1. Barbeque Sauce Dalton Galloway Trevor Gamradt

2. Category Role Blattberg’s Category Role: “Core Traffic” High sales volume, with a large number of households having barbecue sauce Medium variation, Repeated variations on the “original BBQ flavor” (e.g. Hot, smokey, sweet), Certain brands have different levels of variety. Foundational part of any condiment aisle, can take a fair amount of store space due to high levels of depth in the category. “Win on Deal”: High household penetration, Low Margins, competitive

3. Knowing Your Customers This is a “normal category.” Larger households are more likely to purchase barbecue sauce compared to smaller families, or families just starting. “Brand Buyers” More prominent in rural/country areas Black people are a larger proportion of consumers of BBQ Single person households don’t consume as much BBQ

8. Category Assessment Stores Audited: Marvin’s Food Store on College Ave, 2/25/15 Harps on Weddington, 3/11/15 MLK Walmart, 4/17/15 Joyce Walmart, 2/29/15 Pinnacle Hills Walgreens, 3/12/15 130 Different SKUs found, 46 SKUs are only found in one store, not including private label 33 SKUs found at most stores, brands included are: Sweet Baby Ray’s, Kraft, KC Masterpiece, Hunt’s, Famous Dave’s, Cattleman’s, Sticky Fingers Smokehouse, Stubb’s, Jack Daniels, and Head Country

9. Category Assessment 7 Brands stand out as the differentiators, with a slightly higher price point. Interestingly, they were the SKUs only found at the Harps and Marvin’s stores. Those brands include: Blues Hog G Hughes Smokehouse Bronko’s Rendezvous Cattleman’s (non-original flavors) McClard’s John’s Private labels in this category have a smaller proportion of the market; barbecue flavors are more selective and strive for their own distinct signature flavor compared to other condiments such as ketchup.

10. Category Assessment STORE NAME # SKU% of Category Marvin’s Super Savers Club 6751.53% Pinnacle Hills Walgreen’s 10.01% Wedington Harp’s 4836.92% Joyce Walmart 6146.92% MLK Walmart 7759.23%

11. Category Strategy The major manufacturers stated earlier are found at most of our audited stores, with Sweet Baby Ray’s being the only brand found at all stores. Kraft has a larger number of facings in Walmart stores, and smaller more differentiated retailers give more facings to the “Price brands” than Walmart.

12. Category Strategy

13. Category Tactics Stubb’s BBQ is the highest costing Barbecue, which correlates to the higher income families predominantly purchasing Stubb’s brand BBQ. The other manufacturer brands have minmal variance in cost, with KC Masterpiece being the cheapest. Stubb’s has the highest Gross Margins, KC Masterpiece and Kraft have the lowest Gross Margins Kraft and Heinz merger may cannibalize sales between existing brands. Brands included are Kraft, Bull’s-eye BBQ Sauce, and Jack Daniel’s. Private Label is not a major player in this category, it is a “Good Loser”: Low market share, and low price gap with manufacturer brands

14. Category Tactics

16. Comparison to Fall 2011 The following 2 slides show the SPSS data from Fall 2011. Which we are using them to compare the 2011 view of barbecue sauce to the one we see currently in 2015. When comparing total facings, more “Other” category barbecue sauces have entered the market. As a result, the facings in the category has grown from 109 SKU’s in 2011 to 140 SKU’s in 2015. The facings at each store have seen a little bit different of an effect. The MLK Walmart has added only 1 additional SKU since 2011, while the Joyce (Mall) Walmart has seen a decrease from 72 SKU’s to 61. The Harp’s has seen a slight decrease from 53 SKU’s in 2011, to 48 in 2015. The Gross Margin percentages for the category as a whole have exponentially grown. At the MLK Walmart, there was an increase from 21.99% to 33.69% on average in 2015. The Joyce (Mall) Walmart saw an increase from 22.18% in 2011 to 37.11% on average. While the Harp’s has also seen growth, going from 36.58% in 2011 to 45.42% on average in 2015.

17. Comparison to the Past

19. Category Review Category continues to grow, lack of barriers to entry allow smaller manufacturers, such as successful local restaurants, to create, bottle, and distribute a wide array of unique and signature flavors to consumers. The category hasn’t seen a large growth of facings of the larger brands in particular, but it has a whole. The category is also seeing a large growth in gross margin percentages from 2011 to 2015.