Historical approach.
Before and during the Perestroika the market of pastas of Saint Petersburg was offering only the products of the Soviet manufacturers. There were no imported pastas at all. Due to the system, the market of pastas of the city was actually offering something. In the province it did not. There was a deficit of everything. Since there was no competition between the manufacturers, the quality of pastas was extremely poor. The technology of pastas manufacture itself was of interest: it was a so-called “double technology”. A double technology is one that can be used both for manufacture of civil and military products. In the USSR the equipment used for pastas manufacture could be used for manufacture of ammunition. I think it did not affect the quality of pastas positively.
In addition to this, high quality pastas can be made only of high quality durum wheat flour. And of course, there was a deficit of this kind of wheat in the USSR.
The consequence of all these plus bad management was the poor quality of the pastas manufactured in the USSR.
When later the market was open for foreign manufacturers of pastas the native ones were pushed out of the market since they were non-competitive.
For several years the market of pastas was saturated with imported products. Only in the last few years the situation began to improve for native manufacturers. This was because the difference in prices between them and the foreign manufacturers they could achieve became more significant and the quality of Russian pastas improved. The industry began to develop.
The present situation.
In this section some information that had been available for us before the research was made is given.
We can say that the Russian manufacturers use and have used price methods of competition mainly. The reasons why they have to do it are the following:
· Often the product is of low quality;
· The product is manually packed in most of the cases;
· The reason which in my opinion is of the highest importance: Russian people have a stereotype which was, as we say, absorbed with the mother’s milk: made in the USSR means made badly. That is why Russians have negative attitude towards products manufactured in Russia or Post-Soviet area. It makes people think that anything imported is better. And that is why English on the packaging is a mean of marketing in Russia. We have to break this stereotype if we want to succeed.
Products in the market.
We can divide all pastas available into three major categories:
1. Low quality pastas. They are cheap, manufactured in Russia or Byelorussia, made of flour which is not actually for pastas manufacture. [3] Their poor quality can be easily identified by their appearance. They are not smooth and their color is a kind of whitish, not the ultimate specific yellow-gray color of good pasta. Their packaging is always manual.
2. Middle quality pastas. This category will include domestic pastas made of good durum wheat flour but packed manually. As a consequence, the only possible method of competition is low price. The low price influences the position of these pastas, though they are more expensive than the ones from the previous category, approximately by 20-25%[4].
3. High quality pastas. This category includes pastas made of high quality durum wheat flour and packed automatically. Most of the high quality pastas are imported. The strongest position in the market belongs to Italian and Finnish pastas. Domestic offerings of these pastas are rare. The best known domestic manufacturer of high quality pastas in the city is “Panna”, the former “First pasta factory”.
During the last crisis after August, the 17th, the foreign manufacturers of pastas had to face problems in Russia. If before the crisis Russian pastas were approximately 20-30 % cheaper than imported ones, after the crisis when the economic situation became relatively stable again (in October-November), the imported pastas were two times more expensive than the Russian ones. This relates to all or almost all imported pastas since they cost approximately the same nevertheless they are made in different countries- from Italy to Iran. In addition to this, the price level in Russia increased dramatically during only a few weeks. Many imported goods became 2-3 times more expensive than they were. This means a decrease of real income. Since attitude towards Russian pastas comparatively with the imported ones is negative, we can assume that Russian pastas are inferior goods. This means that even if only the people’s income had decrease without any change in price, the consumption of the imported pastas would have reduce in favor of the Russian ones.
Having applied some microeconomics issues to our analysis we found an interesting detail: we have not only one process which can improve the conditions of Russian manufacturers but two. They are a change in price and a change in income. According to the economist of the LBS Corporation the average increase in prices of foods was about 50%. This means the effect of the second process should have been significant. What this led to was called “pastas boom”. According to the information gained with the help of some channels of the LBS Corporation, some big Moscow and Petersburg manufacturers increased their production by three times in September and October comparatively with August. This means the foreign manufacturers which dominated our market became non-competitive and where pushed out of the market. We had to think how should we use this. One of the ideas, as was said before, was to start package automatically, design the appropriate marketing mix for our product, and use this opportunity to gain the brand recognition. We had to break the stereotype and make people think our product is a high quality one though it is made in Russia. We should use this time when foreign competitors are destroyed to capture some market share in which the people would have positive attitude towards our product.
We can also estimate that the overall capacity of the market of pastas will decrease since the most dangerous for us substitute of pastas, potato, have not became significantly more expensive.
Trying to estimate the market capacity of our product, we meet some difficulties:
· There are a lot of small manufacturers and the market is saturated with their products, and they do not declare their true level of production to reduce or completely avoid taxation.
· Pastas are sold in the outdoors markets without cash registers, some pastas are imported through Byelorussia to avoid Russian customs.
That means we cannot trace the quantity of pastas manufactured in the city using top-down approach. The only powerful mean of estimating the capacity of the market we still have at our disposal is the bottom-up approach. We can figure out how much pastas an average person consumes and it will give us an idea about the capacity of the market.
Market segmentation.
My next step was to segment the market.
In my opinion, the most important variable of segmenting of the pastas market is consumer’s family income per head. Later we can apply a kind of sub-segmentation to some of the segments to divide them into smaller ones using another variables.
The segments we can name are the following:
1) “Low class”[5]. Poor people. Their income per head is below 500 roubles. Since they have to make a living somehow, they will want to save on anything. They will most probably buy low quality pastas. The following social groups belong to this segment:
¨ Pensioners,
¨ Jobless people,
¨ Families with more than 3 children,
¨ Public employees (doctors, teachers).
¨ People who are not paid for their job
Though their income is low, this segment is important because of its size.
2) “Lower middle class”. This category will denote people with income per head from 500 roubles to 900 roubles per month. They are able to satisfy their needs for food, though they will try to save on it because their disposable income is still low.
We can name the following groups of people who match this definition:
¨ working pensioners;
¨ retired officers;
¨ public employees[6];
¨ workers and employees of different professions, usually not complex ones;
3) “Higher middle class”. People with an income of 900 to 1500 roubles per head per month will be included in this segment. These people have a significant disposable income for Russia. This means sometimes they will prefer the quality to the price, but the price still is of the highest importance.
To this segment belong:
¨ white collars, office workers;
¨ representatives of complex professions;
¨ representatives of militia, army, tax police, etc.
4) “High class”. We will encounter in this category everyone whose income per head is higher than 1500 rubles per month. These people have a big disposable income for Russia. At least they can afford buy the pastas they like. This means we can expect the price elasticity of this segment to be the lowest one. The representatives of this segment will be influenced by such factors as brand name recognition, quality of packaging, etc. in the highest degree.
In this segment we can include:
¨ small entrepreneurs;
¨ people who have a good job, have a good income, but are not entrepreneurs. This category will include a lot of different professions from drivers to butchers.
¨ New Russians.
We should underline, though this segment is relatively small (according to the sources of the LBS Corporation, 20-30% in Saint Petersburg), it is huge in its absolute figures. In addition, its representatives have the highest disposable income and are concerned about prestige and self-respect much more than the representatives of the other segments. That is why we can be sure a-priori that this segment will require an elaborated marketing mix of its own.
We should not deepen our segmentation using other variables because it will complicate our model of the market and the subsegments which will result from this will hardly differ significantly. The deeper segmentation will not be relevant to our problem.
The questionnaire.
Before and during asking the questions try to notice the following:
1. The customer has bought pastas:
¨ Automatically manually packed
¨ Sort: Corns Shells Spirals Spaghetti Vermicelli
¨ Quality: high midle low
¨ Domestic Imported
¨ Trade mark: (for automatically packed)
Nordic Big other_______ unknown
¨ Weight: 300g 500g 1000g
¨ Price: __________________
¨ Quantity: 1 2 3 more
2. The customer is making or has already made another purchases
YES NO
3. The customer’s sex: M F
4. The customer’s age: 10-18, 18-25, 25-35, 35-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65-
5. The customer’s dress is:
poor average rich
_________________________________________________________
The questions to be asked (skip the question if the answer is obvious, just mark the right answer):
1. Have you bought pastas manually or automatically packed?
Manually Automatically
2. (skip the questions 2 and 3 if the pasta bought is manually packed) What is the trademark of the pasta you have just bought?
3. You prefer to purchase pasta
¨ of this trademark
¨ of this and some others trademarks (if yes, what are they)
¨ the trademark does not mean
4. What is the sort of the pasta you have bought?
Corns Shells Spirals Spaghetti Vermicelli
5. What is the size of the package?
300g 500g 1000g
6. What is the optimal size of the package?
300g 500g 1000g other ____________
7. What is the price of the package? __________________
8. What is the form of the pastas you have bought?
Shells corns spirals vermicelli
other_________________________
9. Why have you chosen exactly this pasta?
Price Quality Familiar trademark Other __________________
10. How often do you buy pastas?
____ times a week once a _____weeks once a _____ months
11. How many people will eat the pasta you have bough? _______
12. Did you use to buy more or less pastas before crisis? MORE LESS
13. You have planned to buy pastas in advance? YES NO
14. You have made your decision about which particular pasta (brandname, sort) you will buy in advance? YES NO
15. Imported[7] pastas are better than the domestic ones. Yes No
16. How much would you pay to have a 500g package of imported pastas instead of Russian? ___________________
17. Automatically packed pastas are better than manually packed ones:
always
often, but sometimes manually packed pastas are not worth
manually packed pastas are as good as automatically packed
18. How much should a 500g package of good-looking automatically packed pasta of an unknown domestic brand cost to make you switch to it? _____________
19. What is the biggest disadvantage of manually packed pastas?
Poor quality Unknown manufacturer No guarantee on weight
Other ___________________________________________________
20. When you buy imported goods do you have a feeling that it is bad that we have to substitute natural gas for foods, cloths, etc.
Usually Sometimes Seldom Never
21. What are you?
22. Have the reforms performed in Russia been in your favor?
23. Do you prefer to buy clothes and footwear in the shop or in the market?
24. What are the members of your family?
25. What is your personal income?
26. What is the income per head in your family?
27. How old are you?
The results.
1. We revealed a negative correlation between income per head and consumption of pastas. The biggest part[8] of buyers were representatives of the lower class or the lower middles (31% and 33% respectively). 27% were higher middles, and 16% belonged to the high class. Since only pasta buyers were asked, the average consumption of pasta is lower than our research show, but nevertheless we can get an idea of structure of consumption of pastas. According to our calculations, the consumption of pastas per head is:
¨ Lower class- 0.6 kg/month
¨ Lower middles – 0.55 kg/month
¨ Higher middles – 0.32 kg/month
¨ High class - 0.13 kg/month
2. Only 12% of the respondents claimed they consume more than 1.3 kg of pastas a month per head. We can treat the lower class and the lower middles as the heavy half and the higher middles and the high class as the light half.
3. 36 % of respondents claimed they prefer corns to other pastas, 22%like spirals, 26% like shells, 7% prefer vermicelli, and 2% usually buy spaghetti.
4. 46% of buyers claimed the price to be the most important factor which influenced their purchase decision, for 37% of consumers the quality is the priority. 5% think they should buy only automatically packed pastas, and 3% claimed some specific features as taste (we should assume that good taste is a part of quality and that is why this group is small). There were also 4% of loyals who are driven by a familiar brand name while making their decision.
5. Usually people plan to purchase pastas in advance (87%). In spite of this, the decision about the particular sort and brand name (if there is any) is usually impulse (63%).
6. The crisis dramatically affected the market of pastas. We talked to the salesmen of pastas to shed light on this question. All of the salesmen we talked to said that before the crisis people preferred imported pastas to domestic ones. Now domestic pastas of low quality (37%) and middle quality (45%) are bought (according to our survey, not to salesmen). We expected changes to happen, but we did not expect them to be so huge, though LBS Corporation’s manufacture of pastas very notably increased since before August, 17th.
7. The most desirable size of package is 1kg (57%), then goes a 500g package (38%).
8. People almost do not purchase domestic automatically packed pastas. Their price is almost equal to the price of imported pastas.
9. 72% of respondents said that they would prefer automatically packed pasta to manually packed one. 35% would do it because they are afraid of being given light weight, 19% do not like unawareness about the manufacturer, and 11% think the quality is poor.
In spite of this, people are not willing to pay much for packaging, though 82% of them agree that they would prefer automatically packed pasta to manually packed one. Only 9% were willing to pay more than 1 ruble for a 500g package, 24 % would pay from 0.6 to 1 ruble for a 500g package, 28% would pay about 0.5 ruble, and 10% would pay nothing at all (some even said they would prefer manually packed pastas because they can use the packaging).
10. People would not like to buy pastas in cardboard or other non-glassy packaging. Actually all of the respondents said they need to look at the product to estimate its quality.
11. Though people agree that imported pastas tend to be better than the domestic ones, most of them (67%) would not like to pay more than 25% more for imported pastas.
12. People do not worry a lot about the brand name. There are no hard-core loyals. There are a few split loyals (11%). They are among the people who still prefer imported pastas. The most popular brands are: Nordic (27% of imported pastas purchased were of this brand), Big (21 %). Non of the respondents was a loyal of any domestic trademarks.
13. Actually all people said that it is bad that Russia substitutes natural resources for industrial goods, but only 4% said they often think about it when they make their purchase decision, 7% said they sometimes do, 5% seldom think of this.
14. Since it was difficult for the respondents to answer weather they used to consume more or less pastas before the crisis (more than 50% could not answer at all or hesitated), we used the salesmen as our reserve source of information. According to them, the overall consumption of pastas decreased by approximately 15%, and consumption of imported pastas has just slummed- by more than 50%.
Conclusions.
Putting two and two together, we can state the following.
General findings.
1. The price is the most important factor influencing the consumer’s purchase decision. It will probably keep its position or even be able to strengthen it if we take the constantly deteriorating economic situation in the country into account.
2. The lower middles and the lower class are the most attractive segments from the point of value. The lowers will more likely need low and middle quality pastas. Taking into account the role of price in purchase decision, we should assume that this segment will hardly react the traditional marketing measures. The other segments high class will probably require more elaborated marketing mixes, since quality plays the most important role there. Quality is estimated subjectively, and we can affect subjective probability using the means of marketing.
The lower middles and higher middles will probably prefer middle quality pastas. the biggest difference between them is in the price they are ready to pay for quality. A company can acquire competitive advantages using automated process of packaging. The main difficulty it is likely to face here – the increase in price must be low enough. It also should be careful and remember about positioning: even if it is able to automatically pack at a low cost and provide the necessary low price, its products than will be positioned as middle quality ones due to the low price. It may harm its reputation and its marketing in the higher middles and high class segments.
The high class segment is relatively small and less attractive because its representatives are less likely to buy pastas in general and when they buy, they are more likely to buy imported pastas.
Actually we can join the higher and the lower middles in one market segment since there are no differences in their preferences which are of principle. Both of them will require pastas positioned as middle ones. Though quality is the most important factor for the representatives of those segments, the price is also of the great importance, and the main difference between the representatives of these segments is the price they are ready to pay for quality (or for the quality packaging).
3. The crisis seriously affected the market of pastas. The domestic manufacturers now have a lucky chance to grab the market share that earlier belonged to foreign manufacturers. They can gain brand recognition and loyalty.
4. The main task, in my opinion, for a pasta manufacturing company in Russia now is gaining brand recognition and good attitude of consumers (of course, if it thinks of its long-term perspectives). People have to give up consumption of imported pastas. This gives a great opportunity to get people used to consume domestic pastas. Since quality of many domestic pastas is actually as high as of the imported ones, the stereotype which has formed in the time of the USSR and which has been providing a negative attitude towards domestic goods will slack.