Kuch Meetha Hoo Jaaye....

Let’s explore a simple question, how any company will expand its business; answer could be like expanding in to new geographies, add new offerings/products/services. But given the global competition it looks difficult to attain the growth if you try only these.

But there are few visionary companies who create new markets and thus expand. Apple, for example created new market with MP3 player, even though there was an existing competition, iPod created a new market by itself. Similarly, Apple products like iPhone, iPad created new market segments and thus boosted the business growth.

There are other examples as well, like 3M’s Duct tape, J&J’s Bandaid, Tata Motors Nano are few such examples where a new market segment was created through innovative products.

But there is some interested phenomenon happening with Cadbury Dairy milk chocolate. Cadbury is growing business by expanding in to new target audience and thus reaching new set of consumers.

Let’s look at traditional chocolate industry market reach, its generally kids or the collage going young generation. But Cadbury is slowly changing this.

First it reached to the festival celebration time, and marketed Dairy milk as a sweet which can be exchanged during the festival like Diwali or can be gifted to brothers/sisters during Rakhi. Secondly, it started marketing dairy milk as a substitute to a sweet you can take home when you are really happy and wanted to celebrate, like salary day or when you get a job or when marriage gets settled.

Now, Cadbury has reached to your dinner table literally. It is now marketing Dairy milk as a substitute to the sweet we use on day-to-day life. It’s been projected as a normal sweet we use after dinner as dessert.

Let’s look as how it expanded the target market. When they expanded in to festival celebration, they expanded out of traditional young market in to a household mass, but still limited to some part of the year, like Diwali, Rakhi, New Year etc. When they expanded the reach to happy moments, they reached our happy moments and became part of our lives. Now, in the process of reaching our dinner table, the target market has even expanded in to possibly each and every house!

This is very smart positioning of a product, expanding the business through innovative approach. In this process, the same product is being expanded in to different market segments, creating new consumers. Compared to traditional way of creating new products, this is clearly a different way of expanding.

What’s the sweet at dinner in your house today?