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Suffolk University
MBA660 - CE
9. 25. 2013
Professor Steve Twomey
Caroline Claps
Cho Kyung-Eun McEttrick
Jingjie Zhang
Ting Mo
1. What is the current situation?
Saxonville Sausage Company
Saxonville Sausage Company is a privately owned family business based out of
Saxonville, Ohio. The company’s revenue in 2005 was approximately $1.5 billion with 70%
consisting of bratwurst, 20% in breakfast sausage, 5% in the Italian sausage branded Vivio, and
the other 5% in store-brand products. Since 2005, sales in bratwurst and breakfast products were
showing a 0% increase in volume and were not expected to grow in the short term. Saxonville
found potential in its Italian sausage market after having an annual increasing rate in sales of 9%
in 2004 and 15% in 2005. Vivio was only being sold in 16% of the country’s northeast
supermarkets.
Steve Sears, the company’s Vice President of Marketing, hired Ann Banks as the new
marketing director to uncover the potential Vivio had as a national leader in the Italian sausage
market by strengthening its presence across the nation’s supermarkets. Banks faced the
challenge of either developing Vivio as a national product or creating a new distinctive identity of
the Italian sausage by marketing it under a different name or even under the recognizable
Saxonville company name. In addition, she needed to be careful in how Vivio was being
positioned in the sausage industry in order avoid unintentionally cannibalizing Saxonville’s other
brands. Banks was experienced in marketing brands to consumers in a way that they could
connect both personally and emotionally. To better understand Vivio’s positioning with
consumers, she first formed a team of colleagues from the research and development, packaging
and graphics, marketing and sales departments. With the research and analysis results from
Banks and her team, Saxonville hoped that they would be able to create a new marketing strategy
that would relaunch the brand in early 2007 and thus meet profit goals for the next fiscal year.
2. Do you agree or disagree with what and how the Saxonville Sausage Company did in
research methodology? If disagree, what would you do differently and why?
a.) At the beginning of her assignment, Banks and the Project Score team explored the input and
perspective of the Italian Sausage opportunity by reviewing the summary of business and sales
performances. Their research methodology consisted of a four-step process. During the first
step, the team collected qualitative research to better understand the behaviors and needs of
target consumers. There were four pilot groups of 4 to 6 users with each made up of men and
women from ages 25 to 50. The individuals either purchased branded or store-brand Italian
sausages. Through these groups, the Project Score team gained a better understanding of the
language consumers used to discuss the benefits of Italian sausage. After developing stimulus
material, it was concluded that females were the primary purchasers, so they administered more
focus group sessions with 100+ women who passed the pre-screening. In the second step, the
team evaluated the women’s reactions to the different brand positioning ideas. Four potential
