Bakkavor Group plc Product Development Processes: A Report

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PRODUCT & SERVICE DEVELOPMENT
Part A
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Executive summary
The present report has evaluated the product development processes of a food
company of the UK namely Bakkavor. The range of products of the company has been
analysed in this report based on the company portfolio. Product life cycle stages are
analysed and the stages are applied to different products of the organisation. The
processes of managing product life cycle stage have been determined as well as
product line management choices have been justified for the company. Product line
management and product development processes have been applied to develop a
product of Bakkavor namely yoghurt.
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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 4
1. An introduction to the organisation...............................................................................4
2. An overview of the different products and services offered in their company’s portfolio
......................................................................................................................................... 5
3. An evaluation of a range of products and services in relation to their lifecycle stage. .6
4. An evaluation of how to manage the lifecycle stages and the choice of appropriate
product line management choices and justification..........................................................7
5. Choosing one product line management choice..........................................................8
An explanation of each of the processes applied for new product development..............8
An explanation of how each stage of the process was applied and the techniques and
methods used...................................................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 10
References.....................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
Development of new products is necessary for organisations in order to improve
customer satisfaction and provide a wide range of products to increase sales. It is
necessary for organizations to determine the product life cycle processes to evaluate
new products. In this report, different products and services of a food manufacturing
company of the UK namely Bakkavor Area analysed in this report. Difference ranges of
products are analysed and one appropriate product management choice is the help of
the product life cycle. Each stage of product development of the organisation is also
discussed in the report.
1. An introduction to the organisation
Bakkavor Group plc is a food manufacturing company that provide freshly prepared
foods. This international food company has headquarters in London, UK. The company
has various products such as ready meals, prepared vegetables and fruits, sauces,
soups, desserts, pizzas and salads. The company serves different areas of the world
such as USA, UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium and China. Revenue of the company has been
£1,855.2 million in 2018 along with operating income of £111.7 million and net income
of £67.2 million in 2018 (Bakkavor.com, 2019). The company has listed 27th in the 2015
Sunday Times.
Figure 1: Financial analysis of Bakkavor
(Source: Bakkavor.com, 2019)
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2. An overview of the different products and services offered in their company’s
portfolio
Wide range of products and services are offered by Bakkavor such as,
Ready meals
Ready meals of the company are inspired by different ingredients and innovative
recipes of the world. The company prepared different types of different countries such
as China, India, Italy, Mexico as well as Moroccan, Mexican and Traditional British
foods are offered by the company. The product dishes include side accompaniments
and dishes.
Soups
Soups are also provided ready-made meals. Fresh soup is prepared from the traditional
recipes which include basil, tomato, coriander and carrot, stilton and broccoli.
Alongside, exotic and seasonal recipes such as Keralan chicken and gazpacho are also
included in the scope items (Bakkavor.com, 2019).
Sauces
Wide range of Sauces of Bakkavor contains stir fry sauces, fresh pasta, stocks, gravies
as well as fresh custard as sweet accompaniments.
Salads
This product includes fresh-cut salads that are made from various salad leaves such as
rocket; spinach and watercress besides, different dressed salads are also included in
this product line which is pasta, rice salads, coleslaws as well as on-the-go meal salads.
Desserts
Different types of desserts are also included in organizational products. It is identified
that the company is specialised in chilled desserts like cheesecakes, crumbles, trifles,
fruit tarts. Several types of cream cakes are also included in desserts such as
doughnuts, choux buns, éclairs, and profiteroles.
Pizza and bread
Fresh pizza is provided by the company. The pizza is categorized as stuffed custard
thick crusts along with Italian, American, Napoli styles pizzas that are topped with
different types of ingredients.
Chilled and pre-cooked artisan bread is provided by the company and these breads are
topped and filled with fresh butter and these are mixed with cheese or garlic
(Bakkavor.com, 2019). The types of beads include focaccias, ciabattas, react-and-share
dough balls and baguettes.
Dressings
Fresh salad dressings are also included in the product offerings that also have different
flavours such as mustard, honey, fresh vinaigrette, yoghurt, mint, balsamic garlic and
vinegar.
Besides, the company offers other products such as prepared fruits and vegetables,
fresh cut vegetables such as stir fry mixes. Sandwich wraps are made by them with
Mexican torticollis and they are followed with fresh ingredients. The products are
tangible and all of the products are business-to-consumer (B2C) products. As
mentioned by Kjaer et al., (2016), the products involve a large number of customers that
can improve organisational profit.
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3. An evaluation of a range of products and services in relation to their lifecycle
stage
Wide range of products is provided by Bakkavor and the products and services of the
company are analysed with the help of the stages of the product life cycle.
The product life cycle has five different stages such as
● Introduction to the products
● Growth
● Maturity
● Decline
Introduction
It is the stage when a product would be released in the market. At this stage, the
marketing, as well as promotion cost, would be on a high owing to make the public area
about the launch of the product (Chaochotechuang and Mariano, 2016). Launching
programs can be held in the densely populated areas of the UK for creating inception
regarding the products’ advantages. This would initiate the demand for the product for
the customers.
Growth
In this stage, if it is found that the sales of a product is on the high and pulling in
revenue, then additional investment can be interfaced in the advertisement and
promotion of the product for beating out competitors. However, if the sales of the new
product are on the lower side, then innovation strategy is to be adopted according to the
latest trends to make the product customer-friendly (Zeng and Chen, 2017).
Figure 2: Product lifecycle stage
(Source: Stark, 2015)
Maturity
At the maturity stage of a product, its sales would tend to be stagnated, due to the
threshold of the product. The pricing of the new product at this stage is to fend off the
competition and alter the new products which are revealed by the competitors (Fava et
al., 2015). Innovation can be one of the key aspects of maintaining the sustainability of
the product in the market.
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Decline
At this stage, the product would be losing its viability at a rapid pace (Stark, 2015). This
would be seen when the sales value of the new product would decrement in an abrupt
manner. In order to sway away from the decline, renovation of the new product can be
done by improving the presentation of the product.
4. An evaluation of how to manage the lifecycle stages and the choice of
appropriate product line management choices and justification
The lifecycle stages of a product are broadly classified into four categories namely
introduction, growth, maturity and decline and different products of Bakkavor such as
Ready meals, soups, sauces, salads, desserts, Pizza bread and dressings are analysed
with life cycle stages. These stages are analysed with the help of the product life cycle.
Introduction
Introduction stage helps the company to generate new product ideas and improve their
products based on the idea generation. As the company provides a large number of
products for a long time, no introduction of a new product is observed for the company.
Growth
Growth possibilities of the product depend on the processes by which the companies
can develop their products (Davcik and Sharma, 2015). It is identified that most of the
products of Bakkavor are in growth and maturity stage. It has been found that the
Ready meals of Bakkavor fall in the growth stage of the product life cycle. This is
because it has been able to attract the customers in the market and it has a viable
number of competitors who wish to outnumber the sales of ready meals.
Maturity
In the case of soups and sauces, they fall in the maturity stage of the product life cycle.
The basic reason for this is that the company has incepted soups recently in the market
and invested a lot of funds for advertising and marketing (Jolink and Niesten, 2015).
The company specializes in making salads as well as deserts since it has been making
these items for a longer period of time. Henceforth, these fall in the maturity category of
the product life cycle. The reason for this is that the sales of salads and desserts have
become saturated and the company is spending funds for staying away from the
competitors.
Decline
Pizza and dressings fall in the declining category of the product life cycle because their
sales have dropped significantly and the consumer behaviour has changed in a
negative manner regarding these products (Wu et al., 2017). Henceforth, the company
has been targeting the already loyal customers for sales of these products.
The appropriate product line management choices can be as follows:
1. Tracking
2. Monitoring
3. Adaptation
4. Standardisation
Recommendation
Installation of a product tracking software for yoghurt
Bakkavor can install a product tracking software namely Amber Road which can be
instrumental in tracking the manufacturing stage of the new product. Furthermore, this
can also provide valuable information regarding new product manufacturing as well as
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the company can identify the sales of the product. This product line management choice
is instrumental for increasing the customer base of the new product in the global arena
(Guerrero et al., 2016). This would vehemently increase the sales value of products of
the company due to increment in demand.
5. Choosing one product line management choice
An explanation of each of the processes applied for new product development
It is identified that Bakkavor has different products in different product life cycle stages.
The products like pizza and dressings are in decline stages. Therefore, it is required for
the company to improve its number of products and introduce a wide range pi for
products to attract more number of customers. On the other hand, it is also identified
that the company does not offer the products like sandwich and burger. However, the
development process of new products like yoghurt of Bakkavor was analysed in this
report. As there was a high demand for products like yoghurt, it was essential for
companies to successfully implement products like yoghurt in the organisation. As 24%
of the young generation like healthy foods in the UK, the introduction of yoghurt helped
the organisation to improve their number of customers and satisfaction (Hedberg Jr et
al., 2017).
There are different stages that can be followed by Bakkavor to develop new product in
the UK market. The processes are,
● Ideas generation
● Ideas screening and selection
● Concept Development and Testing
● Marketing Strategy
● Business analysis
● Product development
● Testing
● Commercialisation
It helps Bakkavor to generate new ideas for developing the product like yoghurt. As
yoghurt was a health related product, it helped them to create a new customer base
(Granato et al., 2017). Therefore, it is required for the companies to improve the product
ranges. For this purpose, new strategies and methods were required for the products as
the company was used new processes as well as new service process to successfully
develop this product and service to the customers.
An explanation of how each stage of the process was applied and the techniques
and methods used
Ideas generation
The generation of idea was made by a combined meeting and the viewpoint of all the
team members involved in the project has been scrutinised. The ideas were advised to
be taken by virtue of examples of erstwhile companies which have succeeded by the
idea. New idea of product development was taken by the organisation in order to
increase the customer base (Marsden, 2018).
Ideas screening and selection
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The selection of the best idea among all the set of ideas was made based on the cost
as well as the availability of resources. Based on the opinion of the team members, the
best idea adopted was renovation of the new products of the company. It was found
that the new product which would help in capturing the market has been ‘yoghurt’ of
Bakkavor. This product was generated by the company as there has been high demand
of this product in different regions of the UK, Italy and Spain. The company took the
product namely yoghurt as the product is healthy and has attracted a large number of
health conscious people of the UK.
Concept Development and Testing
The concept development strategy was based on some features of yoghurt as it was
identified that the food had high protein, vitamins, calcium and probiotics. As it had low
fat qualities, it was effective for weight-loss diet (Govindan, 2018). The company was
willing to serve Yoghurt as ‘dressings’. Testing strategy was done by taking the
viewpoint of potential users of the new product by virtue of a survey. The survey was
conducted by virtue of a poll on the website of the company. More number of users was
encouraged to provide an opinion regarding the yoghurt and in return some vouchers
were provided by a lucky draw.
Marketing Strategy
Proper marketing strategy for new product development was taken by Bakkavor to
successfully communicate with the customers and for this purpose, the organisation
used different pricing. Inbound marketing tactics was used by the company. Digital
marketing strategy such as website marketing was taken into effect for creating
awareness regarding the yoghurt introduced by Bakkavor in dressings. The new product
description has been posted on social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram
so that maximum numbers of viewers are able to witness the advantages of the product.
Furthermore, a diversified opinion can also be obtained from the comments from these
social media websites.
Business analysis
Market research was helped in reviewing the sales performance of the existing
products. Using the recent sales figures, identification of the current level of market
activity and interest of the customers in the new product line was obtained (Estrada et
al., 2016). The sales volume as well as the break-even point of the product was
identified to cover the fixed costs which include rent, electricity as well as wages. It
helped the company to avoid unnecessary costs which can be utilized for future product
development.
Product development
Based on the consumer inferences, it was witnessed that the consumer are in want of
eatables that have high hygiene value. Henceforth, it was decided that the company
would use lesser fat value and more minerals for the development of yoghurt. It was
also found from the survey that the customers have been avoiding fast food due to the
unhygienic ingredients. This product was developed by the organisation as this product
helped the organization to attract the customers who were health conscious and like this
product. At the time of developing the product, digital technology was used by the
company to make new product. For this purpose, Streptococcus thermophilus was
utilised to make yoghurt. Digital technology is also used to track the quantity and quality
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of product (Hu, 2017). For product development, proper resource planning is also
essential.
Testing
A target audience has been set for the range of customers belonging to the age group
of 20-30 years in age since they are the potential consumers of the yoghurt. The ease
of use, appeal and function as well as customer likelihood has been interfaced and it
has been found that the customers rate all the aspects on a higher range (Wymer,
2017).
Commercialization
Yoghurt has been introduced in the market for selling at optimal prices in order to attract
more number of customers. Advertisements have been made in the form of brochures
outside the production units of Bakkavor regarding the launch of yoghurt as dressings.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Bakkavor has different types of products for different types of customers.
It can help the company to identify the customer demand. Product life cycle stages are
used by the company to determine the condition of each product. The lifecycle stages of
a product are broadly classified into four categories namely introduction, growth,
maturity and decline and the products are analysed based on it. The stages of product
line management are analysed and one justification is provided to improve the product
quality.
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References
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