What Elements in the External Environment Might Affect Dippin’ Dots Strategy?

What elements in the external environment might affect Dippin’ Dots Strategy?

As the industry changes Dippin’ Dots strategy was to target not only kids, but older generations in order to be the ice cream of the future.

➢ Sociocultural

The most important element is the demography of the market for ice cream. The ice cream was initially targeting the kids and teenagers (aged 8-18 years) even though Dippin’ Dots had foreseen a growing demand in future from older people. The founder, Jones took a nationally known product and reinvented the ice cream as flash freeze ice cream beads. Over time Dippin’ Dots had developed different products to react to a larger and more diverse audience as they foresaw. They developed coffee drinks, low-fat options and healthier products. They also utilized celebrities and popular magazines to promote their product and tried a joint venture with McDonalds that unfortunately turned out to be unsuccessful. However, the trend to consume more healthy treats made firms develop ice cream with less fat but similar taste and also advances such as slab concept, independent scoop shop, etc surpassed Dippin’ Dots ice cream of the future innovation.

➢ Technological

The company has its foundation from the technology of micro encapsulation which involved flash freezing the ice cream using liquid nitrogen at -325 degrees and collecting the bead/dot to produce a special flavour, texture and shape was a remarkable idea by the microbiologist. This idea was to avoid crystals of air and ice in the dessert. It was named the"icecream of the future" due to its uniqueness whose formula was continuously perfected by Jones. However, due to the unique storage requirements that the ice cream needed i.e. needing to be stored at a special temperature, it was more difficult to ship the product internationally to the other franchises in various countries.