Saxonville Sausage

Although Saxonville Sausage have been profitable for over seventy years, I feel that the addition of the Italian Sausage to their product line finally opened the gates to the northeastern markets for The Saxonville Sausage Company. Lucrative northeast cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston have a large Italian-American demographic, and as a result the Italian Sausage is hot selling product. While Bratwurst, and Breakfast Sausage are their number one and two products (in terms of percentage of total sales), both have produced diminutive sales in northeastern stores. While the Vivio line had been prosperous by then, there is still plenty of work to be done, and they must demonstrate innovation and quality within their product and their strategy. There are numerous companies that exclusively sell Italian Sausage to the northeast. Since Saxonville Sausage are competing against consumer known companies for the same target market, a creative potential positioning concept is vital. The first step into developing a strong food marketing campaign is knowing your product, and determining what can be done to improve upon it. Saxonville Sausage has to deal with plants, unions, shipping, packaging, and health regulations. Due to all these constraints, competing is difficult for small companies. Managing the business that they already have is a challenge, introducing a new product is pretty difficult. The size of Saxonville Sausage is an edge, and that edge is Pre-Cooked Sausage.

Many of the Italian Sausage companies located throughout the northeast operate on one single plant that can only produce the basic ground sausage link that you find next to the hamburgers at the supermarket. In order for them to produce Pre-Cooked Sausages, they must have it done at an external plant, and that can be very pricey. Usually these companies only offer the Pre-Cooked Sausage at stadiums and outdoor carts. Since Saxonville Sausage has the resources to produce the Pre-Cooked Sausage internally, they can sell the pre-cooked product at supermarkets; something only a handful of companies can afford to do.

Saxonville Sausage can produce Pre-Cooked Sausage internally, then not only can they get this unique product into a handful of northeastern supermarkets, but they can also appropriate the business of competitors with stadium deals. Premio Sausage for example, is the only Italian Sausage that can be purchased at every metropolitan stadium (Madison Square Garden, The Meadowlands, Yankee Stadium, Nassau Coliseum, and Shea Stadium). This company has to manufacture pre-cooked sausage internally as they only have one plant (located in Hawthorne, New Jersey), which is dedicated to their ground products. If Saxonville Sausage can make this product for less than what Premio spends to make their product, then Saxonville Sausage can sell the product to the stadiums at a cheaper price, and reap the benefits. By focusing on the Pre-Cooked Italian Sausage sub-product Saxonville Sausage can separate the Vivio name from the brands that northeastern consumers are used to. Another way to successfully intensify the Vivio marketing campaign is to model a sense of family connection with the sausage. When people think of Italian food, they think of large family portions, and a comfy environment. Companies like The Olive Garden, Ragu, and Prego have had considerable success using this technique. It is important that people look at their sausage as a “social meal”. One way of accomplishing this could simply be an extensive coupon investment, as studies show that the majority of people that clip coupons come from families; especially housewives. Coupons would increase exposure to Saxonville Sausage’s target market, as Vivio would enter the homes of more families.

The “Family Style Sausage” will represents Family Connection on the Customer