Cadbury's Marketing Plan: Strategies, Analysis & Consumer Insights

This report provides a detailed marketing plan analysis of Cadbury, a leading confectionery company, focusing on its strategies, industry analysis, and consumer behavior. It examines Cadbury's success in positioning itself across various consumer segments and age groups, highlighting its wide range of food products for different occasions. The report covers industry analysis using Porter's Five Forces, consumer behavior trends, target segmentation (geographic, demographic, and psychographic), and the consumer decision-making process. It further elaborates on Cadbury's positioning strategies, marketing mix (product, price, promotion), marketing activities, packaging, and price promotions. The analysis reveals how Cadbury adapted its strategies to expand its target market, diversify its product offerings, and maintain a strong brand presence through effective communication and promotional campaigns. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of continuous innovation and strategic marketing to sustain Cadbury's market leadership. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

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Executive summary
The report concentrates on the marketing plan and strategies of Cadbury. The content
discussed how the company managed to position itself not only in the particular segment but
it had spread its target market to all types and age groups of the consumers. The company has
become a strong confectionary market that delivers wide range of food products for all
occasions.

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Contents
Executive summary...............................................................................................................................1
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Industry analysis and product................................................................................................................3
Consumer behaviour.............................................................................................................................4
Target segment......................................................................................................................................4
Segmentation........................................................................................................................................5
Consumer decision-making process......................................................................................................6
Positioning.............................................................................................................................................6
Marketing-Mix.......................................................................................................................................6
Product..................................................................................................................................................7
Price.......................................................................................................................................................7
Promotion..............................................................................................................................................8
Marketing activities...............................................................................................................................8
Packaging...............................................................................................................................................9
Price promotions...................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................10
References...........................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Cadbury was introduced and formed with collaboration in 1969. The company expanded its
power and lead into international confectionary company. Cadbury is one of the renowned
brand in the confectionary industry and it has expanded its operation in various food
products. The company is very well known for its wide range of dairy milk products. The
company has covered almost 66 counties through its effective marketing strategies. Initially,
it focused on children demands but it observed that the growth percentage has become stable.
In order to improve and extend its hands to enlarge and spread its target market, it introduced
other products. It also introduced the product named dairy milk that has high milk proportion
and content that have become best-selling product of Cadbury (Balaji, Londhe and Shukla,
2016).
Industry analysis and product
As Cadbury deals in confectionery business, it has been always a market that focuses on
organisations. Cadbury has become a leading food product dealing in various segments. The
industry analysis undoubtedly covers porters five forces analysis. The intensity of
competition has become more prevalent in the confectionary industry (Neilson et al., 2018).
As the industry shows good potential growth, new plays may plan to decide to enter the
confectionary market. Due to entry barriers, high establishing manufacturing standards
lowers the intensity of new entrants in confectionery industry. The suppliers of the cocoa is
limited due to challenges faced by the farmers in the cocoa sector in places such as Cameron.
Both new and existing competitors affect the average profitability of industry. The threat is
based on the market entry barriers. The consumers are not limited to a particular age such as
children. It has become more popular occasionally such as mother`s day, children`s day,
Diwali etc (Park, Ungson and Cosgrove, 2015).

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Consumer behaviour
The trend keeps changing so as the consumer preferences. Cadbury has become popular as
“Mathai” especially in India. Some traditional sweets has become more expensive.
Chocolates started substituting the expensive traditional sweets (Fernandes, Gupta, and
Vidyasagar, 2016). Instead of buying traditional sweets on Diwali and Raksha Bandhan,
people loves to but chocolates. Moreover, the variety of chocolates have become diversified
and further create impulse sales for confectionary companies. Earlier, chocolates were
unaffordable, have become mid-priced. Designer chocolate packaging is considered as status
symbol. There are mainly three factors named as demand for the product, customised talent,
and conducive regulations affects the production of any product in a country.
Majorly, chocolates target children. To attract kids, company starts focusing on sweetness
and glittery packaging of the product. Colourful and cartoons packaging attracts the children
but the industry started noticing that the growth rates in the companies have become stagnant.
Nevertheless, it forced the company to re-think the marketing strategies that would enable to
extend its target market (Freeman et al., 2014). Cadbury was the first chocolate in
confectionary industry that stormed to position itself in children as well as adults. The
consumption of chocolates show indulgent of enjoying rather than regarded as snack food.
Adults bought chocolates in order to gift kids. The chocolates are placed near the retail
counters of the stores and supermarkets. Wholesalers of FMCG products sell the chocolates
to general stores, gift stores, grocery stores, canteens, bakeries, supermarkets, and medical
stores. Most consumers buy chocolates from discounted stores and supermarkets (Joshi and
Nema, 2015).
Target segment
Cadbury is a renowned name in the confectionary world industry. The company produces
chocolate, candy, and gum brand in more than 60 countries to millions of people. The

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company targets an extensive range of consumers especially from children to adults for age
group 5 to 50 years. The target age group is children and youths because these age groups are
chocolate lovers. The company tries to attract its target audience (Bharucha, 2016).
Cadbury invests in research and development centres especially for Bourneville factory with
new advance labs, a collaborated kitchen, and a model plant factory (Pai and Subramanian,
2014). It provides a creative centre for experimenting innovation and new ideas. Moreover,
Cadbury wants to cater all the segments of society. The products of Cadbury are used for
different objective, as the youth would always like to eat these products for entertainment and
love. Whereas, teenagers loves to eat Cadbury products as adventure. Children loves the
taste, as the products are mostly sweet and sugary in taste (Beneke et al., 2015).
Market acquired by Cadbury in global as well as UK market
(Source: abpf87, 2011)
Segmentation
Geographic & Demographic segmentation Psychographic segmentation
Cadbury strives to identify the size of market,
per capital income and consumption level,
Psychographic segmentation is identified
based on consumer lifestyle, motives, and

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and growth trends.
The company analyses each segment to
calculate the market share of the company.
Demographics permits the company to
understand the overall confectionary market
based on age, income group, and gender
(Wang et al., 2017).
attitudes.
Cadbury identifies and segments UK
chocolate market in different categories as per
their preferences such as one who prefer taste,
shape, texture, or packaging (Spence and
Velasco, 2018).
This would help the company to know the
target market and so as the best-suited
Cadbury cream egg twisted products.
Consumer decision-making process
It is very difficult to classify and capture customer perception, as there are huge number of
customers. It is important to establish a strong relationship. The company uses Facebook,
Friendster, and twitter to penetrate the customer minds and collect their feedback. Moreover,
Cadbury can more gimmicks with the existing fan pages online.
Positioning
The positioning and segmentation of Cadbury products are based on demographics,
psychological and behavioural factors such as income-level of people and occasions. The
consumers of children and youth age group enjoys Cadbury products. The offering is based
on the production capacity, packaging designs, occasional demands, celebrity endorsements,
storage facility at the outlet, and pricing of packs and other many factors. The positioning
factor includes vision and mission of the company. The vision plan includes all the strategies
of Cadbury philosophy. The objective of this business strategy is to deliver superior returns to
the shareholders by realising its prime vision to become world`s best confectionery company
(Spence and Velasco, 2018).

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(Source: Khedwal, 2013)
Marketing-Mix
Marketing-Mix consists of various attributes that enables the selling of product globally. It
considers mainly four components such as the product itself, price consideration, and the
promotional activity to induce the potential customers. Cadbury has a wide and power line-up
of offering of products. As far as the BCG matrix of Cadbury is studied, it is interpreted that a
company can have one or two cash cows but Cadbury has a number of lions recognised as
dairy milk, Perk, Bournville, Cadbury éclairs. The Cadbury has not limited its confectionary
items but extended introduced a premium Oreo (Bhasin, 2018).
Product
Although Cadbury has covered the people of all age groups but then it started distinguishing
the product offerings to specific consumer groups. For example- Cadbury launched
temptation and Bourneville to attract those customers who are willing to pay more. Cadbury
SILK targeted people who cannot repel chocolates. Cadbury has been positioned itself as a
sign of good times and meant for special moments for life. Chocolate bar is made from the
real dark chocolate. Worldwide, Same design is used with more milk content than any other
chocolate bar.
Consumption of different chocolates from Cadbury

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(Source: Marketing Diary, 2014)
Price
Price reflects the image of the brand. Cadbury value its target market as well as its potential
customers. Decision on pricing does not major impact on the brand. For example- Cadbury
offers the bar at premium price as compared to Tesco`s and Sainsbury bar for the market.
Moreover, Cadbury also sells its high products to reflect the luxury brand and can derive
good premiums by innovating and introducing Cadbury milk tray, green & black and
Cadbury roses. The price also depends on the perception and preferences of the customers.
Currently, Cadbury gives special deals for its products in its price such as 20% more in the
same selling price (Laforet, 2015).
Promotion
Cadbury chooses the communication strategy to achieve the objective of increasing
awareness and finally attracting the customers to make them purchase the product. Every
promotional activity can be used in a different way that increases the brand value, brand
awareness, educating the customers which further increases the seasonal purchases,

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campaigns “choose Cadbury” to mark positive emotional value of the product and brand
(Spry and Lukas, 2016). After the invention of electronic media, Cadbury has been using
number of websites as a platform to make popular its brand. Websites provide information,
education, games, cocoa partnership, fair trade, and good associates like purple goes “green.”
The company has also agreed to enter into a partnership with 2012 Olympic that will assist it
to give global recognition. Moreover, attractive adds via TV, print media, and Radio.
Advertisements have real life instances and Cadbury fills happiness in them in each moment
(Bumbudsanpharoke and Ko, 2015).
Marketing activities
To promote a new look of dairy milk, a campaign theme seems as look of happiness. The
objective of this campaign is to promote new look of the bar. Cadbury should implement a
wide-ranging campaign. The marketing activities cover advertisements by Internet and
billboards. Television advertising is costly but the company manages to afford it because it
has high market position. The company also strives to maintain flex on the buses to cover a
wide range of customers so that the entire public get to see what the company is going to
offer something new. Public relation is another way to communicate through media by
informing about new products and changes in the existing product. Sales promotion is the
technique used by the company to sell the products. Informing the customers regarding
discounts such as ‘buy one get one free’ and 20 percent extra in the quantity with the same
price is a way to promote the products in supermarkets.
Packaging
Cadbury uses colourful packaging that provides it a quick brand recognition in many forms of
marketing communication plans especially a television advertising and outdoor advertising.
Recent surveys have found that 88 percent of UK consumers recognised Cadbury through its
packaging. The packaging colour of the brand made it most recognised brand in the

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confectionary industry. It shades its packaging, which enables it to establish long association
with luxury and royalty. The packaging colour “royal blue” is considered as valuable to recall
brand recognition. To gain a logo, signature colour and the brand name, the company has
spent millions in legal and regulatory fees to protect its brand name and logo. The aim of
paying a huge sum of money as legal fees to hinder the other companies to use purple named
as “Darrel Lea” in order to promote their products through marketing communication by blue
colour (Thaichon et al., 2018).
Price promotions
Quality comes with price, as the quality is enhanced the price increases because there is
always a cost associated with every service. Oreo constantly strives to market its products to
stand on the top. Similarly, the price of the Cadbury products is high; on the other side, it is
reasonable in some cases. Small-packed products such as perk, éclairs and five star give the
same taste of Cadbury even with the low prices. Dairy milk is the permanent image of brand
Cadbury and is considered as a premium wide-ranged product of Chocolate due to its
positioning but it is widely accepted due to lower price and acceptance among different
segments. Cadbury has launched a high-profile on-package promotion which gives an
opportunity to customers a chance to win a money-can`t-buy prize which can bring joy that
can be made out of its taste. The company is striving to tape the current trends for
personalisation for customers and fulfil the desire that can create experience once in lifetime
rather the material objects (Telang and Deshpande, 2016).

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(Source: Talking retail, 2014)
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be sum-upped that the company`s marketing plan and
strategy has a positive impact on the revenue and profit margins. The company has achieved
a popular brand name among the customers. The blue colour of its packing has made it
popular globally. The company has its brand value and range of product with portfolio of
candy brands.

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[online] Available from: https://abpf87.wordpress.com/ [Accessed on 30/09/18]
Balaji, D., Londhe, B.R. and Shukla, R.P., (2016) Successful Emotional Branding Campaigns
on Television in India: An Exploration. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(15).
Beneke, J., Floyd, V., Rono, C. and Sherwood, K., (2015) Chocolate, Colour and
Consideration: An Exploratory Study of Consumer Response to Packaging Variation in the
South African Confectionery Sector. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 7(1), p. 55.
Bharucha, J., (2016) Cadbury Vs Nestle: A Study of The Chocolate War. Journal
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migration research, and safety regulations. Journal of food science, 80(5), pp.R910-R923.
Fernandes, S.F., Gupta, P. and Vidyasagar, A., (2016) Cadbury India–Sweet Turning
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Freeman, B., Kelly, B., Baur, L., Chapman, K., Chapman, S., Gill, T. and King, L., (2014)
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Joshi, A. and Nema, G., (2015) Emotional branding: A new way to create brand loyalty for
FMCG companies. Journal of Management Value and Ethics, 5(2).

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Khedwal, A. (2013) Cadbury dairy milk. [online] Available from:
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Appendix
Decision-making process regarding Cadbury
(Source: Lovely et al., 2018)
Sweet time as Cadbury demerger goes ahead

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(Source: telegraph, 2018)