Essay MMK101: Marketing Fundamentals – Marketing Strategy Plan of Kool Aid – Marketing Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Kool-Aid has long been one of America’s most popular flavoured drink mixes, a beverage many consumers associated with the hot summer days of their childhoods. 

Introduced in 1927 by a chemist from Nebraska named Edwin Perkins, the brand survived the challenge of numerous fad soft drinks and juice mixes to remain atop the powdered drink mix segment. 

Kool-Aid’s enduring popularity was attributed to its low cost per serving (Kool-Aid was cheaper at the end of the 20th century than it was in 1947) as well as its ease of purchase (tiny sachets) and preparation (just add water and, in some cases, sugar). The product’s marketers did not lose sight of the need to continue to make appeals to its core consumers. To that end Kraft Foods Inc., the maker of Kool-Aid, nurtured the popularity of its product with an aggressive advertising strategy centred on Kool-Aid Man, the brand’s colourful, smiling pitcher (jug) icon. Kool-Aid Man also played off the nostalgia of parents who may have grown up seeing him on packages in the 1960s or, since 1975. The ‘Oh Yeah’ catch phrase: Kool- Aid Man Summer Blast video) is synonymous with the Kool-Aid man as he smashes through walls.

Kool-Aid was previously sold in supermarkets in Australia during the 1960s and 70s. You can buy Kool-Aid in Australia through selective distribution e.g., American food stores, Asian food outlets and online. The Management of Kool-Aid are proposing to re-enter the Australian market. You have been approached as a paid marketing consultant to develop a Marketing plan to address the following objectives: 

1. Identify a primary target market for the Kool-Aid brand in the Australian market. 

2. Determine Kool-Aid’s competitive advantage (differentiation) and develop a positioning strategy.

3. Identify a single (one) Kool-Aid product that would best fit the Australian market. 

4. Determine the most appropriate pricing strategy that will build market share

5. Develop a distribution and logistics (placement) strategy to drive initial trial of the Kool-Aid brand in national and regional grocery chains.

6. Grow brand awareness and recognition for the Kool-Aid brand in the Australian market. 

7. Develop strategies that will increase your chosen target market’s interaction with the brand.