Campbell S Soup Case
External Analysis
Political/Legal
“The U.S. food processing sector is extensively regulated by state and federal agencies. Federal agencies dominate the regulatory oversight: USDA FSIS for the meat and poultry processing businesses and FDA for all other food processing businesses. State agencies also have an active role in overseeing food processing businesses within their respective states, but their role is in collaboration with the federal agencies”.1
Fortunately, there was no mention of any issues that Campbell’s has encountered regarding their manufacturing operations. However, they have run into some ethical issues regarding the methods used by the companies that they employed to do their marketing research.
Campbell’s hired three different marketing research companies. The first was Innerscope Research Inc. who measured bodily responses such as galvanic skin response, heart rate variability, pupil dilation etc. Using these measurements, they looked to see which parts of Campbell’s television commercials were eliciting responses from the consumer.
The second marketing research company they hired was Merchant Mechanics Inc. who conducted studies in the field (rather than a lab) to determine what it was about products that attracted customers. Merchant Mechanics believed that changing the retail environment was the best way to increase sales.
Finally, they hired Olson Zaltman Associates who used a metaphor elicitation technique to ascertain thoughts and feelings that might be occurring in the mind of the customers.
These methods encountered some ethical objections as there was concern about companies being unethical in their use of neuroscience to sell more of their products. It is mentioned in the case study that a group called Commercial Alert has raised objections regarding this kind of research. “Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing which uses medical technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) -- not to
Political/Legal
“The U.S. food processing sector is extensively regulated by state and federal agencies. Federal agencies dominate the regulatory oversight: USDA FSIS for the meat and poultry processing businesses and FDA for all other food processing businesses. State agencies also have an active role in overseeing food processing businesses within their respective states, but their role is in collaboration with the federal agencies”.1
Fortunately, there was no mention of any issues that Campbell’s has encountered regarding their manufacturing operations. However, they have run into some ethical issues regarding the methods used by the companies that they employed to do their marketing research.
Campbell’s hired three different marketing research companies. The first was Innerscope Research Inc. who measured bodily responses such as galvanic skin response, heart rate variability, pupil dilation etc. Using these measurements, they looked to see which parts of Campbell’s television commercials were eliciting responses from the consumer.
The second marketing research company they hired was Merchant Mechanics Inc. who conducted studies in the field (rather than a lab) to determine what it was about products that attracted customers. Merchant Mechanics believed that changing the retail environment was the best way to increase sales.
Finally, they hired Olson Zaltman Associates who used a metaphor elicitation technique to ascertain thoughts and feelings that might be occurring in the mind of the customers.
These methods encountered some ethical objections as there was concern about companies being unethical in their use of neuroscience to sell more of their products. It is mentioned in the case study that a group called Commercial Alert has raised objections regarding this kind of research. “Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing which uses medical technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) -- not to