Listening to Customers – Module 5

Using KDP’s techniques, we can assess what the web marketplace is like for a company like General Mills (GMI).

   1.     Setup and Refine Search Strings

a.     While I cannot actually “setup” our web search strings, I can determine some of the more important ones through sheer logic, or the commonplace Google search. Some examples might be:

                                               i.     People associated with GMI

1.     Ken Powell – CEO

2.     Mark Addicks – CMO

3.     Kofi Bruce – Treasurer

                                              ii.     The company name (General Miils)

                                            iii.     Our “big” brands

1.     Betty Crocker

2.     Totinos

3.     Larabar

   2.     A company like GMI – that operates on such a massive scale – is able to create many of its own outlets, including:

a.     Individual brand sites

b.     An umbrella brand site

c.      PC and mobile apps

d.     Additionally, the company relies on social media as an outlet, including:

                                               i.     Twitter – Customer Outreach

                                              ii.     Facebook – Brand Promotion and Recruiting

                                            iii.     LinkedIn – Recruiting

                                            iv.     YouTube – Recruiting, Marketing, and Customer Interaction/Outreach

   3.     For GMI, there have always been two major “hot buttons” regardless of the medium when we’re talking about product, and those are:

a.     Price

                                               i.     Our market, (especially ready-made cereals) is intensely competitive and marginal due to the fact that the market has had years to saturate, and cereal has become a staple in the majority of American homes. As a result, we must work hard to compete on the value for money ratio for our customers.

b.     Quality

                                               i.     People buy Cheerios because they taste the way people have come to expect a Cheerio to taste. Have you ever noticed that – when you buy an off brand of an oat cereal, it doesn't quite have the same soft, nutty flavor of actual Cheerios? That's because we have a patented process and quality levels for making them that no one else can duplicate.