Sunday, January 26, 2014

Business Mission: To continually nourish lives by making them healthier, easier and richer every day, and our online communities help us achieve that mission. Whether we’re interacting on a General Mills website or in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, a blog or any other social network, we build and protect our communities as great places to engage in great conversation, and discover information that nourishes your life.

Competitive advantage: This brand uses the Product/service differentiation competitive advantage. “The provision of something that is unique and valuable to buyers beyond simply offering a lower price than of the competition” (pg.24). Cheerios seeks more than just giving a reasonable price for its products, the company wishes to support families by offering a nutritious diet that can help lower cholesterols and live a healthy lifestyle. Having more than just a reasonable selling price, Cheerios continues to be families’ favorite cereal for over 70 years (This is what advertisement portrays at least). There are not many other cereal companies that can prove to do what Cheerios is accomplishing.


Growth strategy: This brand uses Market Development, “A market strategy that entails attracting new customers to existing products.” This company’s core product of course is selling their well-known cereal brand, Cheerios. Although this brand has many loyal customers, like any other business they want to expand theirs. To enlarge their corporation they use different growth strategies that fall under Market Development. For example, to get new customers to want their existing products they create different flavor cheerios. They also attract both adult consumers and kid consumers by tending to their needs. Adults want a healthy diet, so Cheerios make a cereal that is made with 100% whole grain oats. Kids want sweets, so Cheerios make cereals that have a wide variety of sweetened flavors such as honey, frosted, apple cinnamon, etc. In attempt to get more customers, Cheerios make cereal bars for those who have no time to sit down at their breakfast table to eat. All of these new uses for the same product really benefit to the growth of this brand.