Case Name :      Managing the Competition: Category Captaincy on the Frozen Food Aisle

Authors :           Madhu Viswanathan, Neil Bendle

Source :             Ivey Publishing

Case ID :            W15113

Discipline :        Marketing

Case Length :    12 pages

Solution Sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

An executive at Freezer Foods, a manufacturer of ready-to-eat frozen meals, has just been told by a major customer, a retail supermarket chain, that it wants one of its two suppliers of frozen food to take over as category captain. A category captain is a third party, usually a manufacturer, who manages a category of goods for a retailer. The executive needs to think through the objectives of category captaincy from the retailer’s perspective and develop an attractive bid to win the category captaincy. In doing so, the executive develops an opinion on the benefits and challenges associated with category captaincy from the point of view of four parties: the retailer, the winning category captain, the manufacturer whose rival becomes the category captain, and consumers.