SWOT analysis for Birds Eye company

In recent years, with the development of economy, a great number of people started to live in a healthier lifestyle, and having a balanced diet has been paid much more attention. Also, cooking a delicious meal in a high speed is highly noticed in this age that time is the most valuable thing.

Birds Eye, which is a international company of food processing, produced the production which is named of “Birds Eye Country Harvest Frozen Vegetable” to meet the requirement of people who like vegetables or want to cook easily and specially.

This report will make the SWOT analysis and the marketing mix in order to locate the position of the Birds Eye company and identify the target market of this production.

As can be seen, there are five main strengths for the Birds Eye Frozen Vegetable. First of all, it is much cheaper than most of other brands of similar products. For example, the price of Birds Eye Frozen Vegetable is mere a half of McCain Frozen Vegetables’. Next, Birds Eye Frozen Vegetable is healthier. The vegetable is picked strictly, and is arranged in balanced nutrition. After that, this production can be stored for a long time in fridges under minus eighteen degrees celsius. Consequently, the frozen vegetables is hard to become putrid. Additionally, it is easy and simple for cooking or heating. For instance, 4-5 minutes of heating in microwave would make a delicious dish, moreover, people have many choises of recipes that are provided by the Birds Eye company. Finally, this brand has a long history for nearly one hundred years, and it has been Austrlia for over sixty years. In brief, these are advantages that should be kept and improved.

·Weaknesses

Obviously, there are also four weaknesses that should be improved. Firstly, there are limited varieties of vegetables in one service so that there is not enough varieties of nutrition to totally meet the requirement of people’s body. Otherwise, people need to buy many bags for different vegetable. Secondly, although the company has already tried its hardest to keep the vegetable fresh, nevertheless, these vegetable is frozen and it cannot be as fresh as vegetable which is just picked. Furthermore, the Birds Eye Frozen Vegetable has lack of promotion. People cannot see any advertising or discount of this brand and product frequently. Consequently, this product is not well-known enough so that consumers do not have a deep impression and image of this product. In a word, all of there are disadvantages that should be avoided and adjusted.

·Opportunities

As can be easily found, there are two obvious opportunities of Birds Eye Country Harvest Frozen Vegetable. The first one is that there are a growing number of vegetarians in Australia, and more and more people pay their attention on balanced diet. Thus, the target market of this production is becoming larger and larger. Furthermoer, the second one is that a large number of people surpose to cook in a short time, especially in resturants or those single white collars. These are another considerable potential target market of Birds Eye Frozen Vegetable.

·Threats

However, there are also two potential threats of this product. The more important threat come from competition among similar products, especially the homemade brands. Their lower price and similar quality has built a considerable threat of companies like the Birds Eye, because the homemade brands reduce the market of Birds Eye Frozen Vegetable significantly. Moreover, there are still some people who prefer fresh food rather than frozen food, so they would not purchase this kind of products.

4Ps Framework

·Product

The first and most important part of 4Ps framework is product. It consists of the product’s packaging, labelling, nutrition information, and quality.

The Birds Eye Country Harvest Frozen Vegetable is packaged by plastic bags in different sizes, such as 500 grams and 1 kilogram. The packaging of the product is colourful. The main colour is yellow, and there is a conspicuous name of the product shown on the front of the bag, also a image of a plate of fresh mixed vegetable next to it. On the other side of the bag, there is many information. For instance, cooking instructions and explanations, nutrition informaton of the mixed vegetables, expire date of the product, the Birds Eye company’s advertisement and the product’s advertisement, the company’s official site, ingredients of the product, and the bar code.

Additionally, the labelling of the Birds Eye Country Harvest Frozen Vegetable is simple and easy to remember. It is a white bird with opening wings in a blue oval, and there are red words of “BIRDS EYE”, the company’s name on the body of the bird. The simple symbol makes people to recognise it easily.

Furthermoer, people can see the nutrition information clearly from the packaging or on the official site. For one bag of mixed vegetables (1 kilogram), it consists of 1950kJ of energy, 24 grams of protein, 4.7 grams of fat, 63 grams of carbohydrate, 36 grams of fibre, 0.24 grams of sodium, and 2.53 grams of potassium. It is easy to find that the Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables has low fat but high energy and fibre. It also contains number of protein. As a result, this product is popular among vegetarians.

Another important point is quality of the Birds Eye Country Harvest Frozen Vegetable. This product has been independently tested, and meet the nutrition standards of National Heart Fundation so that the quality assurance is approved by the organisation.

·Price

The second part of 4Ps framework is price. Here are some prices of similar products which is recorded in Coles at Wynyard in the table below. There are four products were recorded in this case. They are Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables Frozen, McCain Frozen Vegetable, Coles Smart Buy Mixed Vegetables Frozen, and Coles Australian Mixed Vegetables. Additionally, the table is arranged in price order, from the most expensive to the cheapest.

Brand

Price

(per kg)

McCain Frozen Vegetable

$ 5.43

Coles Australian

Mixed Vegetables

$ 4.24

Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables Frozen

$ 3.00

Coles Smart Buy Mixed Vegetables Frozen (Homemade)

$ 1.73

Obviously, people can find that McCain Frozen Vegetable is the most expensive product in frozen vegetable market, at $5.43 per kilogram, and the lowest price comes from the homemade brand, which is Coles Smart Buy Mixed Vegetables Frozen, at $1.73. This is becaused that homemade company is not only the producer, but also the retail saler. It does not have a wholesaler who would increase the price of the product.

Furthermore, the price of the Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables Frozen is $3.00. This price is cheaper than most of brands except homemade brand. This could be the result of the fact that the Birds Eye makes the sale of product faster by joining the price competition. In the Coles at Wynyard, the Birds Eye’s products are often be sold out, this might be the consequence of its low price.

·Place

The third part of 4Ps framework is place, and it also be known as distribution.

Since the Birds Eye is a long-history brand, its product of Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables can be found at almost every big retailing store and supermarket, such as 7 Eleven, Woolworths, Coles, and IGA. This photograph below was taken in Coles at Wynyard.

Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables Frozen

As can be seen, the Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables is put in a large fridge at the corner of Coles, which is frozen food section of the supermarket. Moerover, this product is on the middle storey of the shelf in fridge. However, there is only a small amount of this product on the shelf. The area that Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables occupies is much smaller than other brands such as McCain and Coles Australian. Consequently, it is not conspicuous and is hard for people to find it.

Additionally, people can find some dish made by Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables in some resturants which sale meals or fast food.

·Promotion

The promotion of the product is the last part of 4Ps framework. According to the advertisement of Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables, which is “Simple ways to make meals special”, the main method of this product is that it could help people to cook delicious and special meals in simple way. For example, people just need to put some mixed vegetables into microwave and heat it for 4-5 minutes in order to make a dish.

Suprisingly, the Birds Eye company even provide some recipes on the packaging or official site to help people cooking. For instance, people could make a pesto in only 10 minutes by the given way.

On the packaging of the Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables, people would find some information which is named “simply good”. These information points out the benefits of the product in order to stress that the products of this company are safe and healthy. For example, according to the “simply good”, there is not any added preservatives to make the product hard to be putrid. Also, there is not any added flavours to make it more well-tasted. Furthermore, there is not any added colour to make it more colourful, Moreover, the Birds Eye Country Harvest Mixed Vegetables is a good source of vitamin C and fibre which is beneficial for people’s health. Furthermore, the sustainability is also regarded as a responsibility of the Bird Eye company.

Nevertheless, this product does not have any discount in Coles, because the price is low enough among similar products. On contrast, people can find the fact that there is an over 60% off in the online shop. The original price was $4.80 before, but it is only $3.00 now.

Conclusion

In conclusion, although the Birds Eye Country Harvest Frozen Vegetable can be bought at almost every large supermarket with a cheap price, this brand and product is still not famous enough. Managers of the Birds Eye company should adjust their marketing strategies into more powerful promotion and build a high-level image of the company, brand, and products. Furthermore, the high quality of products is the most important and basic things to keep a developing company.