General Mills' Harmony: Helping Women Achieve Nutritional Harmony

Stephen W. Sanger, CEO of General Mills, is constantly being faced with the challenge of how to keep up with the changing tastes and preferences of consumers. General Mills recently did a thorough focus group research on the most important consumer in grocery stores today: a woman. It is a known fact that 3 out of 4 of grocery shoppers in the United States are women, and many of these females are focusing more on their health and the nutrition value of foods. Although there are many cereals on the market with the same amount of valuable vitamins and minerals such as Total or Kellogg' Smart Start, General Mills decided to design a product specifically for a woman. Harmony would be its name.

Dietician Roberta Duyff claims that women do not get enough nutrients like calcium or folic acid from day to day. " It is great that a woman can now increase her intake of these important nutrients with a simple bowl of cereal for breakfast, and it you add milk, the vitamin D in milk makes the calcium in both the fortified cereal and milk itself more absorbable." This is one way in which General Mills saw an advantage - convenience for the woman. She can grab a bowl in the morning and start off her day with the nutrients she needs. Not only is the convenience of the product an incentive to market it but also the fact that it was found in the focus groups that women like to have a product of their own.

In fact, according to Megan Nightingale, assistant marketing manager at General Mills, "Our research has shown that women are looking for something that's nutritious, fast, convenient and has a good taste." Women even enjoy the calming effect of the box with its pale yellow background and blue female figure. The fact that General Mills is pursuing a single section of the market and meeting their needs shows the benefits of this cereal. Since its nationwide research, Harmony cereal has helped increase total sales to $11.2 billion for 2005. Researching and customizing the market for women was the right way for General Milles to go.

A telephone survey was conducted to determine the preference for and consumuption of Harmony and the relative importance that women attached to a a cereal being nutritious, fast, convenient and good tasting.

Discuss the following two questions:

1.What type of data analysis would you recommend to enable Stephen Sanger to understand how the four factors nutritious, fast, convenient and good tasting could influence women to buy Harmony?

2. What data analysis would you recommend to Stephen Sanger to find out which of the four factors (nutritious, fast, convenient, good taste) shuld be stressed in the advertising for Harmony?