Cereal Wars (Obviously Made up)

“The Cereal War” a public term used to name the completion of all cereal brands in the market, such competition has captured all of the media attention to the point that the most important news agencies created an independent division specialized in the study of the cereal market. According to CBC News, even though competition is tough, only two brands stand apart from the rest, not only because of high sale rates but also due to the cutting edge technology applied in the creation of both Cheerios’ Apple Cinnamon and Kellogg’s Fruit Loops. Recently, it has been announced that Kellogg’s and Cheerios will be presenting their new versions of the cereals at the C2E, commonly known as the Cereal Consumer Expo, an event where companies unveil their new high tech cereal. The cards are set and just one question remains, which brand will offer the best performance as breakfast? In order to answer this question, the public has been asked to tell the three main aspects they look at when choosing a brand over another, therefore this document will compare both cereals in terms of price, taste quality and overall market share prior to the launch of the product.

First, although none of the companies have announced retail price for their products, experts have made estimates as to how much will each cereal will cost at launch. In an interview, Cheerios’ CEO has stated that Apple Cinnamon will be set an affordable and attractive price for hard-core customers as well as for prospect buyers, “we always made the mistake of create the cereal and then price it,” said Cheerios’ CEO in the interview, “now first we set a specific price tag and then worked into making the new cereal suitable to said price tag.” However he did not suggest any tentative or official price on the Apple Cinnamon cereal box. On the other side, Kellogg’s CEO made announcements suggesting a “fruitlicious price” on the Fruit Loops, but as Cheerios’ CEO did, he also restrained from giving prices stating that it is still too early to fix a price tag on the new Fruit Loops cereal box. When asked whether Cheerios was going to fix the price of the Apple Cinnamon cereal box based upon the competition’s price the CEO of the company said: “It is really hard for me to give you this information without consulting first the company’s market department” This lack of information from both companies has led the public to speculate high prices on both cereal boxes ranging from 7 dollars to 15 dollars per box, according to CerealToday Magazine, this speculation is based on the fact that customers are used to pay high prices for a new version of their cereal.

In terms of taste quality, each brand has stood fiercely on its ground, each revealing features never seen before in a cereal. In an interview with CerealToday, Kellogg’s CEO said: “Our team has postponed the development of WOW Ghost in order to focus only in the creation of this new version of the Fruit Loops which I guarantee will take the breakfast to the next level it is here that I proudly announce that the new Fruit Loops taste comes in H.D quality.” This announcement received praises from Kellogg’s most loyal fans as well as from potential new customers and investors. However, Cheerios did not show signs of weakness against Kellogg’s announcement but instead their response stopped customers from aligning on Kellogg’s shelves. When asked about the quality of their cereal, Cheerios’ CEO said “in Cheerios we have been developing and testing new technologies in order to get the best results, therefore I happily announce that Apple Cinnamon taste quality will be in 3D.” After the interviews, reports from CerealToday showed that most of Cheerios and Kellogg’s fans were not sure about which cereal to get after the C2E event, while just a few thought of getting them both.

Although competition is tough, both brands still keep a share of potential customers and investors in the market. In a poll held by Forbes Magazine in fifteen of the twenty countries where Kellogg’s and Cheerios compete, seventy percent of the surveyed answered that they were more likely to buy Kellogg’s new Fruit Loops rather than Cheerios Apple Cinnamon, twenty percent answered they would buy cheerios for sure and ten percent chose neither Cheerios or Kellogg’s brands. According to Forbes, the reason why Kellogg’s seems to be more likely to get higher sales than its competitor could be due to Cheerios CEO declarations when asked the reason of developing their flavour in 3D; “basically, at Cheerios we believe that our customers don’t know what they want, so when we read and listened to their suggestions we decided to ignore them and to do exactly the opposite of what they asked us to do.” According to this magazine, such declarations enraged even Cheerios hard-core fans, yet there are still a number of people who believed that Cheerios declarations were nothing but a marketing technique, although this same people confessed that they feared Cheerios marketing department will be no match against Kellogg’s beloved mascot, Sam the Toucan, who with his treasure hunting games has been not only able to created inspiring games for children but also lovely moments for parents who upon asked about eating Fruit Loops as breakfast answered that the games on the boxes helped them to become more family active, therefore enhancing trust and stretching bones between the family members. A study held by Statistics Canada revealed that families that ate Fruit Loops at breakfast were more likely to fully trust each of its members and less likely to face a family crisis such as a divorce in the case of the parents.

As a final comment, it must be stated that no matter hard both brands take on each other; in the end it is the customer who has the last word about which cereal is better. However the reader will find the information issued in this document quite useful when it comes to choose one of the two brands. Assuming that the reader might have other sources of information different from the ones named on this paper, it is important to keep in mind that the three aspects discussed in this document, price, taste quality and potential market share have to be taken as if they were one because the lack of one of those three aspects will eventually lead to the lack of the other two.