Birds Eye
Case Report

Sanjiv Bhattarai James LeBoeuf
Kishor Singh Maharjan
Sandip Maharjan
John Meacham

MGMT 4813
Professor Lalit Manral

April 21, 2010

Introduction Birds Eye is an international food processing industry. They specialize in a wide variety of fast-frozen foods such as vegetables, seafood, and meat. They were founded in 1973 by General Foods. The name Birds Eye was coined from its fast-freezing patent inventor, Clarence Birds Eye. Birds Eye is the industry pioneer of frozen food. Birds Eye dominated the frozen food market in the 1950's and 1960's. They accounted for over 60% of frozen food sales in the UK. They served exclusively to over 40,000 retail outlets and among other outlets served; they accounted for over 75% of their frozen food sales.
Problem Summary Birds Eye was losing its market share and profitability during the 1970's and 1980's due to increased competition in the frozen foods market. In 1978 their market share of 60% declined to 29%. Private label competitors had gained over 21% of the frozen food market. The increase of stiff competition drove prices down and lowered profitability for Birds Eye. A huge factor in loss of profitability and market stronghold was their internal strategy. The company’s vertical integration strategy worked for in the beginning to initially strengthen their brand, but lost its performance during the 1970's and 1980's. Due to the rising costs of producing frozen foods in the 1970's, and increasing market competition, the company needed to shift to a more horizontal strategic approach.

Analysis
Value Chain Birds Eye value chain was the chain of activates that it was operated on. The chain of activities gave them more value to its service and its products until early late 1960’s. The primary activities for Birds Eye were inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing