Strategies of McCain Foods
There are several marketing and distribution strategies employed by McCain Foods in order to keep themselves up with the market. Marketing strategies are the core strategies that define how the product and service reaches to the customers. McCain foods comes under the highly competitive Food and Beverages Industry for which an effective marketing mix is employed making the company successful and one of the leading company in its domain (Essays, 2018). The 4ps of the market; price, promotion, place and product, are the most effective tools to ensure the brand loyalty and customer retention. Marketing mix ensures overall effectiveness of the company’s strategies as they are the building blocks of marketing strategy

First and foremost, McCain Food’s unique competency is ‘Calories in/ Calories out’ (how-mccain-responds-to-changes-in-the-external-environment, 2019) concept which awares the consumers of the products’ healthy attributes. This makes the product highly suitable for its target audience since its audience is mostly moms who buys the company’s products for their kids. Moms are sensitive for their kids and would obviously opt for healthy food. McCain Foods have efficiently marketed its product through the tagline of ‘It’s All Good’ (how-mccain-responds-to-changes-in-the-external-environment, 2019) to imply that taste as well as the food’s ingredients are all good for the consumers. The company also ensures its quality of food through its own potato seed development. This is again, another unique selling point for the company to increase their brand loyalty. The pricing strategy of the McCain Foods is in such a way that it supports customer centric approach where any one price model is not kept in place, instead, various strategies are employed and consumers are given various perks and promotional pricing benefits to encourage them to buy the product (Essays, 2018).

The place of the marketing mix refers to the channels employed by company for positioning its products. So the point of sales of McCain Foods is the wholesaler and the retailer who channelize it in the supermarkets, making it a business-to-business organization (Essays, 2018). This way the product reaches to the consumers through these wholesalers and retailers, increasing the network of reach.

McCain promotes its products on its unique tagline and selling points i.e. ‘It’s All Good’ and transparency of the ingredients involved (Essays, 2018). The consumers are informed about the ingredients of the product so their trust level in the brand increases. Advertising campaigns are designed for children under 12 years of age, to attract them towards the product while the company uses emotional advertising (Essays, 2018) for its consumers to increase brand knowledge and brand recall. All the strategies are directed to increase the convenience and customer base using the core competencies which differentiates the company from the competitors. The target audience is kept in mind to understand and direct the strategies towards them.

Analysis of External Environment

Social, Legal, Economic, Political and Technological analysis of the company’s external environment shows that the environment is fast changing and with these strong external forces. Firstly, social forces are the ones that affect any business through new emerging trends. There has been recent trends in consumer’s changing eating habits as the rise of junk food consumption and obesity is increasing (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). People are moving towards healthy eating and prefer healthy food for their loved ones.

Another factor that affects the business externally is the legal factor. There are certain standards and values that the company needs to closely follow in order to deal with this external force. The Food Standard Agency of the government has suggested that the company put red and green lights for...…company has to keep a close check of, like Food Safety Law, Trade Descriptions Act etc. to ensure that the business can successfully operate in the country (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015).

To respond to the economic factors, McCain has kept consumer profiles to understand their income levels by which McCain Foods derives its strategies. McCain Foods develops the product that fits the consumer’s purchasing power and their convenience of use, to counter these external factors (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). The political factors are also responded by McCain Foods effectively through supporting the health campaigns initiated by the government. It claims that its products are potato-based and are processed and cooked in a very effective and simple manner as to ensure their consumer’s health (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). Since the government is a very powerful body, all its rules and laws are compiled in all their strategic level decisions where they derive their basic strategies.

McCain Foods has successfully employed technology within its business operations. To reduce the salt content which is highly detrimental to health, sunflower seed oil is used by extracting it from the sunflower seeds using technology (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). Also, with the use of sunflower oil, they were able to cut 70% saturated fat, making the potato based product healthier for its target audience (SLEPT Analysis of McCain Foods, 2015). Analyzing through SLEPT, the company has been effective in countering and responding to various external factors and changes to the external environmental as external environment is vulnerable to changes which can either be opportunity for the company or a threat for it. The important part is how the company handles and responds to such changes and McCain Foods have been apparently quite successful in responding to the dynamic market.…