Show circuit frozen dinner

Tyler Pet Foods currently sells a frozen dog food product in a few stores in the southwestern U.S. This dog food is considerably better quality than the major companies’ offerings. Because it was created as a food for dog breeders, it is made to very high standards. The food is made from uncooked meat and is frozen to preserve freshness. The product is successful in its current marketbecause of the demanding nature of its customers despite being more costly than mass market pet food. The product is known to give dogs a smoother, glossy coat. In the dog food market, this product is very unique.

The dog food market is enormous – a $5.6 Billion dollar market. However, this is a mass market, and the receptiveness of this market to a very different type of dog food is not at allclear. It appears that most people buy their dog food rather oblivious to its real quality or who actually manufacturers, or even what it actually is. Therefore, most dog food is simple, low quality food made by faceless conglomerates. Positioning within this market will require some careful consideration of the market dynamics.

The competition is a set of massive corporations with wellestablished distribution mechanisms. These companies have a global reach and are well entrenched. Their economies of scale allow them to have low operating costs as well as

low unit costs for their products. Their products are heavily advertised. Grocery stores trust them to maintain reliable demand through their large scale advertising budgets. Advertising budgets, particularily for productlaunches, run into the millions of dollars.

Show Circuit Frozen Dog Dinner is a new product, at least to the consumer market. It is new on several fronts. Tyler pet foods as a manufacturer is unknown to the consumer market, especially in the northeast. The product is new in that it is made from fresh meat product and premium grain products and is uncooked. And finally, a frozen pet food iscompletely new to the consumer market.

Tyler Pet Foods is very experienced in the professional dog breeder market. It also has developed an obviously successful product with regard to the sales to the professional market in that the breeders trust it to keep their dogs healthy.

The management of Tyler Pet Foods has approved $300,000 to $500,000 to launch Show Circuit in the Boston Area. Noother information has been given except that this will stretch the resources of the firm. It is reasonable to assume that the success or failure of this product launch will have such serious implications for the company that it will make or break Tyler Pet Foods. Of course success for the product will launch Tyler to another level as a consumer pet food supplier (with it’s associated competitiverisks) but failure could well kill the company financially. It is critical to use this marketing budget very carefully.

Currently, Tyler Pet Foods is selling to kennels via selected pet stores. Their sales channel has been established without advertising and is based on a generally professional market of breeders and, it would seem, perhaps some ‘mass market’ people who have figured outwhat the product is and its quality. There are no sales to supermarkets as of yet.

The markets huge size is both a blessing and a curse. Of course the very large market represents a large opportunity in terms of pure scale, and it would appear that there is no immediate competition, but the market size presents all kinds of new challenges that TPF has not had to deal with. Scaling production toa mass market while maintaining high quality presents new challenges to TPF. Customers in the mass market are sensitive to different things that TPF has little to no experience with: mass consumer packaging, which would have to be very different in style to be appealing and public relations, which have to be more nimble to deal with emergencies. (For example, when Intel went from a specialist...