Lays Baked Sweet Potato Chips A.K.A My Marketing Research Class

Over the course of the past six weeks we have been working on a fictional product from a preselected list major companies. We were given the assignment to create this product and research it using various methods taught to us during the class.

The major company I chose was PepsiCo and the fictional product I came up with was Lays Baked Sweet Potato Chips! This is a growth area as I found out in my research, sweet potato recipes are becoming more common place rather than reserved for the Thanksgiving table in pie form.

Sweet potatoes are rich in many vitamins and minerals and a far healthier choice than the more common russet or golden varieties. Baking them rather than frying them in fat is an additional boost to the health conscious among the population is just an added bonus and would preserve many of the healthier benefits by not submerging them in vats of grease.

The trends I have found tend to make this more of a growth product. There are a couple of smaller potato chip companies that have made this in the traditional fried of kettle form but baked has been missed out on. Add to that no major company has a line of sweet potato chips, not Ruffles, not Pringle's, not Guy's. No one, which leaves a rather large market to be tapped by a national company.

My marketing strategy was to focus group the chips in their baked, fried, and kettle cooked formats and adding flavors such as BBQ, Ranch, etc. with the main flavor being plain and baked which is the idea. Testing to see how the various tweaks on the baked chip would work compared to the one variety that is the real idea.

Focus groups would be used in the southern states first where sweet potatoes are more common and harvested such as the Carolinas. Regional testing is essential as tastes and flavors change from state to state and region to region. Lays Baked Sweet Potato chips might fail in California but thrive in Florida, regional testing would help determine the size of the market.

Smaller markets would be chosen such as quick shops and maybe a chain of grocery stores and sales would be measured until a big enough sampling size could be determined as accurate. The sampling size would be one of the more easier of the products I've read about as it would be anyone that has eaten or would eat a potato chip! That's pretty much everyone in the United States.

This proposed marketing strategy aligns perfectly with any legal or ethical concerns, there are no sweat shops to be concerned about, there are no import tariffs as sweet potatoes are heavily grown in North Carolina. The only concern would be for a fair price to the farms that produced the sweet potato which a buyer on the scale of Lays is used to negotiating prices and contracts for delivery.

I have not encountered many limitations for the idea of marketing proposal of this product. On the contrary, it's been one of the more enjoyable classes I've had as I work towards my degree! Way better than Business Systems and Design which left me with a rather poor teacher. That was the worst experience I've had since I started back to school in 2015! This is the complete opposite of that experience! This class has been faced paced and enjoyable! I've found myself at work thinking about how I would market this product if I really were in charge of such a thing at PepsiCo and what I would do to ensure a successful marketing strategy!