Cereal: The Manufacturing Industry
Everyday, more than eighty million Americans have some type of cereal for breakfast. Cereal is one of the most popular breakfast foods and some brand is found in almost every home in America (Topher). This vast industry stems from the late 1800s when John Harvey Kellogg and C. W. Post began cereal production in Battle Creek, Michigan (Topher). Today, numerous types and varieties of cereal line the grocery store shelves. However, only a few select companies make every one of those different kinds of cereal.
There are four different categories into which economists classify industries. These categories are perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly. Each of these four categories has its own unique characteristics. Perfect competition has an unlimited number of firms, while a monopoly has one single firm, and an oligopoly consists of a small number of interdependent firms. The demand curve of an oligopoly depends on how firms choose to deal with their interdependence with the other firms in the industry. A firm within an oligopoly market can choose to cooperate with other firms in the industry, which is illegal, or the firm can choose to compete against the other firms. An oligopoly produces either differentiated products or homogenous products. In an oligopolistic market, entry barriers, which prohibit new firms from entering the industry, are present. Examples of entry barriers include patents, brand loyalty and trademarks. Long-run economic profits are possible for an oligopoly, and non-price competition is a significant way to compete with other firms in the same market. Most of the non-price competition in an oligopoly comes from product differentiation. The cereal manufacturing industry is an oligopolistic market because it exhibits many of these traits.
An oligopoly consists of a small number of interdependent firms. The cereal manufacturing industry consists of four different firms that control almost all of the market. These companies are Quaker Oats, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, and General Mills (Lazich 68). In 2001, General Mills and Kellogg led the industry with a market share of 32.2 and 30.7 percent, respectively (68). Kraft Foods had a market share of 16.3 percent and Quaker Oats had a market share of 19.0 percent (68). The remaining 11.8 percent of the market share was held by other firms (68). In 2002, Kellogg took the lead with 32.7 percent followed by General Mills with a 31.8 percent market share (Reyes).
An oligopoly consists of either differentiated or homogenous products.
Kraft Foods was founded as a cheese manufacturer in 1903. They had evolved into North America’s largest food and beverage company and the number two player in the world. They grew to have operations in more than 155 countries by 2004. Kraft consisted of two operations, Kraft Foods North America and Kraft Foods International, and its business was divided into five product categories. These categories are beverages, convenience meals, cheese, grocery, and snacks. The Kraft brand portfolio was among the strongest of the global consumer packaged goods with 50 $100-million brands and 5 $1 billion dollar brands. Kraft also has a strong distribution network and well-earned reputation for developing innovative new products and food applications.
This organization belongs to the oligopoly market structure. The oligopoly market structure involves a few sellers of a standardized or differentiated product, a homogenous oligopoly or a differentiated oligopoly (McConnell, 2004, p. 467). In an oligopolistic market each firm is affected by the decisions of the other firms in the industry in determining their price and output (McConnell, 2005, P.413). Another factor of an oligopolistic market is the conditions of entry. In an oligopoly, there are significant barriers to entry into the market. These barriers exist because in these industries, three or four firms may have sufficient sales to achieve economies of scale, making the smaller firms would not be able to survive against the larger companies that control the industry (McConnell, 2005, p.
Although United Cereal’s products are diversified into many different types of foods and beverages, its main source of revenue remains the breakfast cereals market. The real challenge of this market is clearly seen in the European market, where the national tastes and breakfast traditions vary between countries. As a result, its approach in Europe is more complex than in the United States, which causes higher costs and slower processes.
John Harvey Kellogg wanted to cure “Americanitis”, which was the stomachache caused by the typical American breakfast. This breakfast consisted of sausage, fried ham, beefsteak, bacon, with whiskey and salt added on top. He decided to build a tiny health center that helped American improve their heath. In that center, he provided tips for healthy eating, and exercises. He did not allow fats, salt, or sugar in his clinic. In 1894, he took a trip to Denver, where he met an entrepreneur who invented a cereal made of shredded wheat. This inspired Kellogg to take this idea back home, and share with his brother, Will. Kellogg and his brother began to experiment, and created many cereals. They then met C.W. Post, and decided to collaborate and were eventually called themselves The Big Three. They invented 108 different brands of cereals. In the 1940s, they began adding a candy coating to the cereal. The Big Three controlled about 85% of the cereal market. The public’s enthusiasm for cereal grew drastically because women, who had children, had more time in the morning. Although convenience was the key to starting the day, the Big Three could not control the breakfast table without being finessed.
The essential factor of an oligopolistic firm is interdependence. Oligopoly involves few producers, which means more than one producer as it is in pure monopoly but not so many as in monopolistic competition or pure competition where it is difficult to follow rival firms’ actions. Therefore, due to small number of producers on oligopoly market, the price and output solutions are interdependent. As a result, firms can cooperate or come to an agreement profitable for everyone. Therefore, they can increase, as it is possible, their joint profits (Pleeter & Way, 1990, p.129). Further, oligopoly is divided on pure, which is producing homogeneous products, and differentiated, producing heterogeneous products (Gallaway, 2000). Economists Farris and Happel insist that the more the product is differentiated, the more firms become independent, and the more the product differentiation, “the less likely joint profit maximization exists for the entire group” (1987, p. 263). Consequently, it is worth to be interdependent.
Kraft Foods is the largest brand food and beverage company with headquarters in North America and it is the second largest in the world. In the US, it’s best known for its cheese products, especially Kraft Dinner, and Dairylea. Other brands with a large presence in various parts of the world are Toblerone, Philadelphia, Velveeta, Nabisco, Maxwell House, ...
Post Cereals was the first company to come up with the idea for a pastry that would later inspire Kellogg's Pop-Tarts. In the early part of the 1960s, Post began developing a method of packaging dog food in foil in order to keep it fresh and avoid refrigeration. They began applying this method to food for human consumption and created a new breakfast pastry that could be prepared in a toaster and would complement their already popular cold cereals. The announcement of this new breakfast pastry, which Post had decided to call “Country Squares,” came in 1963. Because the product was released so hastily, however, one of Post's biggest competitors, Kellogg, was able to come up with their own version and release it six months later. Even though Post had released their Country Squares prior to Kellogg's version, their sales were lackluster. Many believed that this was due in part to their name. In a time of progressive pop culture, the name Country Squares could be seen as a backward way of thinking. The developers working on the proje...
An oligopoly is defined as "a market structure in which only a few sellers offer similar or identical products" (Gans, King and Mankiw 1999, pp.-334). Since there are only a few sellers, the actions of any one firm in an oligopolistic market can have a large impact on the profits of all the other firms. Due to this, all the firms in an oligopolistic market are interdependent on one another. This relationship between the few sellers is what differentiates oligopolies from perfect competition and monopolies. Although firms in oligopolies have competitors, they do not face so much competition that they are price takers (as in perfect competition). Hence, they retain substantial control over the price they charge for their goods (characteristic of monopolies).
Kellogg’s poptarts make about a billion poptarts a year! That’s 2 billion single poptarts a year! There was also a poptart store in time square. (I would spend all of my money there!) One thing that should’ve stayed in style was the poptarts cereal! It’s the best of both worlds. Cereal and poptarts.
The beer market has turned itself into an oligopoly in the past 100 years. Where there once were hundreds of brewers across America, there now are just a few major players in the industry. But what is an oligopoly? As defined by Ayers & Collinge in the textbook Microeconomics, “an oligopoly is characterized by multiple firms, one or more of which will produce a significant portion of industry output”(microeconomics). Oligopolies exist where a few large firms producing a homogeneous or differentiated product dominate a market. There must be few enough firms so that they are mutually interdependent, which means they must consider rival’s reactions in response to decisions about prices, output, and advertising. The causes of the beer oligopoly are as followed: 1. Economies of scale exist, which indicate that a few large firms would be more efficient that many small ones. 2. A high degree of capital investment required. 3. Other barriers to entry may exist like patents, control of raw materials, large advertising budgets, and traditional brand loyalty.
There are many industries. Economist group them into four market models: 1) pure competition which involves a very large number of firms producing a standardized producer. New firms may enter very easily. 2) Pure monopoly is a market structure in which one firm is the sole seller a product or service like a local electric company. Entry of additional firms is blocked so that one firm is the industry. 3)Monopolistic competition is characterized by a relatively large number of sellers producing differentiated product. 4)Oligopoly involves only a few sellers; this “fewness” means that each firm is affected by the decisions of rival and must take these decisions into account in determining its own price and output. Pure competition assumes that firms and resources are mobile among different kinds of industries.
Difference Between Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition An oligopoly market structure is one in which there are a few large producers who are present in the industry and account for most of the output in the industry, there are many small firms but few large. firms dominate and have concentrated market share. Whereas monopolistic competition is a market structure that has a large number of sellers, each of which is relatively small and posse a very small market share. Another feature of an oligopoly is that there are some barriers to entry and exit into the industry.
A monopoly is “a single firm in control of both industry output and price” (Review of Market Structure, n.d.). It has a high entry and exit barrier and a perceived heterogeneous product. The firm is the sole provider of the product, substitutes for the product are limited, and high barriers are used to dissuade competitors and leads to a single firm being able to ...
We have carried out a study on the F.M.C.G Company Heinz. Heinz is the most global U.S based food company, with a world-class portfolio of powerful brands holding number 1 and number 2 market positions in more than 50 worldwide markets. There are many other famous brand names in the company¡¦s portfolio besides Heinz itself, StarKist, Ore-Ida, Plasmon, and Watties. In fact, Heinz owns more than 200 brands around the world and makes over 5,700 varieties.
The second market structure is a monopolistic competition. The conditions of this market are similar as for perfect competition except the product is not homogenous it is differentiated; thus having control over its price. (Nellis and Parker, 1997). There are many firms and freedom of entry into the industry, firms are price makers and are faced with a downward sloping demand curve as well as profit maximizers. Examples include; restaurant businesses, hotels and pubs, specialist retailing (builders) and consumer services (Sloman, 2013).