The start of the 21st Century resulted in a strategic resolution for Nestle – to shift from a successful, technology oriented food and beverage company to a more research oriented nutrition and health group! This was a new strategic marketing objective for the firm. Did this result in a positive turnaround for the global conglomerate? Let’s peek into their R&D strategies and see how they deployed technology to address varying consumer needs and realized their vision of becoming a dynamic nutrition and health group.
Setting up R&D
Nestle asked themselves – What do we have to change if we need to deliver different types of foods catering to various needs of the market. Nestle’s focus turned to addressing consumers need for healthier and more nutritious foods, without compromising on the taste. This way Nestle called in the R&D experts to meet this new challenge. Some of the initial R&D efforts included assessing of nutritional levels of all products and keep improving them by deploying the best minds; increase R&D spends ( in billions!!) to address specific consumer groups like Infants and toddlers, consumers needing special diets, elders and athletes. In its endeavours, Nestle set up science and technology centres of excellence where the R&D activity was being carried on!
Leveraging technology
How do you ensure a perfect mix of fat and salt in your Maggi Noodles at the manufacturing end? Simple – Let technology do the trick! And not just for Maggi- Nestle personalized machines and technology to prepare their products. Food technology was at its optimal usage here in Nestle! Even Spray dying to give that milky effect to Nescafe milk powder was done with the help of technology. Imagine, Nestle personalised technology to such an extent machines that were used for plates and cups were used for breakfast cereals, pet food etc. Nestle is also investing big time (again billions) in start up firms who partner with them in food technology! Now that’s commitment to your objective.
Consumer Centricity as the goal and means
The entire focus of R&D and technology was around the consumer! In simple words they look forward to providing tangible solutions to what consumers want. Today’s consumer wants more of the healthy, nutritious and the uncommon stuff! With the help of robust R&D Nestle identifies these needs and by leveraging technology – look forward to addressing them! If consumers want instant cappuccino- they get it (with adequate amounts of nitrogen to make that foamy drink – this is where technology comes in). A classic example would be the want of healthier 2 minute maggi noodles, which gave rise to the atta, multigrain variant or the normal variant this time with 25% less salt and 75% less fat but no change in the yummy taste! With compositions (thanks to R&D and technology) closer to mother’s milk – Nestle’s Formula variant- Nan Pro does wonders for babies and working mums!
Technology and Customer-Centricity – relationship goes on..
Citing the benefits of R&D and technology could take this write up into pages and pages , but for now – we hope all their plans work out and consumers like us get to have more healthy stuff!
[message_box title=”MESSAGE TITLE” color=”red”]The case is prepared based on secondary data and the purpose of this case study is to just bring out the key marketing strategies and techniques deployed by different firms from our perspective.[/message_box]
