Compal Essencial brand extension

: the new category of fruit portions

Abstract

Compal was a well-known Portuguese company in the industry of soft drinks. It launched Compal Essencial in 2006, which introduced consumers to a new category of fruit portions. Essencial was equivalent to a fruit portion and aimed to improve people’s fruit consumption habits by providing a quality and convenient product. This dissertation provides an overview of how Compal Essencial’s development process led to its success, translated in high sales levels, penetration rates and market share. Nevertheless, over the years new competitors emerged and the success of Compal Essencial seemed to vanish. In 2012 consumers appeared to understand the product concept and most of its important features, but this did not translate into high levels of consumption, as it did during the initial years of Essencial in the market. To give a broader overview of the product management, this work also contemplates a brief analysis of Compal Essencial’s internationalization strategy. Compal Essencial was exported to foreign partners with the ultimate goal of achieving numerical distribution and volume generation. Partnerships gave most control to the host country entity, which was responsible for most of the marketing decisions of placement, pricing and promotion. Compal’s contribution was mostly in providing the product along with general guidelines of communication content. The result was an expansion over nine new markets, though in some of them Essencial pulled out because the partnerships broke down. This dissertation provides material that allows an analysis over the factors that contributed to Compal Essencial’s brand extension success, as an example of innovation in the soft drinks industry. Furthermore, Compal Essencial’s case study allows an overview on how the process of strategic decision making and product management take place in the real world.

Date of Award	7 Feb 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Pedro Celeste (Supervisor)