Swiss Chocolate Challenge: SwissOne versus Toblerone

In 2021, the chief executive officer of Cocoa Luxury SA moved back to Switzerland and founded his premium chocolate brand, SwissOne, after spending two decades in Australia manufacturing confectionery products. Growing up in Bern, Switzerland—the location of the original Toblerone factory—had inspired his unique chocolate recipe and the first three chocolate bars he intended to sell. In January 2022, once he had finished his prototypes, to finalize his marketing plan, the CEO had to consider three questions: First, what was his overall marketing strategy? Second, what was the Swiss business environment like, and how competitive was the Swiss chocolate industry? And third, how could he best position his SwissOne brand, and what should the marketing mix look like?

This case enables students to explore the challenges related to creating a new company and brand in a highly competitive industry and market as well as new product development, pricing, distribution, new product promotion, and identification of market segments and opportunities in a competitive industry.<br><br/>After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Use frameworks such as PEST and Porter’s Five Forces to assess the global and local business environment and evaluate the balance of power within the Swiss chocolate industry.</li><li>Understand how to calculate the HHI and the concentration ratio (CR) to measure industry concentration and competitiveness (rivalry) and propose an appropriate competitive strategy.</li><li>Combine the external and internal analyses, and conduct an analysis of the company’s overall strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).</li><li>Understand competitive strategies and apply them to the product, price, promotion, and place (4Ps) of the marketing mix.</li><li>Identify and describe the chocolate consumer segments and create a positioning map for the brand.</li></ul>

• competitive strategy
• marketing strategy
• PEST
• industry competitiveness
• SWOT
• marketing mix
• chocolate
• cocoa