Kit Kat

1. Has KitKat a marketing-oriented approach to developing its confectionery brand? What elements of marketing orientation, if any, are missing?

Yes KitKat has a marketing-oriented approach to developing its confectionery brand.

They are building long-term relationships to their customers by offering high quality products. Those are hard to copy for the competitors. Therefore, there was no serious competition for the KitKat bar for almost 59 years.

They supplied the market with two different kinds of formats that would appeal to two different kinds of target customers:

- The 2-finger format was aimed to be consumed by families, especially the children

- The 4-finger format was aimed to be consumed by the 16-24 years old customer

Since the number of competitors increased, they had to change their marketing strategy, because they had a lack of variety. So they launched new products with flavour variety like KitKat Orange and KitKat Mint. As a competitor to the famous Mars bar they introduced KitKat Chunky also in two different flavours.

2. What is the situation facing KitKat: the strengths and weaknesses of the brand and the opportunities and threats it faces?

Strengths:

The 2-finger format is the market leader in the CBCL sector (Chocolate Biscuit Countline).

The high quality product is hard to copy.

Their leading position in the market gives them a price premium.

They are already an established brand so they have a high advertising budget.

Weaknesses:

The 4-finger format is not hunger satisfying compared to its competitors on the market

The 4-finger format is not the market leader, only a weak no. 3. It cannot dictate prices or products.

Opportunities:

Demographic: the lifestyle is becoming busier, people are tending to digest a small snack in between rather than eat a real meal

Market: customers are welcoming new kinds of flavours, recent releases of new KitKat flavours has shown that it will be pretty successful

Threats:

Competitive activity: Price cutting actions by groceries are giving hard competition to KitKat. New brands are pushing their way into the market, taking away some of KitKat's market share.

Demographic: Shifting consumer age forces KitKat to define new target groups, advertisements have to be improved.

Economics: Less salary will make things like KitKat become a luxury; there is a possibility that their sales would be reduced.

3. How and why are the KitKat 2-finger and 4-fingers marketed differently?

They