Question

Practical Exercise: Recipe of Success!

Few British knew about Dr Oetker a German and European leading food manufacturer who entered the UK market with a frozen pizza named "Pizza Ristorante". So, who is Dr Oetker?

Dr Oetker was a pharmacist from Biefeild in Germany who established the Oetker Group in 1891. Nowadays, the company is one of the largest family businesses in Germany with revenue of 3.5 billion euro per annum. The key ingredient of the company's success is quality; whether in management or product.

Quality of the best recipe:

Oetker management rose the curtain of Pizza Ristorante in Britain, in 2020 and astonishingly was the first investment for a huge and well-reputed food and beverage company from Germany. The promise has been to offer an authentic pizza taste even if it is frozen. In no months, Pizza Ristorante became a popular product across the UK as research pointed out that 76% of consumers give Pizza Ristorante preferences over its competitors' pizzas. Till recent years, the brand made a tremendous journey of success and well established in the UK market.

Recipe of Success:

Dr Oetker is an experienced company when it comes to introducing products in new markets, and food and beverage market, including its frozen pizza brand, a leader in the 23 European countries. Similarly, Ristorante frozen pizza enjoys success in the UK market. Due to its philosophy in quality, Pizza Ristorante is made from high-quality ingredients to satisfy customers who are interested in buying frozen pizzas. Moreover, before entering a market, the company thoroughly study the specific market needs and the nature of its competitors. Therefore, the company through its marketing research found that the dominate taste of the pizza was a thin and crispy segment, accordingly, the company decided to possibly add value by offering high quality and with competitive price of frozen pizza. The goal was to encourage consumers to revisit the frozen pizza category by tasting samples of an authentic pizzeria pizza of Ristorante Pizza.

Onwards and upwards.

As a result of Ristorante brand success, Dr Oetker launched several new products in the UK market; yoghurt, dessert brands 'Onken' is now established and doing well. Dr Oetker's new venture was acquiring SuperCook range of baking and cake decorating products. For now, both companies are in the phase of merging and re-introducing SuperCook with new packaging and promotional material.

Once again, Dr Oetker is a well-established company in the area of baking products back in Germany and EU with a long history of providing baking products. After major success in the frozen pizza segment in the UK, Dr Oekter may go ahead investing more resources in its newly developed product (SuperCook) and again Dr Oetker is aiming to become number one in baking product segment too by using its recipe of success, the one used when launching Ristorante Pizza. However, British baking products are popular for their traditional taste, thus, many UK bakers do not like to have a new thing in their baking process. Moreover, they are suspicious of the innovation in the baking material though this brand has been there in the UK for a long time.

Another task to be taken into consideration is to persuade the UK retailer and super grocery shops to spare shelves for SuperCook (after re-launching product this task may not be easy as it is seen). In other words, SuperCook needs the super grocery continuous support and to allocate shelf space as they used to do before Dr Oetker acquires the business.

The crucial part of the success of re-launch is recruiting a well-trained new salesforce.

Source: Adapted from articles originally in The Grocer, 18 May 2002, p. 30; 13 July 2002, p. 48; and the website: http://www.talkingretail.com/products, 22 February 2008.

2. The sales manager also understands the importance of giving the right sales incentives to the salesforce to have a smooth relaunch of SuperCook in the market. Therefore, the sales manager understands the pivotal role of sales budget in encouraging and controlling the salesforce. In the light of these facts, suggest best approaches to set up sales quotas or sales targets for the salespeople for the relaunched brand and how these are used as meterstick when measuring achievement.

Answer 1

SuperCook will have to ensure that the brand is the same and that there are no major changes undertaken after it was acquired by the german brand, it will also have to ensure that its baking technique has been the same even after it was acquired so that the grocery shops know that the product is the same and that the sales won't be impacted. Best approaches to set up sales quotas for the salespeople for the relaunched brand are higher the sales, higher the sales quotas for the sales people. The sales people will have to ensure in conveying to the audience that nothing has changed in the brand after it was acquired by Dr Oetker, instead the quality has improved and the number of satisfactory reviews a sales person gets, higher will be his quota and higher revenues for the sales person, as he is able to sell the product efficiently, as the positive review suggests. Sales targets could be set by assessing how much sales used to be before the acquisition and that whether now the sales are the same, so that one could get to know that people's tastes have remained same and there is no major change in their decisions, thereby grocery stores would give them the shelfspace.