Britannia - A Treat for Everyone (By Vaibhav Sham Sutrave)

CASE STUDY ON MARKETING STRATEGY OF BRITANNIA BISCUITS

Introduction:

In view of the fact that Britannia Industries Limited is a food based organization which produces a large variety of Biscuits, Dairy products, Rusk, Bread and Cakes, it is evident that they have now excelled in their business. Britannia Industries Limited is a public food industry, with its headquarters located in Bangalore, well-known for its Britannia and Tiger biscuits. It now has around 300 stores spread, owned by DANONE and KALABAKAN Investments in India. As we know, they deal in Biscuits, Rusk, Dairy products, Bread and Cakes.
Within this document the evidence of company’s current position and success is at hand with a concentration on the marketing mix and the STP analysis of Britannia. In brief, we see that Britannia Industries Limited continues to improve the quality of their products to meet the consumer’s demands and prevail over the competitive edge.         

About Britannia biscuits:

Britannia Biscuits was set up in 1892, in a very plain and ordinary house in Kolkata with the initial investments of Rs. 295. By 1978, Britannia biscuits had crossed 60% of the shares of the firm, followed by renaming the company to Britannia Industries Limited(BIL) and in 1983 it crossed Rs 100 crores revenue margin. Then as we know, in 1992 it celebrated its Platinum Jubilee. In the 21st century it came out as India’s largest and most famous brand of biscuit.

Now Britannia is no more just another ordinary biscuit but it is one of the most renowned and well known biscuit in the world. From a small fairy tale it reached new standards and from a small investment it has got a high margin of profit which has been very positive for the company investors.

They have a variety of biscuits even considering the health and economy to the life-style oriented types. BIL has decided to focus on seven core brands in the biscuits category. The brands include Good Day, Tiger, 50-50, Snacks, and the Cream Treat, bourbon, marigold.

Success parameters:

·       Growth rate and profitability:

Even though Britannia biscuits started off by selling their products in India, they slowly expanded and started to export it to other parts of the world. By doing so, they adapted to the different cultures of those countries and made plans for those neighbouring areas and researched and analysed which product has more demand than the others and ways to improve their sales.

Promoting their brands is a very essential idea for their marketing strategy as it helps understand the consumers the variety of benefits they get while purchasing the product. They should advertise and publicize their message clearly stating the facts.

Based on the marketing strategies, we understand that building a brand is an important part of the company. They understand how to increase sales and profits in a short span of time while continuing to promote its variety of brands to create loyal consumers.

Britannia consolidated net profit increases 52% for the year. India’s leading food company, reported consolidated revenue growth if 11.3% for the year at Rs. 6829 crores. Profit from operations and net profit increase by 56.6% and 52.3% at Rs. 544 crores and Rs. 395 crores respectively.

·       Market share:

The current market capitalisation stands at Rs 12,440.50 crore. The company has reported consolidated sales of Rs 1,777.28 crore and a Net Profit of Rs 108.12 crore for the quarter ended Mar 2014. With a market share of 38% and 27% y-o-y growth .

Britannia has been able to find itself at the top position in India in manufacturing and sales of biscuit, bread, cake, dairy products and rusk. The net profit grew significantly at 382% from Rs 396 MN in 1998-99 to Rs 1,910 MN in 2007-08, giving a CAGR of 19.1%. As per latest financial reports, the issued and paid up capital of Britannia amounts to 23, 890,163 equity shares having a nominal value of Rs 10 each and the shareholder base is about 25,300 in number. Also it features as one of the top 100 most trusted brands in the world. This enormous success and huge brand value is the compounded result of its excellent            marketing strategy and efficient distribution network.                             

·        Brand image:

Britannia has got very good image among its customer base in terms of reliability and quality of products. The quality perception of the brand among customers is positive and very strong; it appears in saying “Britannia can’t compromise with its quality of products”. Almost every customer able to recall its brand logo and more than one product name which shows consumer is highly aware of brand Britannia. The customer those have been consuming this brand from very long time they rarely make any shift or even try any different brand.

Britannia has been able to find itself at the top position in India in manufacturing and sales of biscuit, bread, cake, dairy products and rusk. The net profit grew significantly at 382% from Rs 396 MN in 1998-99 to Rs 1,910 MN in 2007-08, giving a CAGR of 19.1%. As per latest financial reports, the issued and paid up capital of Britannia amounts to 23, 890,163 equity shares having a nominal value of Rs 10 each and the shareholder base is about 25,300 in number. Also it features as one of the top 100 most trusted brands in the world. This enormous success and huge brand value is the compounded result of its excellent            marketing strategy and efficient distribution network.                             

·        Brand image:

Britannia has got very good image among its customer base in terms of reliability and quality of products. The quality perception of the brand among customers is positive and very strong; it appears in saying “Britannia can’t compromise with its quality of products”. Almost every customer able to recall its brand logo and more than one product name which shows consumer is highly aware of brand Britannia. The customer those have been consuming this brand from very long time they rarely make any shift or even try any different brand.

Marketing strategies:

Marketing Strategy include anything from facts, events, procedures, values and personalities. Britannia nearly sells all their products all over India and even exports it other few countries. Their market rate kept growing every year in the Indian market. Therefore, BIL has implemented a Diversification strategy, so that it becomes the market leader in the food and biscuits industry. But they made sure that when they diversify, they make similar kinds of products such as cheese, dairy products and even more bakery items. So the company can realize their marketing strategies by underlining the opportunities in the market. There are a various different strategies they adopted. The main marketing strategies followed by them are-

·       Product strategy.

·       Reduced losses by way of elimination of losses.

·  Target customers to capture growth in each category by segmenting the market both along conventional lines and through segmentation.

·       Look beyond the product, at the customer. And use knowledge to reposition the brand.

·       High class R&D and recently enhanced testing and evaluation facilities.

·       A corporate image of quality.

Marketing mix:

·       Product:

As we all know, Britannia biscuits still have higher growth potential in the market as its one of the best-known brands in India and popular among other countries as well. Even though they have come up with new variety of biscuits, they still emphasis on their initial biscuit brands such as Tiger, Good Day, Marie, Treat and even more. 

·       Tiger: Tiger, launched in 1997, became the largest brand in Britannia's portfolio in the very first year of its launch and continues to be so till today. Tiger is described as “nutri-glucose” biscuits and comes with the added goodness of wheat and milk.

·       Good day: It is one of the fastest growing brands under Britannia and is a leader with almost 2/3 share of market. It is a real butter biscuit and infuses happiness into people daily lives. It is available in good day pista badam, good day Choco chips, and good day coconut

·       50-50: Britannia 50-50 is considered as the “very very tasty tasty” snack. With the success of 50-50, another variant was launched named Maska Chaska which is a thin and crispy snack with peppery flavour.

·       Marie gold: it is one of the Britannia’s oldest brands and is the #1 in its category since a long time. It is crispy, light, healthy and delicious. It is a must for every tea break

·       Cream treat: Treat is a range of delicious cream biscuits with yummy treasures within the biscuit shells. It offers a wide variety of flavours, such as Bourbon & Elaichi, fruit flavoured cream such as mango, orange, pineapple and jimjams range.

·       Milk bikis: Milk cream is a variant launched under Milk Bikis. These are round biscuits with smiley faces, full of milk cream, making it popular among children.

·       Nutrichoice: Britannia introduced NutriChoice range of healthy biscuits in 1998. It is delightfully tasty biscuits. The brand is targeted towards overall health and wellness for adults.

·       Price:

Ø  LOWER SEGMENT: To target the price sensitive customers, the company has introduced biscuits that provide them value for money and have nutritional value

                                    Tiger (100gms) – Rs. 5

Milk Bikis (100gms) – Rs. 7

 

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Ø  MIDDLE SEGMENT: The Company has a range of biscuits that lie in the mid-segment that are light and include both sweet and salty variety.

                                      

                                       50-50 (135gms) – Rs.10

                   Marie Gold (100gms) – Rs.13

                   Time Pass (75gms) – Rs.15

                   Little Hearts (67gms) – Rs. 10

                   Nice time (100 gms)-Rs.10

 

Ø  PREMIUM SEGMENT: The premium segment offers biscuits that have more to them in addition to the taste and value for money. They offer a wide assortment of biscuits with dry fruits and different cream flavours.

Good Day (100gms) – Rs. 12

Treat (100gms) – Rs. 9 to Rs. 12

Bourbon (100gms)-  Rs.10

NutriChoice Digestive (100gms) – Rs. 12

Therefore, doing this has enabled Britannia to widen its customer base.

·       Place:

Ø  For FMCG products, distribution channels are very important. For biscuits, distribution and visibility are extremely important as it's partly an impulse purchase product. And in biscuits, setting up a distribution channel is anything but easy.

      

Ø  Britannia Industries Ltd. is one of India's leading producers of biscuits and other bakery products. The company is partially owned by the French company Group DANONE, one of the world’s largest food products company. BIL has a widespread retail distribution network that services 400,000 retail outlets in 2,200 towns with the help of 2,500 distributors.

Ø  In addition to this, the company is constantly expanding its product portfolio and retail network. Britannia's managers are constantly on the move, given this breadth and depth of its business and the geographic spread.

Ø  The company’s plants are located in India’s four major metropolitan cities- Kolkata in eastern India, Chennai in southern India and Delhi and   Uttaranchal in northern India. Combined, these facilities employ more than   4,300 people and yet only make 30% of the company’s products. Sixty-one   other contracted factories produce the remaining 70% of Britannia’s    product line.

     

·       Promotion:

Ø  Eat Healthy, Think Better! - This tag line is something that has changed the face of Britannia completely. This logo encapsulates the core essence of Britannia-healthy, nutritious, optimistic-and combines it with a delightful product range to offer variety and choice to customers.

Ø  ”Swasth Khao Tan Man Jagao” promises the new generation a healthy and nutritious alternative-that is also delightful and tasty.

Ø  "BRITTANIA KHAO, WORLD CUP JAO" was the theme adopted in 1999. People bought the biscuit packs and searched for the lucky scratch for flying to England to see world Cup Cricket match. The sales bounced 37% high on account of this strategy. The scheme came alive again during the world Cup Match in 2002-2003 in South Africa.

Ø  "Lagan - the super hit movie” brought fame to Britannia Biscuits also as 40000 buyers of Britannia Biscuit packs were invited to see and a small lucky group to play the game with the movie Stars of Lagan. It proved to be a novel way to promote a product - a perception in correct proportion indeed!! Britannia spends approx. 10 % of its sales on marketing.

Ø  Interestingly, biscuits captured the No.1 slot among all the categories surveyed, with 21 per cent respondents claiming to have seen or heard a biscuit-category related promotion. This was followed by corporate promotions (11.5 per cent) and televisions (4.8 per cent). Britannia had the highest promotion recall level among all brands (20.2 per cent), followed by LG Electronics (9.2 per cent), Samsung (3.6 per cent) and Pepsi (2.5 per cent).

Ø  Contests in the form of gift offers, slogans, scratch cards and related items were played back by 14 per cent of the respondents interviewed, according to the NFO findings.

Ø  Britannia has been using Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid as its brand ambassadors.

Ø  In addition to that Britannia makes continuous efforts to come forward with newer and innovative promotional campaigns like when TIGER brand was introduced in the market, Britannia supplied Note Books, Scales, and Pencils to Children in the name of its new brand free of cost.

INTERNAL MARKETING:

With an internal marketing strategy, employees are treated as “internal customers” who must be convinced of a company's vision and worth just as aggressively as “external customers.” The goal of internal marketing is to align every aspect of a company’s internal operations to ensure they are as capable as possible of providing value to customers. If a company can operate in a coordinated and standardized way, that company can provide a more consistent experience to their customers.

At Britannia they believe in creating growth opportunities by encouraging “idea leadership” and taking responsibility for decision making. their work culture can be characterized by strong performance focus coupled with high result orientation. However Britannia is incomplete without an essential ingredient…FUN!!! Every new joinee finds a friend and a mentor in every Britannian he or she encounters during his/her tenure in this organization. The Family like culture of this 100 year young organization fuels the life-blood of every Britannian and has helped strengthened bonds manifold across almost a century. This strategy of the company helps to make their internal marketing strong.

EXTERNAL MARKETING:

External marketing is done by the companies to attract the customers by   giving promises. Britannia does their external marketing with help of advertisements in newspaper, TV, radio etc. Britannia gives promises of quality, health and tastes to the customer.

Ads from newspaper and magazines

Commercials on TV

Ø Commercial of good-day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYrH6BUOhFI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2DKr83KfXo

Ø Commercial of tiger:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aL191Y5g9c

Ø Commercial of 50-50:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWrceRZWYyc

Ø Commercial of little heart:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGs7hShBAuw

Ø Commercial of bourbon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOqLZ4VxT1o

Unique selling proposition

Unique selling proposition of Britannia biscuits is brand loyalty due to its high quality well packaged products.

Differentiation:

Ø  Large variety and range of products.

Ø  Most intensive distribution coverage.

Ø  Britannia has image that generates fun along with the belief of good quality.

Ø  Plays perfectly around its tag line “eat healthy ,think better”

Customer attraction, retention and satisfaction:

The company's strategy is designed to attract new consumer segments and widen its consumer base with its well packaged low priced offerings. Britannia’s success has also come from its formidable. Britannia got success in retention of its product due to brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is more based on taste, flavours and quality of products. Britannia provides that   taste, variety and quality which helps to attract and retain its customers. In addition to this company has been using stars to promote their products that they can attract the customers. Britannia makes continuous efforts to come forward with newer and innovative promotional campaigns like when TIGER brand was introduced in the market, Britannia supplied Note Books, Scales, and Pencils to Children in the name of its new brand free of cost so that customers get attract towards them.

Values:

Values define the business in terms of the principles and values that the business leaders will follow. They provide the bounds or limits of how the business leaders will conduct their activities while carrying out the vision and mission. Britannia’s Core Values:

·       Provide economically sound business opportunities for our members.

·       Practice high ethical business standards.

·       Respect and protect the environment.

·       Produce high quality products that are safe for consumers.

·       Meet the changing needs and desires of consumers.

Swot analysis:

Segmentation:

·       Age group: Different products for different age groups for example tiger and treat for kids, little hearts for youths and good-day for elders.

·       Occasions: Britannia’s shubhkaamnaaye is for special occasions like Diwali.

·       Benefits: products like milk bikis, nutrichoice, Britannia tiger are healthy and nutricious.

Targeting:

·       Rural and urban coverage through strong distribution channels.

·       Target all age group through variety of products i.e. age wise segmented marketing.

·       Britannia follows full market coverage pattern of target market selection.it has differentiated target market pattern i.e. it operates in several market segments and design different product for each.  

Positioning:

·       Full market positioning: Britannia is market leader in cookies segments.

·       Use positioning: Nutrichoice products for diabetic people.

·       Benefit positioning: with eat healthy think better, Britannia positions itself as healthy and nutritious alternative.

Conclusion:

Now that we have an in-depth view of the company’s profile, marketing strategy and marketing mix, it shows the different methods used to adapt to promote and publicize their products across India and other countries. Based on the information researched, we find that they focus on consumer needs to a very large extent. This is shown by the fact that, since consumers are more health conscious nowadays, they have introduced NutriChoice Diabetic Biscuits. It is also proven by their tagline, “Eat Healthy, Think Better”. In conclusion, we see that how a small sized company has grown to be one of the largest biscuit selling brands across India and many other countries world-wide.   

Submitted by-

Vaibhav sutrave

MM01

ROLL NO.1404014