Essay on Hawaiian Punch: Go-to-Market Strategy

Words: 1521
Pages: 7

Hawaiian Punch is the leading brand of fruit drink brands in the United States and has a long history of satisfying customers. The Hawaiian Punch brand traces its roots back to the 1930’s when it was developed as tropical-tasting syrup for ice cream and later sold as a drink. The brand has been owned by several different companies over the years and was recently purchased by the Cadbury Schweppes Company from Procter and Gamble Corporation. Hawaiian Punch joined the Dr. Pepper-Seven UP Inc. bottling network, which is the third largest carbonated soft drink bottler in the United States. This allowed the brand to be distributed in the soft drink aisle of the supermarket. The brand is unique in that it is sold in two different sections …show more content…
While increasing sales volume in the juice market is important to the brand, the real growth area is in the direct store distribution since the current market share is low, which leaves much room for growth, and the profit is much higher at 52.7% versus just 16.6% for finished goods. A major effort should be made to increase direct to store sales promoting the brand to teens, which is an expanding category and has the most room to increase sales volumes. Allowances and Advertising Each distribution network has its own cost associated with brand innovation and must be able to support additional SKU by either paying additional cost of product placement fees or additional cost of media advertising. The finished goods network has additional cost of product placement fees displaying a pull marketing plan, while the direct to store has the need for additional media advertising, which represents a pull marketing strategy. Both of these complement each other and work together to increase and already high brand awareness within the consumer. The important question is how much of each. Currently, the Hawaiian Punch brand spends only six cents per case in advertising compared to its competition, which on average spends twenty-four cents per case. An increase in the advertising should be directed towards the direct to store model because of its high gross margins (52.7%) and overall brand margin (41%). The additional focus and funds should be concentrated to