Marketing Strategies / Strategic Marketing Case Study

Bionade Soda (A): Marketing Challenges for an Innovative Brand

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Abstract:
Companies coming up with innovative market offerings often face challenges of making potential consumers aware of the product, building the brand, generating sufficient initial trials and ultimately making a place for themselves in the market. These challenges are particularly tough coping up for small-scale businesses. Marketing and promotions play a key role for successful commercialisation of a new market offering. With limited resources, small businesses often cannot afford spending on traditional marketing media. Bionade Soda was one such innovative organic drink, first of its kind in the world. Decreasing beer consumption and the consequent financial crisis of his family brewery led German entrepreneur Dieter Leipold to invent an organic drink using beer brewing techniques. However, being a small family firm, the makers of Bionade Soda did not have the requisite advertising budget to promote the drink. Distributors were not ready to stock the unknown product and the makers of Bionade Soda were struggling to successfully commercialise the product. Drawing parallels to the innovative product Bionade Soda, the case study highlights the challenges of marketing a new product offering for a small family owned company and provides a scope to discuss alternative marketing techniques that they can adopt.

Pedagogical Objectives:

• To understand the new product development process
• To discuss the commercialisation challenges of new product offering
• To analyse alternative marketing technique options for small-scale companies.

Keywords : Bionade Soda, BIONADE International GmbH, Privatbrauerei Peter KG (Peter Brewery), Germany, Alcoholic beverages, Marketing Strategies Case Study, Non-alcoholic beverages, Beverage Industry, Beer, Family Breweries, Family-owned Company, Changing industry trends, New product offering, Innovation, Alternative marketing techniques

Contents:

• German Beverage Industry Landscape
• Privatbrauerei Peter KG: The Birth of Bionade Soda