Havremalt : relansering av en hälsokostprodukt

Abstract: Launching and marketing a health food product is associated with larger problems than a launch of a traditional food product. There are several sales channels that can be used for a health food product, for example the product can be sold as a traditional food product, natural health food product or as a prescription drug. A smaller company can however experience problems while launching its product as a prescription drug because of the large costs associated with this particular sales channel. There is often no other alternative than to launch the product as a traditional food product, this can however create other problems because of the existing regulations on what can and cannot be mentioned in the marketing of a health food product. The limited amount of information about the product that can be enclosed together with it makes it hard for a company to differentiate and position it on the market. In other words it is hard to distinguish the product from already existing products. When the company Nils Oscar launched their product Havremalt they experienced the problems mentioned in the text above. They decided to withdraw the product from store shelves and now they want to do a more successful relaunch of the product. The purpose of this thesis is to examine purchase habits and interesting target groups as well as to give suggestions of strategies that can be useful to the relaunch of the product Havremalt. A study has been made to fulfill the purpose of the thesis. Questionnaires containing questions about attitudes towards health food as well as information search habits have been handed out to consumers. The gathered material has been processed and analyzed. The study shows that there are no big differences between age groups and sexes when it comes to attitudes and consumption patterns. However the results show that a consumer of health food spends a great deal of time searching for information about health food products. A marketer of a health food product should therefore provide information about the product not only at the store but also through active marketing and promotion of the product.