Centre Number: 61855 Learner Number: P633165 Name: Fin Baker
Wholly Nutritious is a fairly well-established company, founded in 2000 before market boom,
providing boxes of fruit and vegetables and delivering to customers across the UK. In this analysis, I
will be preparing a rationale for Wholly Nutritious, whom seek to maintain their revenues through
posting videos each day on social media showing how to cook meals using items sold in their food
boxes.
Market Research
Market Research is essential to conduct. This is because it gives the business all the tailored
information necessary to make new changes and developments. In Wholly Nutritious’ case, it will
help them maintain their company size and focus on maintaining their revenues through means of
promotion. In turn it will increase their brand recognition and consolidate relationships with new
and existing customers. According to the primary research conducted by Wholly Nutritious, they
have managed to identify their target markets:
- Young professionals aged 21-45 who lead busy lives and want to help them save time
- Households with at least one child. These families want good quality, fresh fruit and or
vegetables
Understanding this they will have to tailor their campaign to ensure that they meet the wants and
needs of their target customer. Adding to this, the majority stated that they were either interested
or somewhat interested in videos online demonstrating how to cook with ingredients in the food
boxes.
In 2022, Gousto launched marketing campaign to combat consumer opinion that food boxes are
repetitive/boring. This tells us that Wholly Nutritious will have to differentiate in some sort of way to
maintain their revenues and combat the biggest issue with the market at this current time, being
that customer retention is very low. Proved by the figure, that on average less than 20% of UK
customers have kept their subscription for more than year, usually in first five months.
Market Size
Market size tells a business how well it may be able to compete against its opposition. The size of
the Food Box industry in 2022 is big. It is defined as a mass market, evident by the 114% sales
increase in April 2020 Alone. The market Leaders earned more in the first six weeks of 2020 than in
the whole of 2019. According to HelloFresh, another market leader, the market is saturated in the
urban areas but stagnated in the rural areas. This is due to the slow adoption by the more provincial
locations. However, this can pose an opportunity for the already well defined business, Wholly
Nutritious, as they will have the capital to entice these untapped streams of revenue.
Their target market has been outlined in a series of ways. Geographically, they don’t have too many
stresses due to the previous expansion across the UK. Psychographic and Behaviourally, as they rely
on the emotions and trends with buyer habits, whether they want to save times and potentially use
their quick cooking times to get the job of cooking dinner done. Demographically, they have
identified the age range and the types of people that they will need to be targeting, social media is a
great way for this due to freedom to target specific people with great variety. Understanding the size
and constraints of their target market they can really use this as a major advantage as it will allow
them to introduce new unique selling points and tailor their methods that they choose to entice
their customers to maintain their flow of income.
Product Lifecycle, everything to do with the product from introduction, growth, maturity, and fall off
point, is important to understand as it allows them to make judgments on way they can improve
1
, Centre Number: 61855 Learner Number: P633165 Name: Fin Baker
their product in small or large ways that provide a competitive advantage not yet discovered.
However, the product lifecycle is actually in a good place at this point in time, as it has already been
introduced and is in the major growth period. Making the market extremely profitable but also very
competitive.
Market Structure
The food Box market was on a slow rise in the in the early 2000s, and then really took off around
2015. This caused many early entrants into the market to really take advantage by already obtaining
a developed business, shifting their focussed onto development. This mass market is defined by 1 in
4 households using a food box, according to Statista. Not only this but it expected to exceed £1.5
billion in 2022 in the UK alone.
The market is crowded, with competition being very vigorous. This means Wholly Nutritious will
have to adapt and introduce new way that will attract target customers.
Trends
During lockdown, people had to stay inside, this could be seen as the reason for the exponential
growth in the market. Staying in and having more time to cook their own food was used as a
marketing ploy to increase their worth of the industry. With people seeing daylight again, it
predicted that people will be likely to utilise this method of eating slightly less, but the market has
been propelled into a successful and profitable trend for the future.
On average less than 20% of UK customers have kept subscription more than year, most cancelling
within first 5 months. This tells us that there is a serious issue with retaining their customers.
Introducing new ways to get people invested with the company, and building emotional
relationships is most likely the best way forward. Here they can get people coming back to the
business hopefully keeping their subscription n in the process.
It is also understood that the younger generation and the young adults tend to purchase the
products, this means that the business can successfully use social media as a way to maintain and
build them relationships to ensure that food boxes are continuously being bought.
Competitors
With the latest developments in the market it is understandable that the competition and increase
of new entrants have occurred within the industry, especially with sales expecting to rise 55% year
on year.
Supermarkets are a massive competitor, like M&S and Morrisons, who have diversified into the
market by utilising their existing supplier relations to provide people across the UK with a more
affordable and a reasonably high standard of product. Morrisons boxes were so popular that its
website crashed on launch day because of the volume of traffic. It is essential for Wholly Nutritious
to identify the competitors to understand their greatest attributes and potentially incorporate some
of them to improve their company.
Understanding that Wholly Nutritious already has a well-developed customer base it is likely that
they will be able to compete with the current market leaders including HelloFresh, Gousto and
Mindful Chef.
Reliability/Validity
1
