Market research: The UK ice cream market (2011) - ‘Gelato’

Thèmes abordés

Market research, ice cream market, 2011

Résumé du document

According to a study in the UK, “The ice cream sector is a major part of the UK's food economy with an estimated value of £4 billion” and “Ice cream sales contribute £1.4 bn to the UK economy” (BBC News (b) 2010). As we can observe, there is a substantial ice cream market in the UK with major opportunities considering the annual consumption per capita of 5.2 liters (Euroglaces 2009 Ice Cream Market Report).
in order to identify the major competitors of Carte D'Or luxury ice cream, we have to examine the premium and luxury ice cream segments. Main competitors in the premium and luxury sector are Nestlé, Unilever Group, Mars Inc, Baskin Robbins and others independents labels. However, within these international groups, one can perceive competition between internal brands such as Ben & Jerry's and Carte D'Or within the Unilever Group. In the UK, the three major ice cream brands are Carte D'Or (natural product), Ben & Jerry's (home-made product) and Haagen-Dazs (organic product); Three different brands, three different ways of manufacture , and nevertheless the three leaders on the UK ice-cream market.

But making this kind of promotions is not enough to expand brand. To fix this matter, we have to find a new product, a new category of product fit to potential customers. Recently, a product has been noticed with a lot of potential for the ice-cream market: gelato. Indeed, gelato is a new way of making ice-cream, created by Antonio Federici who received the award for “best ice-cream in the world 2009” by the IICC (International Ice Cream Consortium). IICC is one of the main collective groups of ice cream manufacturers just after Unilever and Nestlé (FoodBev, 2009). Maybe there is scope for this product development within this “new category”.

However, companies have their best turn over during winter and want to extend their sales to all seasons. Manufacturers are trying to de-seasonalise ice cream to sell it all along the year (Market analyst Mintel, 2009). To go in that way, they tried to promote ice cream by organizing susbstantial promotion by time (examples of Easter, Halloween).
Remain the questions: what kind of specific customer? Which kind of product? To sum up: what do today's buyers want?

Extraits

[...] A creative report should be more playful, keeping the substance but changing the form. As I read in The Market Research Toolbox (1996) of McQuarrie, the substance should be: - Executive summary and introduction - Research objectives - Methodology - Results - Limitations - Conclusion and recommendations - Appendices To be more playful, the idea is to change the nature of the support to keep the attention of people who are listening, in respecting the flow: Beginning by the interlocutor making a short executive summary and an introduction. [...]

[...] This contribution will make them totally set in the project. After, we will explain the methodology used. As we have made a questionnaire, we can show video when we are interviewing people to see the typical profile of person that we have interrogate. To make them as if they were on place. Then, to show up the results, we will use visuals charts and graphs to be clear and keeping simple the results. Notice that at the beginning of the presentation papers will be given with the plan and all the appendices. [...]

[...] The second one, “What kind of ice cream do you take permit again to frame subjects as we are interested by the premium and luxury sector. The two next questions help to know better subjects tastes with the packaging and the perfume. Then the next questions are on the frequency and place where they use to buy ice-cream. In order to try to identify the best moment for them to purchase the product. For “Where do you use to buy ice I put a case in order to have new idea of where we should sell the product. [...]

[...] To take a look on ice cream competitors towards Carte D'Or, we have to do it on the premium and luxury part. Main competitors in the premium and luxury sector are Nestlé, Unilever Group, Mars Inc, Baskin Robbins and others independents labels. However, inside these big and international groups there are making auto-competition with their own's brands like Ben & Jerry's and Carte D'Or inside Unilever Group. In UK, main competitor's brands are Carte D'Or (natural products), Ben & Jerry's (home-made) and Haagen-Dazs (organic products). Three different brands, three different ways of making but three leaders on the UK ice-cream market. [...]

[...] 1.2 Objectives It is important to settle objectives at the beginning of the marketing research: “most marketing research is a waste of time. The money is wasted because the company has not defined the market properly or segmented it properly” (Malcolm McDonald, Bradley 2007:34). Indeed, we have to determine what specific information is required to complete the research question Research Questions: - To identify is there are opportunities for Gelato in UK's ice-cream market. - To determine which segment of customers reply to Gelato segment. [...]