Nibblr: Subscription Snacking In A Digital Market - Case Solution

Summary - Nibblr: Subscription Snacking In A Digital Market:

This case focuses on the introduction of Nibblr, an online snack subscription service, to an emerging and fairly untapped market. Nibblr is a child company of General Mills. Even though they come from a powerful brand, their goal was to launch Nibblr using limited resources, a tight budget, and a need for immediate innovation.

The main challenges facing the subscription service development team, BMX, included creating a clearly differentiated product in a market of fairly similar offerings and making the most of a limited budget through smart and effective digital marketing strategies.

Following its launch in November of 2013, Nibblr was seeing modest success by March of 2014. However, upon checking their website for further information, I found that not only was the subscription no longer available, but they had officially stopped fulfilling orders in early June of 2015, showing the apparent long-term failure of the service.

Question One:

The subscription-snacking market when Nibblr entered was one with several key players, but also one that the BMX team thought they could penetrate and capture a significant share in.

The first key competitor is the US-based company NatureBox, which had strong senior management and an entrepreneurial vision that allowed them to convert many prospective customers and build their brand via digital means.

NatureBox was established in the US and was on a positive growth trend; qualitative research via their website showed they specialize in a high-quality health dimension.

The other main competitor to Nibblr was the UK-based company Graze. Graze had been successful in the UK but struggled initially when it introduced itself to the US.

Though it was not coming close to matching its UK subscription numbers, Graze saw decent success several months after its US launch. Both companies’ subscriptions were priced higher than…