DiGiorno Pizza: Introducing a Frozen Pizza to Compete with Carry-Out

Kraft Foods successfully introduced DiGiorno Pizza into the marketplace in 1996. Kraft conducted extensive research about the product and the marketplace before introducing this product to the public. Many questions had to be answered before Kraft began production. For example, why do people eat pizza? When do they eat pizza?

SMI-Alcott conducted a research study for Kraft in which they sent out 1000 surveys to pizza lovers. The results indicated that people ate pizza during fun social occasions or at home when no one wanted to cook. People used frozen pizza mostly for convenience but selected carry-out pizza for a variety of other reasons, including quality and avoidance of cooking. The Loran Marketing Group conducted focus groups for Kraft with women aged 25 to 54. Their findings showed that consumers used frozen pizza for convenience but wanted carry-out pizza taste. Kraft researchers realized that if they were to launch a successful frozen pizza that could compete with carry-out pizza, they had to develop a frozen pizza that (a) had restaurant takeout quality, (b) had the convenience of freezer storage. To satisfy these seemingly divergent goals, Kraft developed DiGiorno Pizza. This impressed focus group members, and in a series of blind taste tests conducted by Product Dynamics, DiGiorno Pizza beat out all frozen pizzas and finished second overall behind one carry-out brand.

DiGiorno Pizza has continued to grow in sales and market share over the years. According to AIB International, DiGiorno Pizza was by far the top frozen pizza brand in the U.S. in 2011, which sales of $677 million when compared to the next brand, which had sales of $294 million.

Instructions:

• In light of questions in Discussion 2 at WEEK 2, how was the inferential process used by Kraft in their market research?