Hill Country Executive Summary

As with any company Hill Country Snack Foods has goals and objectives they want to achieve. CEO Howard Kanner always had the shareholder in mind, when decisions are being made he always made it a point to keep the shareholders in mind. The goal of this was to maximize the shareholders’ value. Kanner made strategic decisions that grew the company’s ability to efficiently increase the amount of free cash flow over time. An objective that was used in order to accomplish increasing shareholders value was to avoid debt and fund investments internally (Stephenson, 2012, pg.2). These actions made a strong balance sheet. Another goal of Hill Country was to deliver products that consumers wanted to purchase. They achieved this by using customer feedback

Sell numerous products, in many distributions sites and keep prices low. Hill Country held a strong position in regions that were experiencing both population and economic growth by offering healthy affordable snack foods (Stephenson, 2012, pg.1). Hill Country used all channels of distribution to get the name and product to the consumer. The company attained economies of scale by manufacturing and selling thousands of well-priced products in hundreds of locations every day. By using this strategy customer defection rates are kept low and customers stay loyal (Hill, 2012,

These 4 items need to be understood in order to fully accept the marketing strategy for Hill Country. In the center of these 4 items is a company’s target market, in order to determine who a company’s customer is it has to understand the 4 Ps. Hill Country manufactures, markets and distributes many types of snack foods including but not limited to; churros, tortilla chips, salsa, pretzels, popcorn, pita chips and frozen treats. Hill Country has a wide variety of snack foods that mostly feature a Southwestern flare (Stephenson, 2012, pg.1). This tactic is to set Hill Country apart from other snack food brands. In order to keep prices low for consumers Kanner has to be sure that the company is running efficiently and being tight with costs. A competitor may not be able to keep costs as low and put out the same quality product. This gives Hill Country a higher demand from its target market. As stated previously Hill Country distributed all of its products as well. These product can be found for sale in grocery stores, movie theatres, schools and even at various sporting events (Stephenson, 2012 pg.1). Product was sold in places where the population was growing and the economy was steady. This was to make sure that sales would grow steadily and the company would succeed. Lastly, promotions Hill Country provided were scarce. From the information given Hill country did not seem to use any promotions such as