It's All Greek to Me

It's fairly obvious that the Greek Yogurt market is becoming fairly saturated. Representing 2 billion of the $6 billion dollar yogurt market, it seems as if every major yogurt competitor has jumped on the band wagon. But, is it just a fad? Or can this Greek madness last?

There has been a recent surge of television advertisements by Chobani, the American brand Greek style yogurt that entered the market in 2005. Until recently, the company relied on word-of-mouth marketing and print advertisement. The new $30 million ad campaign focuses around the theme: Go Real. With slogans like "keep it simple, keep it real" and "leave food alone," Chobani intends to undercut its competitors by highlighting the simplicity and pure quality of its product. Consumers are encouraged to use the hashtag #tastereal with prompts from television ads that state, "share your first taste of real."It seems to be working, as Chobani is the leading Greek Yogurt brand, capturing 49% of the market and 16.4% of the total yogurt market share. 

So will Chobani continue to rank above the market giants like Dannon and Yoplait? With a growth in the greek yogurt market from 25% to 35% in just a year, and a decline in sales of non-greek yogurt, we can assume that the major competitors will begin to compete financially. In order to gain market share, I assume that companies will begin to compete in price wars; sales growth will most likely remain steady, but will not increase as rapidly as it has been recently.