As consumers have become more aware of the impact an unhealthy diet can have, socio-cultural views in the United Kingdom have moved towards foods with lower levels of salt, fat and sugar. This has had a big impact on convenience and in particular snack foods such as crisps. PepsiCo who own the UK's leading crisp brand, 'Walkers Crisps' is such a company and experienced a sales loss of 6.6 % in 20051 when compared to the previous year. This is a loss of ã28.6 million and as Mike White, the President of PepsiCo's International Division, explains this loss resulted in the closure of a factory:"A fall in crisps sales and changes in snack habits have caused the closure of our Widnes plant with the loss of 540 jobs".2This caused PepsiCo to adopt a consumer - centred marketing approach, where they identified that consumers wanted lower amounts of saturated fats and salt in their snacks.
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PepsiCo 4They then tried to minimise these amounts by changing the ingredients and the way in which the product was produced to make it more appealing to the consumer. Once this had been implemented a large scale marketing campaign was launched which concentrated on the improvements to the product and made this information freely accessible to gain the trust of its consumers. Along with this PepsiCo also undertook a 'stay fit' initiative consisting of the distribution of Pedometers and be a founding member of the I.S.B.A., which further developed the idea that eating their product did not make you unhealthy.
Using this marketing approach indicates that PepsiCo have used a differential competitive strategy, as they have made a conscious effort to ensure that their product seems healthier than any other crisp producing competitor. By using this strategy PepsiCo aim to increase sales by encouraging...