budget. We decided to be very consistent with our strategy over the ten periods; however, in hindsight we should have implemented a more dynamic strategy that factored in the changing

We decided to increase Allround’s pricing by no more than $0.10 per period with a final price of $5.70. As it relates to Allround + we took a bigger risk, increasing price by $0.75 with a final pricing of $6.05. The results did not prove to be as favorable as we would have liked. Although sales increased, our net income, stocks and share of manufacturer sales fluctuated throughout the simulation. Some of the decisions made did not always prove favorable, for our team, Allround went from $102.1M to $148.6M in unit sales and $355.3M to $537.8M in sales. (See figure 1). Allround + went from $7.4M to $38.6M in unit sales and grew from $24.2 to $109.8M in

Smashburger is a rapidly expanding burger restaurant concept; they have announced a summary of its 2011 accomplishments and their marketing and expansion plans for 2012. Opening their first location in 2007 and growing rapidly ever since, now in 2011 Smashburger had yet another successful year of growth and consumer acceptance. Smashburger is quickly gaining national recognition for its juicy handmade burgers that are smashed fresh and served delicious, along with its localized recipes that celebrate regional taste profiles in

All the above factors restrict the penetration of Allround and impact its retention ratio. This is a serious concern that needs to be addressed immediately. Allround team has an opportunity to leverage its current customer strengths to penetrate into other customer segments that are currently not in the mix by assessing their needs and wants. At a high level they can categorize their segments into several categories like cold, cough, allergy, other and also based on demographics; young singles, young families, mature families, empty nesters, retired, children etc. They could use social media effectively for this purpose. Overall the goal is to determine a strategy to achieve long term segment attractiveness eventually in all customer segments. They also need to be cognizant of the price sensitivity of a huge percentage of the consumers of the industry. Population growth is also a major factor which is growing at a 0.9%. The niche products targeting non - penetrated customer segments by its competitors, loss leaders, inflation, brand formulation and aggressive marketing strategies from competitors are the biggest threats to All round’s market share and retention ratio.

A feasible solution is a global optimum if there are no other feasible points with a better objective function value in the feasible region.

The Company currently only has one brand on the market, Allround. A resource the company currently has would be within the Research and Development department there are two reformulations available to replace the current Allround product formulation. This would allow the company to utilize the brand awareness and image as an effective OTC medication and reach a different customer market with the re-developed product. AllStar Brands would be able to reach consumers that are concerned with the side effects or to reach those with alternative needs than what we are currently meeting with our product containing the cough suppressant addition.

1. As a marketing consultant for a chain of hair salons, you have been asked to evaluate the kids’ market as a potential segment for the chain to target. Evaluate the kids’ segment against the four criteria for successful market segmentation.

From period 1 to 3, only ALLROUND was available and we targeted to make it as a core product of ALLSTAR. Our primary goal was to expand the market share and gain the market awareness of the brand name. To make it success, we refined the ingredients to reduce the side effect so that the market could easily recognize ALLROUND. However, the market share of ALLROUND only increased slowly even we boosted the advertisement and increased the reminder to perform

Providing Over-The-Counter medicine Allstar targets people who have common health problems. The best way to segment Allstar’s customers would be by the following two major categories: illness (cold, cough, allergy) and demographics (young singles, young families, mature families, empty nesters, retired). Allstar Brands invests in marketing research to learn about the ever changing preferences and trends of the market. The information the Company gathers from this research is then used to make according decisions to satisfy each particular category of customer.

The problematic issue for Bristol-Myers was to position its new aspirin drug to the potential customers and decide a good price which can not only make it acceptable by the customers, but also give a fair profit to the company. In other words, the company had to formulate an effective marketing and promotional strategy for its new drug, Datril. The company was not merely willing to establish its new brand in the analgesic market; the main issue was to establish this new brand in the presence of a strong competitor, Tylenol.

Allstar Brands' Allround product is a 4-hour multi-symptom, over-the-counter, liquid medicine used to treat colds, coughs, and allergies. Allround is typically used at night because of the strength of the medication and because the alcohol and antihistamine helps consumers rest. When LSD&J took over as Brand Managers, our strategy was two-fold; grow the top and grow the bottom of the company. Our goal was to make the company strong and stable to ensure Allstar remains one of the top brands of medicine for years to come. Our strategy to grow the bottom was to focus on keeping our gross profit margin stable by minimizing operating cost, manufacturing cost and fixed cost. Our strategy to grow the top was to increase sales and net income.

Another reason was its bids conversion ratio which was falling year by year which can be seen from following table:

The purpose of this document is to discuss the progress of Allstar through the last ten periods. Analyze the marketing strategy and rational for the decisions and adjustments in each period and highlight the lessons learnt from the experience. The high level objectives set for Allstar at the beginning of the period were as follows:

From personal experience and as reflected in our market research most consumers prefer to purchase perishable consumables at a local store and we will need to entice our targeted consumers to come to the store fronts or to order online once they have tasted and enjoyed our products. Much like Starbucks whose coffee shops sell a lot of items not related to coffee we must consider adding the intrinsic items that our customers would find interesting such as free wireless internet access from each storefront. This feature would also help us promote our website and expand our customer base. We must continue to collect feedback from all of our market areas and customer to make sure we keep our product fresh and exciting.