Strategy: Mars ice-cream

Strategies adopted by Mars

Mars expanded the whole ice-cream market in Europe when it introduced a new bar made with top-quality ingredients; therefore the main idea of its strategy was to make difference between its product and those of its competitors by offering better products.

Mars ice-cream has been heavily supported through an investment in advertising and media spend as a part of their strategy, the brand wants the customers who usually buy ice-creams to know the reasons why they should buy Mars´s ice-cream instead of others, but also, let customers who already buy others Mars products realize that Mars is good making not only chocolates but ice-creams as well.

To support the customer´s perception of high quality the new ice-cream was more expensive than its competitors.

When Mars were denied access to main competitor’s freezer cabinets (Unilever and Nestlé) in many European markets and the distribution problems came up, it was forced to operate schemes either to make loans or sell freezers, even negotiating agreements with smaller companies, such as Lyons Maid or Miko until these companies were taken over.

Since Mars do not sell other kind of products also demanded by consumers, like dessert ice creams or packs for children, it is not attractive for a retail customer and it has had to accept them into its cabinets.

Will Mars ever make significant profits from its ice cream operations?

Business strategy is concerned with an organization´s basic direction for the future, taking competitive advantage; it is your link between the company and the environment. There are many things to consider in order to be successful.

From my point of view, Mars knew their goals but did not measure very well its resources and capabilities to achieve its objective, one example is the issue with the freezers, not understanding the necessities of the retail customers and affecting the consumer´s perception of high quality since its ice-creams were sharing freezers with others products that are not as good as Mars ones. As a result Mars did not satisfying the expectations of its target, the product fail when customers do not perceive it as better value than those are currently using, I think due to a poor competitive position.

Therefore, Mars did not analyze correctly the force of its competitors and the barriers to entry into the ice-cream markets despite the big effort and investment in advertising. Without proper planning, the result is failure, since the strategy has not been tested and product launched being inadequately implemented.

However, nowadays none of the reasons is surprising and most of the problems could be at least substantially reduced. The situation of Mars is difficult but they should try making more kind of products, having freezers just with their products, focusing on effective ways to reach the consumers…

Mars has to analyze properly the situation, adapting to it with a new strategy. Otherwise they will continue making no profit.

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