Ben and Jerry Business Fundamentals

Case Study (Ben and Jerry's)

Negar Ekbia (1813632)

University Canada West

Professor: Yuri Taira

 MBAF 503: Business Fundamentals

14th May, 2019

Background

In 1978, Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen established their own ice cream company in an old gas station in Vermont. Many people find this company attractive because it was an incorporate company combined with reach fat ice cream and heavy thick components and memorable name they put on their products. In 1984 the company was introduced to stakeholders and begin with the BJICA symbol. This company known for its caring and responsibilities for the people and environment due to their attitudes. For example, they were only buying cream from Vermont, and bringing the nuts from south America forests, where offering renewable substitute for cutting woods for different products. The other significant major they did was giving 7.5 percent of their profit to helping different social organizations related to health and homeless people. They provided reach ice cream with high density, which was 2 percent more than that of other companies; consequently, their ice cream certified as super premium product. One of the competitors they had was Haagen-Dazs, who tried to put pressure on the Ben and Jerry's company for distributing their product. In 1985 they stablished their second firm and after that their third one in Vermont.

problems  

companies' problem

Ben and Jerry's had the second market share position of about 34 percent which was a significant number compared to 44 percent of Haagen-Dazs, but in 1994 the company faced a lost. Although they grew bigger and the sales were more than $150 million and distributed to more countries, they net income and profit were at bad situation. They were at 5th highest share of the market and only 3.6 percent of the market belong to them but their speciality was in super premium ice cream.

Problem roots:

        Lack of strategically marketing plans, advertising and a proper CEO to manage the company to first examine the opportunities in foreign countries and then plan and invest in that countries; accordingly, many of the investments in the foreign countries were faced a problem.

Investing in Japan

1)Disadvantages for investing in Japan

        One of the problems was that super premium ice cream were already selling by about 6 bigger Japanese companies, in addition, distribution in Japan was really complicated also the exchange rate is always a risk, so it was another burden for Ben and Jerry's. moreover, if anything happened between these two companies, the Ben and Jerry's is going to have nothing in Japan. Another problem was related to production, they need to packed the ice cream in small personal portion instead of 473ml that they always packed, because ice cream in japan is like a snack and they prefer to have an individual cup. In addition to the change in size, Seven-Eleven wanted different design on packages, so the unique brand image of Ben and Jerry should erase from the package. While Odak rise the prices to show that they are equal to Haagen-Dazs in matter of quality, Seven-Eleven wanted to sell Ben and Jerry's ice cream a little bit less than Haagen-Dazs.