Barkleys Food Case Study

Barkleys Food Case Study

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Joyce Stevenson, the manager of marketing research for Barkley Foods, had just left an emergency meeting with the firm’s president. An opportunity to buy an established line of gourmet (high-quality/high-priced) frozen dinners had arisen. This decision depended on judgments about the future prospects of the gourmet frozen dinner market and whether Barkley could achieve a competitive advantage She had pressed for such participation and now she had to deliver.

Because of prior work on frozen fruit juices, Joyce had some knowledge of the gourmet frozen market. Since then, other firms have entered the industry with complete gourmet dinners (including Swanson’s Le Menu and Armour’s Dinner Classics). The distinction between entrees, dinners, and the three main types of food offered—conventional, ethnic (i.e., Benihana Restaurant Classics), or low-calorie (i.e., Weight Watchers or Light & Elegant)—define relevant submarkets. Joyce hypothesized that the gourmet frozen food buyer differs from the buyer of conventional “TV dinners” in several respects.

Barkley Foods was a diversified food company with sales of $2.3 billion. Over 80 percent of its sales came from branded packaged food products sold nationally through grocery stores. Their brands typically held a solid second-place position in the supermarket.

She wrote down the following four sets of questions to guide the thinking of the research group:

You are the Marketing Research Manager for Barkley Foods; you just left an emergency meeting with the firm’s president. There is an opportunity to buy an established line of gourmet (high-quality/high-priced) frozen dinners had arisen.
Please consider the following four topics to help guide your decisions as the manager of the research group:

Market analysis
Environmental analysis
Customer analysis
Competitor analysis

What is your target market and the importance of your target market to competitors?
What are the potential drawbacks for Barkley Foods entering a particular marketing environment of your choice?
Are there any secondary entrants that could impact Barkley Foods business?