Introduction

Nestle is the world wide leader of nutrition, health and wellness (measured by
revenues). Created in 1866 in Switzerland, the company is today implanted in all the
continents and has production sites in almost every country. Marketing has been a
relevant aspect of their global strategy as it is based on that quote : « Think globally,
act locally ». Kit Kat is one of their most popular brand and the most consumed
chocolate bar in the world. It has also became a fascinating cultural good in Japan.
Indeed the Kit Kat’ story in Japan can be seen as a « marketing fairy tale ».

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I. Nestle’s marketing strategy for Kit Kat

1.1 Marketing at a local level - France

According to Philip Kotler marketing can be defined as «satisfying needs and
wants through an exange process» and for the Chartered Institute of marketing it
involves «identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirment profitability».
The main idea is : meeting needs and providing benefits. (Learn Marketing, 2010)
Domestic marketing involves being able to compete on a local market by being
better than competitors at meeting the customer needs.
The french chocolate bar market is highly competitive as presented in the following
figure.
Figure 1 : Chocolate bar market shares in France

(Letschner, Le Figaro, 2012)

1.2 Marketing at an international level - Japan

According to R.Bartels : «Experience in international markets has shown

marketers the inadvisability of projecting domestically successful marketing

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 2.1 Segmentation
Properly segmenting the population means dividing poeple in homogeneous
groups makes it easier to identify their needs and wants. The segmentation can be
done in several ways. According to Vishwajeet Prasad : « In the
concentrated strategy, one firm chooses to focus on one of several segments that
exist while leaving other segments to competitors.» (Prasad, 2009)

The segmentation for Kit Kat is based on :

 Demographic criterias :
Nestle segmented the market based on age.
• 35-54 years old with children of 18 years old and below. Those people are at
the same time the providers and the consumers.
• 12-17 years old are people who have spending power and are able to make
their own purchasing décisions
• 18-24 years old are students and Young professionals with very active lives.

 Psychographic criterias :
Based on life style and personality Nestle is interested in a segment of active people,
working a lot and in need for energy during the day.

 Behaviorial criterias :
Based on benefits Neslte provides Kit Kat to people that are used to have snacks but
who want to eat healthier and less calorical products than the ones of the competitors
(Mars, Kinder Bueno …)

2.2 Targeting
The target of a company is based on the segmentation. The firm has to
choose the segment that is the most likely to be interested in consuming a particular
product. The aim of Nestle, conserning Kit Kat is to target a segment of poeple which
are looking for a chocolate bar which is high in quality and moderetaly priced.
In France, nestle mainly tragets the 35 to 54 years old people and their children.
Those poeple can be coming from lower, middle and upper class.
In Japan, the targeting of Kit Kat is more based on both the segments of the 12 to
17 years old and the 18 to 24 years old. Those young people are craving for new
tendencies. As consuming Japanese products is highly important for most of
Japanese poeple, they also target that part of the population by giving the brand a
strong Japanese touch.

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 When it comes to Kit Kat in Japan, this is their innonvation capabilities that made
their success. They have been able to exploite regional food specialities to make
limited edition flavours of the chocolate bar. Now, people all around the world are
craving for those new flavors. Some of them are even made in collaboration with the
famous chocolatier Takagi.

4.2 Future trends impact on objectives and strategies

To remain competitive Nestle must, almost every day, anticipate and keep in
mind that the environment analysis might be good to rely on today but won’t be
anymore tomorow and the day after. Uppsala Model by Johanson and Vahlne shows
that it is a must for a company that is expending to rely on market knowledge at
every step of the strategy. (Coventry University, 2014). More than that, the company
also have to keep focused on the new trends in marketing practices.
Marketing department and public relation departement are working hard to find
and follow new trends in customers behaviour and respond towards their products.
Nestle has also openned in 2010 a research unit in Japan that enables the company
to provide products with more health benefits as people care more about it
nowadays.

As people are paying more attention to where their

products come from and becoming more ethically
conscious, Nestle setted up the Cocoa Plan. They
work with UTZ Certified to give their suppliers better
living conditions and better quality to their products.

(Nestle, 2013)

V. Environmental analysis

To enjoy opportunities and avoid threats a company has to understand its

environment. As an international firm, Nestle has to jungle with the local and the
international environment by using the Pestle strategic tool.

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Conclusion

Becoming a cultural object of satisfaction and fascination, Kit Kat succeded in

meeting the japaneses special needs. Pushing the concept at its extrem level meant
for Nestle to offer more and more diferent flavors of the chocolate bar as the
japaneses were craving for them to do it. In Nestle’s strategy, the costumer becomes
an actor of the marketing as they include them in the process of inventing new
concepts and new flavors. Thanks to the marketing strategy Kit Kat is in Japan a real
business success, indeed, every second 650 kit kat bars are eaten.

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