Product Metrics Assignment

MKTG 370 - Product Launch Financial Assignment This assignment covers the following topics from weeks 6 and 7: the relationship between pricing and channel margins, sales forecasting and cannibalization. The formulas you need are included in the lecture notes for those weeks. You will complete the analysis in Excel and turn in your spreadsheet (if you do not have access to Excel, please reach out to discuss options). Please use textboxes for comments and explanations (these “float” on top of your spreadsheet so will not affect the spacing of your cells). You can organize the spreadsheet with or without tabs. The focus of the assignment is on using the calculations correctly and presenting the analysis with a professionally organized spreadsheet. You will need to make a few assumptions that you need to explain, but there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to the assumptions. Scenario You will assume that you are the brand manager at a Chicago based small company that makes high end chocolate. The company currently has one brand called ChocoHealth. ChocoHealth is a brand of quality chocolate without additives and only healthy ingredients such as quinoa and nuts. You are selling directly to Whole Foods, which will carry your product in all its 15 stores in the Chicago area. In other words, your distribution channel includes a retailer only. Your chocolate comes in a 2 oz bar. You are currently evaluating the launch of a new chocolate bar that meets keto diet standards. Your goal is to evaluate the financial impact of launching this new brand. To make this evaluation you need to decide on a retail price for the new product, estimate how many units you will sell of the new product, and estimate the effect of cannibalization. The financials for the old and the new product that you start with are the following:

Unit Sales Volume in

2021

Unit Sales Forecast

2022

COGS per unit

Your Selling Price

Your Channel Partner’s Margin

Retail Selling Price /Bar

ChocoHealth 900,000 1,000,000 $1.19 $2.70 40% $4.50 New brand n/a TBD $1.39 TBD 40% TBD

Step 1. Calculating your selling price and unit contribution Your first need to decide on the retail selling price for your new product. It can be the same as, or higher or lower than the price for your existing brand. Keep in mind that the new product will be slightly more expensive to make due to more expensive ingredients. Please add an explanation for your decision (1-2 sentences will be sufficient).

Once you have decided on your retail price, you can calculate the price at which you will sell it to your retailer using the channel partner’s margin, and your unit contribution based on your selling price and the COGS per unit. Step 2. Sales Forecast for the New Product The unit sales forecast for 2022 for the existing product is already provided above. To calculate a sales forecast for the new brand for 2022, you need to estimate a sales forecast per month and then add up the monthly sales projections for a yearly sales projection. To complete the forecast, you need to make assumptions about the number of customers that will try this product every month, a repeat purchase rate, a purchase frequency, and how many units you think the average consumer with buy at a time. The table below provides an example of how you would organize the analysis for your sales forecast. You can either assume that the new customer number, the repurchase rate (95% in the example below), the average purchase frequency and the average purchase volume, is consistent from month to month or that these will change over time. While there are no right or wrong assumptions, you need to explain your thought process for making them (the calculations below are from Excel and minor inconsistencies are the effect of rounding).

Month New customers

Repeat customers

Total customers/ total penetration

rate

Average purchase frequency

Average purchase volume/

Units

Total units sales

forecast

Jan 100 0 100 2 2 400

Feb 100 95 195 2 2 780

March 100 185 285 2 2 1,141

April 100 271 371 2 2 1,484

May 100 352 452 2 2 1,810

June 100 430 530 2 2 2,119

July 100 503 603 2 2 2,413

August 100 573 673 2 2 2,693

September 100 640 740 2 2 2,958

October 100 703 803 2 2 3,210

November 100 762 862 2 2 3,450

December 100 819 919 2 2 3,677

Total

26,135

As a benchmark, here is the penetration rate, yearly purchasing frequency, and average purchase per units for the existing product for 2021.

Penetration rate 2021- Number of households who

bought the product

Average frequency (total number of

purchases per year)

Average units per purchase

Total unit sales 2021

ChocoHealth 37,500 12 2 900,000

Step 3. Calculating total contribution with and without cannibalization In the final step of your analysis, you will determine what the total contribution will be with and without cannibalization. You have discussed the issue of cannibalization with others in the company and based on this input you think the cannibalization rate will be somewhere between 5 to 30 percent. For the final analysis you need to decide on a specific cannibalization rate within that range and explain your decision (1-2 sentences will be sufficient). The table below presents a model you can use for the cannibalization analysis. You will use the information about the existing product as well as the price, contribution margin and sales forecast you calculated for the new product.

Total Contribution

2020

Contribution estimate 2021- no

cannibalization

Contribution estimate 2021 with

cannibalization

Product 1 Total units sold 100 100 70*

Unit contribution $20 $20 $20

Total contribution $2,000 $2,000 $1,400

Cannibalization Rate

0% 50%

Product 2 Total units sold

60 60

Unit contribution

$40 $40

Total contribution

$2,400 $2,400

Total Contribution $2,000 $4,400 $3,800

* a cannibalization rate of 50% means that 50% of the sales of the new product, or 30 units in this case, will be taken from the existing brand.

Based on your calculations you will comment on whether you think cannibalization will be a significant problem in this situation or not (2-3 sentences). How you will be graded The assignment will be graded on the correctness of the calculations, the clarity and organization of your spreadsheet, and the explanation of your choices. A grading rubric will be available on Blackboard. Please make sure that the formulas you use are visible so that I can easily track your analyses.