Highlights in Business, Economics and Management FEIM 2023

Volume 7 (2023)

Mars Business Analysis

Jianing Xue
University of California, San Diego, CA 92023 USA
Abstract. Mars Incorporated is a well-known confectionery company in the United States. It is
famous for its chocolate snacks: Twix, Snickers, M&M’s, and so on. It also offers business all over
the world. As an outstanding company, it’s valuable to analyze Mars’s business strategy and take a
closer look at its performance in this industry. In the following analysis the paper will be discussing
Mars’ performance relative to their business. The paper firstly describes the basic introduction of
Mars company’s background as well as its mission, business strategy, and industry. Then, I will be
analyzing Mars’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats compared to their industry
competitors. Using information gathered on their top competitors to reveal how well Mars is
performing comparatively. Also the paper will be providing recommendations on how Mars can be
more successful.
Keywords: business analysis, confectionery company, SWOT analysis, recommendations

1. Introduction
Mars Incorporated is a large, worldwide and famous company which works in the food industry.
Its products, such as Snickers, Skittles and M & M’s, are famous not only in the United States but
also all over the world. They are easily reachable in the grocery stores and people can easily recognize
them. Mars’s products are not limited to the snack industry. They also work to help people prepare
meals, get a healthy lifestyle, and care about pets.
Mars Incorporated has a long history. The company started as a candy factory in 1911 by Frank C.
Mars. The company got its name as Mars in 1926. Around 30 years later, the company extended its
business to Europe. Frank’s son Forrest introduced M&M’s back to the United States in 1940. As the
candy business became larger, Mars company began to expand its business area. In 1968, Mars
bought Kal Kan (a pet food company) and started their corporation to expand its business in pet food.
One year later, high–tech vending machines were developed under Mars. Till 1991, Mars still
renewed and increased its business in the area of candy and pet foods. After 2000, Mars continued to
add new brands to its confectionary goods. In 2009, Mars became the first company to label calories
in the front of the snack packs. After 2010, Mars organized lots of activities to help build a better
world. It established funds like the Lion's Share Fund, opened its Food Safety Standards Research
Center, and so on. Recently, Mars is still very active and leading in the food industry.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze Mars’s current business situation and how it can perform
better in the future. This paper talks about Mars's business situation based on its background history,
business strategies, supply chains, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, which is able
to provide a complete overview of the company.

2. The mission of Mars

As one of the largest and most successful companies around the world, Mars clearly knows its
target and objectives. The company lists its direction of five policies clearly on the website: Quality,
Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom. It is devoted to making a better world for people.
“Helping people lead healthier, happier lives” is listed on the website as Mars’s mission. Mars, as a
company in the food industry, cares about the world and the people who live in the world.

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3. The business strategy of Mars

Mars has its complete strategies to run its business. To develop its product, Mars divides its
business into 6 segments: Chocolate, Petcare, Wrigley, Food, Drinks, and Symbioscience. Under
these six different segments, Mars brings a variety of products and services in its marketing mix. The
company targets a large group of customers in the society, mostly all ages of upper and upper-middle
classes. Mars also uses a mid-premium pricing strategy to price its products in order to make them a
reasonable price for customers so that it can maximize the number of its target market. Besides, Mars
also pays attention to its advertising strategies. Taglines and slogans are created, and promotions are
made to attract its target market. Social media such as television, newspaper and advertisements assist
Mars to reach its customers and enhance its reputation. Extraordinarily, Mars decided not to advertise
snacks and food to children who are under 12.

4. Industry Analysis of Mars

As a food developing and producing company, Mars owns an integrated system to run its business.
From the very beginning, Mars considers the ingredients resources as an important element in the
supply chain. For example, chocolate plays an important role in Mar’s production so that it pays much
attention to the supply chain of cocoa. Mars has its criteria for the cocoa collection and makes
“knowing the farmer groups and farms that supply the cocoa” as a basis. Other than cocoa, Mars
also puts great effort into other ingredients such as mint and rice. As Mars cares about the ingredients,
it also lists clearly how they use those ingredients in the snacks to show to its customers.
To sell its products, Mars has formed a reliable distribution channel with wholesalers and retailers,
which contains over 75,000 numbers of workers. Through these distributors, Mars is able to reach
its target market easily and efficiently. Walmart in the United States, Tesco and Lidl in Europe, Big
Bazaar and Hypermarket in India are typical large retailers that Mars has cooperated with. Besides
the distribution channel, Mars also provides a more personalized service for its customers to have a
direct experience with Mars, which strengthens recognition and loyalty. Take M&M’s as an example,
M&M’S® World store allows customers to enjoy the colorful chocolate displays and purchase
M&M’S character related products. To invent new products and attract customers, Mars also applies
licensing to products such as novelty candy, housewares, plush and jewelry. Mars cooperates with
other companies to design and invent new products to target a larger group of customers and provide
them with seasonal products.

5. SWOT Analysis of Mars

As a competitive company in the world, Mars has lots of advantages to strengthen itself. First of
all, nowadays, Mars is already an international company with international brand name and brand
presence, which gains global recognition. As Mars sells its products worldwide and people are
allowed to get them easily in the markets, Mars owns its reputation widely. Second, Mars owns high
brand loyalty and a large number of customers enjoy the good tastes and packing of the goods.
Chocolate such as Snickers, M&M’s and Twix are very popular among people. Third, Mars is doing
a great job at advertising and marketing its target customers. It pays lots of attention to advertise
through the media. According to data, Mars spent 1.5 billion dollars in advertising in 2021. Its
sponsorship in the World Cup Squad in Italy even brings it more reputation. While Mars puts so much
effort into marketing, it also cares about the content presented to the public. It tries to eliminate any
potential stereotypes in the advertisements to make its marketing inclusive and responsible. Fourth,
Mars is a company that cares for the environment and the world. It sets up lots of sustainability plans
and goals to help people protect the environment. Especially, when they look for the ingredients
resources and try to establish relationships with local farms. Last, although chocolate and other sweet
snacks are always considered to be high-calorie and unhealthy snacks, Mars tries to decrease the
unhealthiness in its products. For example, Mars rolls out bars that are around 100 calories for people

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to purchase. Compared to Mars, Hershey’s chocolate bar is almost all over 200 calories per bar.
Besides, it also announced to remove all the artificial colors from its human food portfolio.
Although Mars is already an excellent company, it also has some weaknesses that it has to
overcome to become more successful. First, the price of Mars snacks is almost the same as other
chocolate brands as Mars’s target market is mostly middle and upper class so that customers may
consider other aspects to decide whether to purchase from Mars. At Target, customers can buy
Hershey chocolate at a price of 0.55 dollars per ounce, while they need to pay 0.64 dollars per ounce
for Snickers. Second, customers may switch to other chocolate or snack brands other than Mars as
the food industry includes lots of companies. There is competition between Mars and other companies
in similar industries, and customers who depend on their personal preferences can freely choose to
purchase so Mars may lose some customers. There is not a too much difference between chocolates
from different brands. A pack of chocolate which weighs around 7-8 ounces almost sells at a price
around 3-4 dollars each. Besides, different brands have some similar products as well: most chocolate
brands sell dark chocolate, peanut butter chocolate, almond chocolate, and so on. Some people may
prefer national brands while others may tend to purchase from those imported products. Third,
sometimes Mars’s company image is negatively influenced by bad news especially when there are
problems with its products. For example, in May 2022, Mars in the United States and Canada
announced to recall gummy candies because there might be thin metal strands in the products. This
recall event could negatively affect customers’ trust and reliance in Mars because it was about food
safety and customers who accidentally eat the strands might have serious health problems. Last but
not least, Mars tries to include more healthy snacks as their products these days as people nowadays
tend to be more concerned about their health situations but as a confectionery factory, adding sugar
to their products is inevitable. Mars’s products are known to be high salt, added sugar or fat. Then,
the products may be high in calories and threaten people’s health.
Mars has lots of opportunities to strengthen its business. First, it has close relationships with those
growing cities and retail chains, which allows them to keep their productivity. Mars can keep
developing their factories in different locations to maximize its profits by decreasing several costs.
Mars currently has its business in more than 130 countries, such as Asia, Austria, Latin America, the
Middle East, Africa and so on, which includes about 65 percent of the world’s population. Second,
they still keep inventing products in their pet care and confectionery industry so that they are able to
bring more products to the market for customers to choose. To be consistent with the rising health
situation trends, Mars can pay more attention to invent healthier and more low-calorie snacks for
people to choose. Kind Bars are known to be a healthy snack substitute for chocolate under Mars. In
2017, the sale of Kind increased about 5 billion dollars. More recently, sales of Kind surges in the
beginning of the pandemic as more people purchase more snacks as they work at home. Third, Mars
can cooperate with other companies to unite and create more products. For instance, they have already
connected with Wrigley. To get mergers in the business, Mars is able to acquire a larger market share
and thus become more competitive in the market.
In a market that contains lots of companies, Mars faces lots of threats as well. First, chocolate is a
very common snack that people would like to purchase, which allows lots of chocolate companies to
thrive. As a result, Mars must compete with other chocolate companies who bring cheaper and more
creative products. Within the United States, Hershey is known to be a competitive rival to Mars.
Besides, Mars also has to confront lots of competitors in the global market. In 2021, Mars has a
revenue of 45 billion dollars while Nestle has a revenue of 95 billion dollars globally. Although Mars
is considered as one of the top chocolate companies, several other brands may also catch up quickly.
Mars currently has its business in around 130 countries, while Nestle operates in 189 countries, which
can be considered as a globally larger confectionery company than Mars. These chocolate brands
provide similar products to the market, such as milk chocolate. To develop a larger market, those
companies also find mergers and cooperate to reach their goals. For example, Hershey invests in Blue
Stripes and Fulfill Holding which are snack companies in 2019.
(https://www.cspdailynews.com/snacks-candy/hershey-invests-2-snack-businesses ). Moreover,

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these two brands both provide healthy and premium chocolate for their customers. Blue Stripes are
known to mark chocolate as a superfood in their brand and it also has products that exclude added
sugar, and Fulfill Holdings is professional at making vitamin-fortified and high-protein nutrition bars.
Hershey does well in including these healthy elements in their brands to catch up the current trend of
healthy lifestyles. Hence, Mars does not seem to play a leading role in producing healthy snacks
Second, the consciousness of health among people rises nowadays, they may decide to purchase fewer
unhealthy snacks with high sugar or fat levels, which may make a difference to Mars. Eating these
unhealthy snacks increases the risk of cardiovascular health problems, diabetes, and cancers. As a
result, it is reasonable for people to try to avoid snacks from Mars. Third, the labor wages have
increased in the United States so the cost of producing goods becomes more expensive, which can
reduce the profit Mars earns every year and thus threaten the business. In 2022, hourly wage in the
United States increased 5.2% compared to last year. Once the problem gets more serious and Mars
starts losing profits, the business may not be able to survive any more.

6. Recommendations
As a confectionery business, Mars should pursue and follow what the market tends to favor so that
it can satisfy most people’s desires and then maximize its profit. AS mentioned in the previous
paragraphs, Mars has already invented healthy snacks, such as 100-calorie snack bars, to satisfy
people’s needs to live a healthy lifestyle, there is still something Mars can do to help people reach a
high-quality life. Currently, people look for a high quality of life and premium chocolate. Although
the global confectionery market was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020, the demand for
premium confectionery goods surprisingly increases. The sales of premium confectionery goods
increased around 13%. Not only healthier snacks but higher quality and more delicate packaging may
also bring more profit for Mars. (https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/premium-
chocolate-market-report#:~:text=Report%20Overview,9.3%25%20from%202022%20to%202030.)
Moreover, people tend to look for functional snacks to satisfy their daily nutritional needs. According
to the data, 78% of the customers agree that taking snacks regularly is a way to care for their body
conditions, which increases a lot compared to the year 2020. Hence, Mars can also begin its inventions
and attach importance to its nutritional aspects of the snack.
(https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/20526-sizing-up-snacking-trends)
In addition, Mars should also pay more attention to its ingredient resources. As Mars is now known
to build close relationships with farmers that supply those ingredients, the benefits that those farmers
earn seems very limited. For example, when a chocolate is sold, cacao farmers are only allowed to
earn about 6% of the final price on average (https://damecacao.com/chocolate-
statistics/#million_tons). Once farmers find there are no profits to make, they may quit to keep
supplying cacao for business to use. However, if Mars is able to negotiate and provide a reasonable
benefit for them, it can thus gain a stable supply of its ingredients.
Last but not least, Mars’s products are common around grocery stores and supermarkets in the
United States, but it can enlarge its business by providing more online shopping experiences for its
customers. Online shopping becomes very popular as the technology develops, so more and more
people tend to shop chocolate online. Under the categories of the distribution channel, online stores
grow fastest, which is predicted to have a compound growth rate of 6.75% on average.
(https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220111005749/en/United-States-Chocolate-Market-
Competition-Forecast-Opportunities-Report-2021-2026-Featuring-The-Hershey-Company-Mars-
Ferrero-and-Lindt-Sprungli---ResearchAndMarkets.com). As a result, if Mars provides an individual
online shopping website, its sales may increase as customers have more access to it.

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7. Conclusion
In general, Mars is doing a great job in the confectionery industry now. It can also get improvement
by keeping renewing and upgrading its business strategies to become a stronger company in this
industry. Although Mars does have several threats such as their competitors within the similar
industry, it can still be an excellent company if it pays attention and takes actions to pursue the current
trends in the market and care about its customers.

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