Truearth Healthy Foods
TruEarth Healthy Foods: Market Research for a New Product Introduction
Problem Statement:
TruEarth was founded by Gareth DeRosa in 1993 in St. Louis, Missouri. During 1980’s there was a increase in demand of healthier food in market as people were becoming more aware of their eating habits. Company launched its own line of healthier gourmet pastas and sauces made from superior ingredients. DeRosa managed to source particularly high quality of durum wheat from North Dakota. He was very choosy about the ingredients of sauces that were made by the company. The company became a leading example in whole grain products offering customers with option of 60% or 100% whole grain pastas to choose from. The sauces were made from real fresh ingredients such as real tomatoes, extra virgin oil and without any sweeteners or dried spices. People liked the concept of healthy food offered by the company and all the products were success. The product development process of company was very informal and based mostly on intuitions. Management believed that experimenting with new products is the best and most inexpensive way to identify the next big hit in market. Company uses high level analysis and intuition to make an educated guess about the performance of product in the market. But the estimations made by the company were not consistent with the actual market trends and calculations. Company was either underestimating about the success of a product and finds itself struggling with increased demands or the estimates were too optimistic which frustrates retailers and they ask for some guarantee from the company that their product will not a money blocker for them. So company adopted a new policy which involves four step process for research and development of new product. But the strong competition for the most successful product of the company was forced to extensively work on launching new products and invested a lot in their new pizza project. One can ask a question that if
Problem Statement:
TruEarth was founded by Gareth DeRosa in 1993 in St. Louis, Missouri. During 1980’s there was a increase in demand of healthier food in market as people were becoming more aware of their eating habits. Company launched its own line of healthier gourmet pastas and sauces made from superior ingredients. DeRosa managed to source particularly high quality of durum wheat from North Dakota. He was very choosy about the ingredients of sauces that were made by the company. The company became a leading example in whole grain products offering customers with option of 60% or 100% whole grain pastas to choose from. The sauces were made from real fresh ingredients such as real tomatoes, extra virgin oil and without any sweeteners or dried spices. People liked the concept of healthy food offered by the company and all the products were success. The product development process of company was very informal and based mostly on intuitions. Management believed that experimenting with new products is the best and most inexpensive way to identify the next big hit in market. Company uses high level analysis and intuition to make an educated guess about the performance of product in the market. But the estimations made by the company were not consistent with the actual market trends and calculations. Company was either underestimating about the success of a product and finds itself struggling with increased demands or the estimates were too optimistic which frustrates retailers and they ask for some guarantee from the company that their product will not a money blocker for them. So company adopted a new policy which involves four step process for research and development of new product. But the strong competition for the most successful product of the company was forced to extensively work on launching new products and invested a lot in their new pizza project. One can ask a question that if