Oreo in different countries

USA

Market of sandwich biscuits in USA is growing (CAGR 17%) and it reached almost $ 2.5 bln in 2013. Oreo brand holds the second position with 9% market share.

Oreo represents cookies for “kids and adults who want to have fun”, aiming at children and youth who are quality conscious – so Oreo is definitely a premium brand. It positions itself as the “best selling cookie in the United States” and with its strong record of innovation and clever advertising Oreo won the preferences of a great audience. 

Oreo is distributed through retailers and supermarkets, also having partnership agreements with such companies as McDonald’s and Baskin Robins. This ideally represents the way to reach their target audience.

Oreo has very strong marketing campaigns, basing them on the innovation, creativity, responsiveness and adaptation. Oreo uses a lot main social networks (Facebook, Instagram, twitter) to entertain their potential customers and make them believe that “To every person that feels happy, enjoys life and wants to have or share a unique taste, Oreo is the answer and your experience enhancer”. Oreo answers the trends instantly and always is eager to create new innovative ads to capture customers’ minds – it helps to keep pace with the youth and to remain one of the most creative brands.

China

Kraft Foods entered Chinese market with its bestseller Oreo in 1996, but for 9 years it couldn’t do anything to build the business, by 2005 Oreo holed only 3% of Chinese cookie market.

The whole Chinese biscuit market can be divided on seven categories. All of them together have a value of more than one billion – dollar: sandwich biscuits, plain sweet biscuits, wafers, plain savory, cookies, soda crackers and egg-roll biscuits. By 2005 Oreo was competing only in sandwich biscuit category. Kraft Foods recognized that without a significant strategic reorganization the whole market would be lost to competitors.

At first, the management team needed to understand why the existing strategy did not work. Oreo used the same strategy as company was using in U.S. Oreo had the same products and marketing strategy. This strategy did not work because different culture and different tastes.

The Oreo China team designed the following strategy to win Chinese market: 

1. It introduced a less sweet version called LightSweet Oreo.

2. Also for the first time in company history Oreo changed the formula of original Oreo to make it better for the local tastes.

3. The size of the packet was reduced to give new costumers change to try new product for lower prize. 4. The team also worked on distribution. Some very brave ideas were introduced for example in Shanghai one supermarket offered to sell Oreos by weight, which gave customers more control over how much to buy. 

5. After recognizing the popularity of wafers segment in China, the team introduced chocolate-covered wafer sticks. Convincing senior management to introduce a new product was not easy, but Oreo sticks were a big hit and soon gained 30 per cent of wafer sales overall. Wafer sticks later were launched in some other overseas markets.

India

AC Nielsen study, the company said the Indian biscuit market grew at 17% in 2010, with creams and biscuits leading overall growth, realized that trend, Kraft had decided to introduce Oreo to India market.

In 2011 Kraft Foods announced its entry into the India biscuits market.

1. To enter the new market Kraft decided to change a strategy and launched Oreo under the Cadbury brand name.

According the Kraft Food “launch Oreo under the Cadbury brand in India was made locally because the Cadbury brand has stronger brand equity in the region that the Kraft brand, which is not so well known”

Kraft also says the Cadbury brand will never be applied to Oreo in the UK or regions where the Kraft brand is “just as strong as Cadbury”.

2. Kraft used Cadbury distribution channels, it allowed the company to save a lot of money and time.

3. Kraft could reach correlation between Codbury chocolate and Oreo.   

4. Oreo also changed its price strategy to fit India market

At start prices were set lower than its core competitor Britannia's Jim-Jam Treat.

5. Oreo introduced a lot of different types of packages (3, 7 and 14 biscuits in package), in order to create a big price differentiation, because Oreo wanted to cover all India market segments.