Quaker Oats Case Analysis

For this case, I had role of VP Customer Relations. I negotiated against other VP’s to improve Snapple’s market share and brand image. The main goal of the group was to resolve the issues for Quaker Oats after its association with Snapple. I believed that this can be best accomplished by introducing a sports drinks and not focusing on expanding the variety of flavors in fruit drinks. My views regarding this interest were determined by fact that it will exalt the prestige of my department, thus fulfilling my interest too. However, I felt that these views were in direct contrast with other VP’s, especially with VP’s of Marketing and Finance.

Since this was the group negotiation, I was expecting beforehand that at least one of the members would support my decisions, and I was right as most of my views were similar with the VP of Sales & Distribution. Thus, I planned to lend their support so as to make the idea of expanding the brand image feasible.

Moving to negotiation, I felt my strongest point was that I was representing the Customer Relations Division, thus my opinions will be counted as I was close to customers and

The VP of Finance was talking mainly to the VP of Marketing and VP of R&D. Moreover, as VP of Customer relations, I wanted to change the ingredients of products before any decisions made by FDA, but most of the VP’s especially VP of Productions and VP of Corporate Strategy in the group were not in favor and were in support to just change the label. Personally, I also got convinced by their decisions, as FDA had the weak case against us. But changing the label also requires lot of reasoning as we were confused for most of the time that we should change the “all natural” label to just “stay natural” or not, as customers are health conscious and prefer to read label before buying any product. Talking about Kosher label, we didn’t take that much time and decided to remove it from