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Top Ramen Noodles

Whose noodles?Nissin Foods is a world-wide company that makes instant ramen noodles.

It was established in Japan on September 4, 1948 by Momofuku Ando as Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd. of Japan and ten years later introduced the first instant ramen noodle product, Chikin Ramen (Chicken Ramen).

They established a US subsidiary Nissin Foods in 1970 and sold instant ramen noodle products under the name Top Ramen.

Instant noodles (1958) and cup noodles (1971) were both invented by Momofuku Ando.

Nissin Foods has its headquarters in Yodogawa-ku, Osaka.

IntroductionTop Ramen is one of the noodles brand in India launched by Indo Nissin

Foods Ltd. in 1991 in India.

It was introduced as Japanese soup-type noodles which were watery and were called ”Smoodles” derived from “SMoother nOODLES” .

It is available in different flavours like chicken, masala, curry, tomato, and egg.

Since its launch the brand has been constantly changing its sales pitch and product composition — with little success.

Top Ramen has been trying all possible marketing tools for the past 18 years to dethrone Maggi Noodles which had become a benchmark in the category.

The Struggle…

Entry Level…

When Top Ramen was launched in India, Maggi was an established decade-old brand, and had become a benchmark in the category.

Indian consumers were used to the look and taste of Maggi noodles which left no water in a dish and on the contrary Top Ramen was watery which didn’t find too many takers.

Pricing…

It was costlier as compared to other brands.

A 400 gm pack of Top Ramen was priced at Rs 34.

Re-launch…

Top Ramen was relaunched as Quick Chow-Chow Noodles in 1992 as an easy-to-prepare snack for children.

But since it came in direct conflict with Maggi’s positioning, was perceived as a me-too brand and an inferior one at that.

Change in Marketing Strategy… In 1994, Nissin tried targeting pre-teens consumers - if Maggi caught its

consumers young (below seven), Top Ramen wanted to watch them grow under its franchise.

To this end, a new campaign broke, with the adline “ Don’t be a noodle. Be a smoodle ”. Market share climbed from 13 % in 1996 to 24 % in 1998.

Maggi tried its hand at a change in product formulation in 1997 — from oil-fried noodles to sun-dried ones — which didn’t go down well with consumers. It was forced to backtrack in a year’s time.

The Marketing Twist…

Brooke Bond, which had a 26 % stake in Indo-Nissin and looked after the distribution of Top Ramen, was merged with Hindustan Lever Limited.

Indo-Nissin managed to finalise an alternate distribution arrangement with Marico Industries only in July 1998.

With the distribution network of five lakh outlets, Maggi is miles ahead of Top Ramen’s two-lakh outlets.

Lacking Innovation…

The major issue faced by Top Ramen was the differentiation.

Top Ramen could not offer any serious differentiation to Maggi either in terms of the product or brand.

Since there was no serious differentiation, Maggi was able to gain back the lost ground because it was the pioneer brand who built the category.

Top Ramen also lost out when Maggi repositioned itself in the health platform.

Production Failure…

In 1997, Nestle’s Maggi market share over 80 per cent.

Top Ramen market share around 17 per cent.

Reason for the fall in market share was not because of falling volumes but because it has not been able to grow along with the category which increased from 14,000 tonnes in 1998 to 17,000 tonnes in 2002.

Promotion Failure Also??Not considered localization in the early stages.

Use of funky English tag line "Don't be a noodle, be a smoodle“.

One major factor for Maggi's success was its quick localization.

Maggi easily connected with its consumers with its tagline “ Maggi 2-minute noodles “.

Except for the first phase of brand promotion, Top Ramen did not have any worthwhile campaign in its 18 years of existence.

New Positioning… Indo Nissin Foods has re-launched its Top Ramen Noodles and Cup

Noodles in a new bright international packaging.

Offered price-off schemes, launched new advertising campaigns and hiked its advertising budget

Top Ramen added more “food value” as the product has been enriched with vitamins and calcium which give consumers 25 per cent of their daily requirement of calcium vitamin B1 and B2.

Target the 11 to19 years age group. This segment is the largest consumers of instant noodles, accounting for 35 to 40 per cent of sales.

New Promotions…Re-launched with a fresh campaign that seeks to make Top Ramen

a part of every Indian family as the ‘ little strands of happiness ’ .

New commercials with part animation and part live action.

The objective is to position Top Ramen as smooth and tasty noodles, targeting primarily kids, and secondarily, mothers.

New Scope or New Slope?Top Ramen share of innovations. Top Ramen currently holds more than

90 % share in the cup-noodles market.

Cup-Noodles is targeting adults – age group 16 to 35 .

Indian noodle market is growing at 30% per annum, it can capture a major part of market share in the Rs 1500-crore Indian noodle market.

Thank You…