Sealed Air Corporation

SITUATION ANALYSIS

Sealed Air Corporation (SAC) is the company known for the invention of Bubble Wrap and has been able to achieve market leadership by differentiating itself from the competition with technological innovations and exploration. Sealed Air technology is patented and so it was no surprise they were able to obtain and keep leadership in the protected market industry. However, they did license their packaging technology to other manufacturers. With these competitors, Sealed Air established a standard for the air bubble packaging, thus making it more available to other manufacturers. More and more competitors continue to rise, and this is causing Sealed Air Corp.’s piece of market share to decrease. So, SAC’s brand innovations led them to create Vision Tracking and Identification or VTID, which at first would help track each piece of individual meat within processing plants. Unfortunately, by the time the prototype was ready, potential customers were unwilling to adopt the new technology, and since then, Sealed Air has had difficulties penetrating these markets. After years of new product development, Sealed Air has invented a technology that monitors hundreds of daily human movement to ensure employee actions didn’t deviate from safety protocol. The company’s ability to explore and gain market strength has ultimately led them to try VTID within the fast-food market with no comparable competition. In this case Sealed Air Corp. is aware of previous sales with Bubble Wrap that many fast-food restaurants have set up chains and businesses all over the world. This required quality packaging to their products and was something that only SAC could provide. They realized that with the constantly growing food industry there was a bigger opportunity for it to introduce a product which will help the industry in finding where food-borne illnesses originate from. This would result in a much easier and quicker way to stop illnesses from spreading in the event there is a food recall. The company must determine whether its most recent target market, the Quick-Serve Restaurant segment (QSR), is still worth pursuing or whether the company should look for a different application and market altogether. On the riskier side of options, Sealed Air could terminate all efforts to commercialize VTID.

SEGMENT ANALYSIS

The Quick Service segment estimates $303 billion worth of sales, which is over 60% of total sales in the foodservice sector and employs over 5 million people. Sealed Air Corporation can position itself around the segments of waste reduction and food safety. The VTID future development plans include surveillance technology for monitoring food waste, that will seek to reduce the large quantities of napkins and utensils replaced daily, along with controlling the excessive portions of toppings that employees put on consumer products. In the table below stakeholders were surveyed about their biggest concerns about a restaurant’s operations, and site profitability was concerning (1 to 3) for 73% of QSR stakeholders.

If an employee is constantly using excessive toppings, the cost of replacement will increase due to the quickness of having to refill orders for the sauces/toppings. The value proposition would be waste reduction and lost revenue, and customers will want to increase profits without spending money on the millions of employees trying to “ketchup”.

Director of Services Sales and Marketing, Keith Johnson’s strategy to position VTID around the food safety segment, was to enter the market where government organization’s concerns were high. In the table above, the biggest concern for nearly 80% of QSR stakeholders was having a food safety incident like a food recall or sickness outbreak traced back to the company. This can result in many lawsuits,