ods USA, which in turn is a major contributor to revenues and profits of the General Foods Corporation. The General Foods Corporation was acquired by the Philip Morris Company in 1985, and by 1987 accounted for approximately 40 percent of the total revenues of Philip Morris.
In 1987, the last complete year prior to the time frame of this case, the General Foods Corporation expended $500 million, or 5.2 percent of revenues, on print and television advertising. The key business goal for the General Foods Corporation is to grow faster than the competition in both volume and earnings in both an overall corporate context and in specific lines of business.
In the mid 1980s, Post Cereals decided to target nutritionally aware households through the implementation of a new company strategy the Starchild strategy. The Crispy Critters cereal product was introduced as a part of this strategy in mid year 1987. By mid year 1988, the brand was failing to attain its expected market share, and its performance was far below that of the market leading products in the nutritionally sound segment of the ready to eat cereal market.
The introduction and market performance of the Crispy Critters cereal product is analyzed in three contexts. The areas of analysis are as follows:
1. Segmentation, targeting, and positioning.
As a part of the Post Cereals Starbird strategy, Crispy Critters was developed as a wholesome, ready to eat cereal product for children the first such product for Post. Of the many factors which are important in the marketing of products, new product development, product positioning, branding, and promotional strategy are among the key elements in the performance of the marketing function for any firm. Product development consists of the efforts of a company to increase the level of its sales by developing new or improved products for its current markets. Post Cereals has not been in the recent past highly successf...