Kellogg is to discontinue its Nature’s Pleasure muesli range in the UK just a year after the product was launched.
The premium baked muesli brand was introduced into the UK market in February 2009 in a bid to “invigorate the muesli sector”, which Kellogg said at the time suffered from the perception that muesli is “dusty and tasteless”.
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The launch was supported by a GBP3m (US$4.5m) marketing campaign but Kellogg said today (8 March) that it has struggled to establish the brand amid the economic downturn.
The company said the weakness of sterling had a negative impact on a product made with “high-cost ingredients”. The group also insisted it was “difficult” to predict in advance how consumer behaviour might have changed in 2009.
“It was also impossible to predict the exchange rate fluctuations that impacted on the cost of manufacturing the product. Britain in particular felt the sharp end of the exchange rate fluctuations with the Euro and this became one of several reasons that lead to our decision to withdraw Nature’s Pleasure,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson insisted Kellogg’s strategy of launching products during a downturn was sound.
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By GlobalData“It’s best practice to continue to innovate even through a downturn and that’s why we had a number of product launches over the last year. If you look at our other big innovation around the same time, Crunchy Nut Bites which we launched in October 2008, has gone on to be a big success,” he explained.
The firm said it will continue to innovate this year with two launches this year – a cereal aimed at younger consumers called Krave and a cereal bar called Fibre Plus.
