General Mills's Growth In The Wal-Mart Industry

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General Mills growth has not been what is used to be in previous years. A large part of that is due to the U.S yogurt market. The yogurt sector of the company is not small, containing $1.3 billion of yogurt sales during the last full fiscal year, which is about 13 percent of sales for the company (Star Tribune, 2017). According to the Star Tribune, General Mills got its start by getting the U.S license for the Yoplait brand in the late 1970’s (Star Tribune, 2017). Initially, General Mills did a superb job of marketing the yogurt because U.S consumption of yogurt per person grew 645 percent from 1980 through 2013 according to the U.S Department of Agriculture. According to Fortune.com, General Mills pitched it to Americans as “¬Yoplait—it …show more content…

The brand began targeting women, with one ad touting a custard style as “fat-free and guilt-free.” By the turn of the century, Yoplait scored a major hit when it launched Go-Gurt, yogurt in squeezable tubes for kids (Fortune.com, 2017). By this point, Yoplait had overtaken the Dannon brand and become the market leader. An evident pattern has seemed to appear with yogurt. The product branding of yogurt seems to be redefined every five to ten years. According to David Clark, president of General Mills’ U.S yogurt business; “It is a category of constant reinvention of itself”. Up until recently, General Mills has been able to keep up with market branding changes or beat …show more content…

As previously stated, the yogurt market is redefined every five to ten years. Yoplait was severely late on the last trend which was Greek Yogurt. A General Mills executive stated that “It’s no secret we were late” in response to the rise in Greek Yogurt, referencing Chobani’s success. The company attempted to launch a Greek Yogurt brand of their own, however it was not nearly as successful as its competitors Chaboni and even Dannon’s Greek Yogurt. According to the Star Tribune, Yoplait Greek sounded to many consumers like the company was trying to finesse them into buying their yogurt just to be part of a trend. General Mills should attempt to start their own trend of yogurts. They should try marketing to a different group of people such as senior citizens or people with health

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