Eurobrands: Development Strategies and Managerial Issues in the European Food Industry (PDF)

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 1995 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: magna cum laude, University of Fribourg (Templeton College), language: English, abstract: Today's social and economic environment faces various problems, economic stagnation, recession, new challenges due to free trade alliances or the opening of the former USSR as well as constantly changing fashions. Furthermore, European food producers are falling victim to the rising costs of R&D and labour, the shortening of product life cycles, the increasing buying power of European retailers who demand greater conditions and super-bonuses and the ongoing diversity of European consumers. The international environment therefore requires manufacturers to reply in a very flexible and rapid manner, so that a company's ability to respond to consumer needs whilst participating in the global market is becoming the primary source of competitive success.

In the past, world-wide companies have gained competitive advantage either by running multinational approaches with a multitude of different products and decentralised organisations, or by exploiting global economies of scale through nearly total standardisation. The new winners are now the companies that are sensitive to market, environmental or technological trends and are able to exploit innovative ideas rapidly and efficient in a European or even world-wide manner. The right balance of customising and standardising opens the way to cost reduction, profitability and competitiveness. Thus this paper wants to discuss the use of harmonised Eurobrands as a modern way of thinking in European terms whilst fulfilling the needs of the great variety of European consumers.

The aim of the thesis is to describe Eurobrands as a meaningful and strategic weapon in today's challenging food market and to set up a concept for the launch of Eurobrands in the food industry. Herein after, a Eurobrand means a harmonised product sold in three or more European countries with harmonised appearance, quality and a narrow price range in order to achieve competitive advantage over the traditional, mostly national products.
[...]