Marketing Internship Final Report

MKT 353 Marketing Department Internship

Final Report

Fall 2004

1. Brief description of the company and its marketing strategy.

Bolthouse Farms is a family company known for their quality premium fresh produce and innovation. They are a 4th generation family farm since 1915. As a leader in their industry, Bolthouse Farms is the #1 baby carrot producer in the world. With over 2,400 employees, the company produces over 35,000 tons of carrot products every month.

After more than 85 years of farming, the company recently developed a new line of delicious yet healthy fruit and vegetable juices. They figure that what better way is there to get the five servings of fruits and vegetables a day than in a convenient drink. The main selling point of this product line is that each flavor is 100% juice, 100% natural and 0% from concentrate. The juice is made of superior ingredients and uses better production techniques. The company aims to cater the juice to specific grocery store retailers whose consumers can afford to spend the extra money on top quality products, as their prices prove not to be cheap.

II. Internship Goals: state the goals of your internship and which ones were achieved during the internship.

The main goal I wanted to achieve through this internship was to be able to apply and see through first-hand experience classroom knowledge of introductory marketing being used in the real, working world. After completing my internship, I was satisfied with my experience because I was able to apply what I learned in the classroom to my work with Bolthouse Farms. To know what I learned in the only marketing class (MKT 337) I had ever taken before my internship made me pleased because I realized that even the introductory class was worthwhile.

My other goal of this internship was to learn meaningful concepts of real world marketing that I could not have learned in the classroom. However, this goal of mine was harder to achieve because I did not gain new knowledge that I did not already learn in the classroom. In some ways I think of that as a good thing because that means either that my introductory MKT 337 class covered all the important concepts. In other ways, not having learned any other information from outside my classroom knowledge could be seen as negative because perhaps my internship was not encompassing enough.

3. Work Performed: describe the nature of the work that you did throughout the internship, specifying

1. Initial job responsibilities

2. Changes in job scope over the internship.

At my initial interview with Sarah Patterson, who would eventually become my supervisor, she had explained what would be the internship position's responsibilities. She explained that Bolthouse Farms' juice line was a relatively new product and they needed help establishing the merchandise. My responsibilities included conducting demonstrations for consumers to sample, visiting stores, managing store audits, and working to establish good relationships with Produce Managers and staff. At that time, in the Houston market area, the Bolthouse Farms juice was only available in the produce departments at Whole Foods Market, Super Targets, and Costco. There had been a few other stores but either those grocer companies had closed down in the Texas area or Bolthouse Farms had chosen to pull out of those stores. Still, with those three grocer companies in Houston, visiting the stores and checking on the products would take up the large part of my time since the stores were located all over the city, from the far north to the extreme south. On my shadowing day with Sarah, she took me around to visit the Whole Foods around Houston. She introduced me to the managers as well as the juice. There were a total of seven flavors at the time: Carrot, Orange, Passion Fruit, Vedge, Green Goodness, Strawberry Banana, and Perfectly Protein. Eventually, later on in the summer, a new, more appropriate flavor was introduced: Mango Lemonade.

As I went to visit the stores, I would take a moment to meet with the Produce Manager to say hi, see how orders were going through, and ask how well the products were selling. After collecting product data from visiting the stores, I would type up reports with all the gathered information including any important relevant details and send it to my supervisor. As the company was changing and expanding, my responsibilities changed as well. As Bolthouse Farms and Krogers formed a relationship my initial job was to research the Krogers Signature stores in the Houston area until the orders were complete and the juice was in the store.

My second major responsibility was performing demonstrations. The first image that popped into my head when Sarah told me about this task was a vision of me as a sample lady dressed in an apron handing out samples of Bolthouse Farms juice. For the most part my image was correct. It turns out this responsibility was not as unglamorous as I had first thought. I spent much of my summer holding these demonstrations at Whole Foods Market with whom Bolthouse Farms had a really good relationship. During the peak hours of these demonstrations, strategically held during busy lunchtimes, a crowd would gather from hearing about all the good feedback from taste testers and loyal customers of Bolthouse Farms. I had first thought this part of my internship would be the most embarrassing or boring. However, this was actually the most interesting and fun aspect of the internship because of the customer interaction I experienced whether the product received positive or negative feedback, and the way I was able to use my marketing skills in order to sell the product. This demonstration responsibility never changed throughout the course of my internship.

4. Educational Value: describe what you learned about your career field and the business environment through the work you performed.

After completing my internship experience I believe the work that I performed with Bolthouse Farms has supported everything I ever learned about the retail industry and about marketing. Just like any other student, I have held several odd jobs in the retail industry in attempts to earn some extra spending money. Any successful company focused on creating value for the customer, turnover, and making a profit. Bolthouse Farms concentrates on producing