Marketing Coursework on Cadbury.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Marketing Coursework

Cadbury is a successful company known for its chocolate bars. The market is very competitive and it is becoming more and more difficult to find new products that achieve long term success for the company.

I have been given the job as sales and marketing director for Cadbury and I have to develop a new product for the company. Cadbury is a successful company well known for selling chocolate bars.

Over the past 10 years Cadbury’s have produced a wide range of chocolate bars aimed at different target markets, which has had varied degrees of success, both in the uk and abroad. However the market is getting more competitive and it is becoming a lot harder to produce new products for long term success for the company.

Cadbury’s

Richard Tapper Cadbury moved to Birmingham from the West Country in the 1790’s, his son John Cadbury owned the shop next door to his father and sold tea, coffee, hops, mustard and unlike most cocoa and drinking chocolate which he made himself using a mortar and pestle.

Cocoa and drinking chocolate was established in the 1650’s and had remained an luxury enjoyed by the high class of the English society. John’s customers were members of the richest families of Birmingham at the time, which could afford to pay for the cocoa.

John Cadbury experimented with the cocoa using his mortar and pestle and produced a wide range of cocoa and chocolate drinks. Later on John added sugar and sold his products in a block which was added to hot water or milk.

John Cadbury promoted and advertised his products until he rose to being one of the leading tradesman of Birmingham and helped his shop grow. Soon later he became one of the first cocoa and drinking chocolate manufacturers.

Benjamin Cadbury the brother of John joined the company and they became the Cadbury brothers of Birmingham. A larger factory in the centre of Birmingham was bought.

Taxes on cocoa were dropped which made chocolate available to a wider selection of people so the business boomed however the partnership ended and John retired living his sons, George and Richard to run the business and they became the second Cadbury brothers of Birmingham and were awarded their first Royal Warrant.

The brothers discovered process for pressing the cocoa butter from the cocoa beans. This allowed the brothers to sell a new cocoa essence and all sorts of new types of eating chocolate which had never been made before.

The business outgrew the bridge street factory so the brothers moved to a Greenfield site which later was called Bournville. The business carried on growing and the brothers started producing milk chocolate for eating which would not be of good quality now but at the time was a revolution and their was big competition with the Swiss and their fancy chocolate.

Richard had a sudden death and George became the chairman, Richard and George’s sons became directors and Cadburys growth did not decline. By the 1900’s all sorts of chocolate products were being made and Cadbury released their first and biggest selling brand Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Cadbury’s today has factories all over the world and still maintains in being one of the biggest chocolate confectionary companies in the world.

Cadbury Products

Cadbury's brand has a wide consumer base with all ages and types of people buying it. This means that Cadbury’s Dairy Milk was never really targeted at a specific market. This was because Cadburys Dairy Milk is an old product but it’s repretation from the past allows it continueing in being one of cadbury’s leading products.

Fuse was launched in 1996 it is packed with lots of snacking ingredients and is aimed at those people whose fast moving lifestyles find them snacking. The target market is the 16 to 30 years the ones who are usually snacking. More than 250 different ingredients were tested in the making of this product. It took 5 years of planning to launch the fuse and cost 10 million pounds. It was mainly made to fill there gap in the developed market. When the fuse bar was launched it was a massive success and rose confectionary goods bought up within the year.

Target Markets

Most products produced today have aimed their products at a specific group of people like say a drill is targeted at a man who does some DIY or a sewing machine more at older women etc.

This is easy enough but when you get further down to something less specific like confectionary goods each different brand but the same thing a chocolate bar still try and target different groups or into different groups for why they are bought.

For example Cadbury roses is a product that is not bought for self indulgence or for snacking but more for a gift for someone else. However a regular Cadburys dairy milk would not be bought as a gift but to eat yourself or perhaps share with friends. These little groups are called market segments and these segments are usually where the products are aimed.