Introduction of a New Flavour of Potato Chips

Running head: INTRODUCTION OF NEW PRODUCTS
Introduction of a New Flavour of Potato Chips
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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INTRODUCTION OF NEW PRODUCTS
Introduction:
The potato chips market is one of the fastest growing fast food market segments in the
world and introduction of new flavours face stiff competition due to dominance of multinational
brands. The chips market in the United Kingdom is one of the largest chips markets in the world
dominated by Walker owned by none other than the American fast food and beverage giant
PepsiCo. The company sold 77 million kilogrammes in 2017 alone and owns the largest crisp
manufacturing plant globally (Walkers.co.uk. 2018). This shows that launching of a new flavour
of potato would meet with stiff competition from the existing companies. The paper would
explore this competitiveness of British potato chips market with an arbitrary potato chips maker
launching a new flavour of potato chips as its background. The aim of the essay would be
recommending an appropriate flavour which the firm can launch in the British market and an
appropriate promotional strategy to launch the flavour. The recommendation would draw
substance from the primary and secondary researches.
Discussion:
The chips company mentioned in the case should conduct a thorough primary and a
secondary research of the potato chips market conditions in order to decide on the appropriate
flavour to be launched and the appropriate promotional strategy to be used to market the product.
For example, the primary research shows that 37 percent of the respondents prefer Mexican
Chilli variants of chips. The pie chart showing the least appetising flavour shows that only 6
percent of the respondents dislike the variant. According to this finding of the primary
research it is clear that Mexican Chilli is the most appropriate variant. An analysis of the
demographic graph of Britain and Wales shows that population of Americans including
Mexicans is pretty high (Ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk. 2018) (Appendix 2). Thus,

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INTRODUCTION OF NEW PRODUCTS
going by this secondary data, it can again be pointed out that Mexican Chilli is the most
appropriate variant. Slater, Mohr and Sengupta (2014) mention that conducting primary and
secondary research is important before launching new products into the market. This is because
launching of new products involve immense investment of capital and thus, an exhaustive market
research enables the launching company to predict the profit which the new product being
launched would yield in the future. Bumbudsanpharoke and Ko (2015) opine that primary
research enables the marketers to gain knowledge about the taste and preferences of the chosen
respondents like customers. Primary research also enables firms launching new products to
locate prospective upstream and downstream supply chains of their new products. Fang, Lee and
Yang (2015) contradict the previous author pointing out that the profitability of new products are
not dependent on the local population of customers who can be interviewed for the primary
research alone. They further point that macroeconomic factors like entry of new firms and
economic changes have significant impacts on profitability as well (Statista.com. 2018). This
makes it crucial for the firms launching new products to conduct a secondary research to
understand the macroeconomic trends of the selected market namely, the United Kingdom.
Thus, it can be pointed out that while primary data analysis shows the local market trends,
secondary analysis shows that macroeconomic market trends. This comparison between primary
and secondary data reveals that the latter holds a stronger position while conducting market prior
to launching of new products.
The firm in the case study based on the primary and secondary research, should
form its own market research strategy emphasising on macroeconomic research. The
macroeconomic research strategy would be based on chips market like studying the different
market factors effecting the chips industry both positively as well as negatively. This need for

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INTRODUCTION OF NEW PRODUCTS
macroeconomic research pertaining to the chips industry can be reasoned on the grounds that
though macroeconomic economic research gives an overview of the macroeconomic conditions,
there are certain conditions which effect specific industries. For example, the social trends of the
United Kingdom shows that the population of American origin people surpass the population is
very high. This trend would affect the potato chips industry since ethnicity and cultural have
significant impacts on food consumption (Thøgersen et al. 2017). Moreover, as far as religious
groups residing in the United Kingdom are concerned, the population of religious groups which
generally abstain from consuming beef is very large (Ons.gov.uk. 2018) (Appendix 3). Thus, by
producing a beef based variant, the chips manufacturing would be losing a huge customer base
and incur immense revenue losses. Thus, it can be inferred from the social trends of Britain
that Mexican Chilli would be more appropriate as the flavour of the variant to be
introduced compared to the other three variants namely, Wasabi and Beef, Bolognese and
Parmesan and Indian Tandoori. These decisions are important because in the firm is required
to invest immense amount of capital in order to manufacture and market the new variant of
potato chips. It is required to gain supernormal profits on the invested amount to sustain in the
market and also give positive returns to the investors. Thus, it can inferred from the discussion
that it is important to carry out a secondary research stressing on the potato chips and crisp
market in the United Kingdom. It can also be pointed out in this context that the primary
research decisions did reflect trends in the consumers’ preferences pertaining to consumption of
chips. However, the findings from the primary cannot be regarded as a ground strong enough to
take the business decisions pertaining to the appropriate variant to be introduced since the sample
does not reflect the actual trend of social conditions of Britain which the chips manufacturer
need require to base its business decisions on. Story, Boso and Cadogan (2015) mention that