Case: Kingsford Charcoal

Define problem Kingsford is a branch product group of Clorox. The main product of Kingsford is charcoal. The business performance of this brand was good among the competitors, but during the recent years, it tends to be worse.The marketers of this company are trying to find a way to solve this problem by using the analysis and informations they got which cover many aspects. According to the analysis, the biggest competitor of Kingsford is Royal Oak and Private Label. Kingsford, as a brand with good brand awareness, keeps having better sales and earning performances than that of other FY, the sales volume dropped in 2000 and the category has become soft. At the end of 2000, about 5.7% decline happened in food …show more content…

If they found that Charcoal could not satisfy the market demand, they would like to quit them and find the alternatives. Therefore, we should promote the products consistently and try to have a good performance in channel management.

Alternatives:
1.The short term benefits of Kingsford have been damaged by poor sales volume, so taking price increases could satisfy the short term needs and make sure the cash flow works well. Since Kingsford has a big group of loyal customers, so this activities may not cause a big customer losing.
Arranging a new ads campaign to highlight the advantages of Charcoal, and increasing the investment in ads area. The survey showed that most people enjoy the taste of charcoal grilled food because they taste like real barbecue. This is a good selling point because this is the weakness of the competitor and it is the value that they will never get. Moreover, ads could help people find the brand identity they have had. Since the

long history of Kingsford, the marketers could get some secondary information from the experiences and make more profits.
Sales group tend to use MAPS as their strategy. They develop the local market and educate the individual store. They also help the channel partner to make business plan and make sure that their product could be treated consistently across store.
In order to higher the profits in light season, sales people tried to