Client Name

Continental Biscuits J.V. Mondelez International

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Raja Shahzad Shaikh

SBS Thought Leadership Areas

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

SBS Thought Leadership Area Justification

First, the project is essentially a corporate entrepreneurship exercise. We were tasked with finding growth avenues for a brand that has strong equity but limited presence in certain sub-segments of Pakistan's biscuit market. This required the same kind of thinking as a new venture strategy: identifying opportunities, assessing the competitive landscape, and building a go-to-market plan. For example, our field research revealed that the Rs. 10 impulse tier, the highest-volume price point in kiryana and tuck-shop channels, is completely unserved by Cadbury, and we developed a channel-based strategy to address this without requiring a new SKU launch.

Second, the recommendations involve tangible product and packaging innovation. The proposed gifting-format SKU for Ramadan and Eid, and the exam-season campaign across all three SKUs, both required us to adapt Mondelez's global capabilities to local market realities. The gifting pack in particular needs no new product development but represents a meaningful packaging innovation backed by data: 4.8% of Daraz reviews in our sentiment analysis were gift-tagged and generated the most positive responses in the entire corpus, yet no gifting SKU currently exists in CBL's active distribution.

Aligned SDGs

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Aligned SDGs Justification

Our recommendations around new pack formats, channel expansion into kiryana stores and petrol stations, and the gifting-format SKU all reflect product and distribution innovation. Extending branded, packaged biscuits into underserved channels also contributes to formalising Pakistan's food retail infrastructure at a small scale.

NDA

No

Abstract

This Experiential Learning Project (ELP) was undertaken in partnership with Continental Biscuits Limited (CBL) to identify actionable growth avenues for the Cadbury biscuit portfolio within Pakistan's packaged biscuit market. CBL operates as a joint venture with Mondelez International, holding a 23.4 percent share of Pakistan's USD 1.6 billion sweet biscuit category (Euromonitor, 2025). Three Cadbury biscuit SKUs are currently active: Mini Fingers (Rs. 20), Cadbury Cookies / Centre Filled (Rs. 40), and Cream & Choc (Rs. 50). Despite Cadbury's unrivalled chocolate brand equity in Pakistan, the biscuit portfolio remains commercially underdeveloped relative to this equity — characterised by a thin price-pack architecture confined to three price points, incomplete distribution coverage across Karachi's major modern trade accounts, and a brand funnel retention rate of only 26 percent for Mini Fingers in the kids segment (NielsenIQ, 2025).

The research was conducted through a multi-method design combining primary and secondary data, with all distribution strategy recommendations explicitly designed for ambient channels. Primary data sources comprised a structured consumer survey (n = 294, April 2026), structured retail field visits across thirteen stores spanning five trade formats in Islamabad and Karachi, and a computational Key Word in Context (KWIC) sentiment analysis of 1,268 cleaned Daraz Pakistan customer reviews, using a composite three-lexicon dictionary incorporating Loughran-McDonald (LM), Bing Liu, and a purpose-built Roman Urdu lexicon. Secondary data sources included the NielsenIQ Brand Health Tracking (BHT) dataset commissioned by CBL across nineteen waves from 2021 to 2025, Euromonitor International 2025 retail value and company share data, Mondelez International annual reports for FY2024 and FY2025, and Mondelez India's chocobakery and distribution strategy as a directly applicable market benchmark.

The principal findings are as follows. First, the Rs. 10 impulse transaction tier — the highest-volume single price point in Pakistan's kiryana, tuck-shop, and petrol-station convenience channels — is entirely unserved by Cadbury, ceding this segment to Bisconni's Cocomo and Mayfair's Chocday Mini. Second, all three Cadbury SKUs were out-of-stock at Carrefour Lucky One, Pakistan's highest-footfall hypermarket in Karachi, at the time of field research, with a Cadbury Cookies brand poster visible on the premises and no product on shelf. Third, the consumer survey and KWIC sentiment analysis independently converge on the same diagnostic: "stronger or real chocolate flavour" is the most cited product gap among buyers, indicating a measurable expectation gap between the Cadbury brand promise and the current biscuit product experience. Fourth, gift-tagged reviews constitute 4.8 percent of the Daraz sentiment corpus and generate strongly positive sentiment anchored to gifting occasions, validating a premium gifting-format growth avenue. Fifth, the NielsenIQ BHT data confirms that Pakistan's adult biscuit category is 60 percent familiarity-driven, meaning that distribution coverage and aided awareness are the most direct levers for market share gain. 

Three recommendations are presented, ordered by commercial urgency: the development of a Cadbury Cookies premium gifting-format SKU at Rs. 500 to Rs. 900 for Ramadan and Eid occasions; the activation of an exam-season marketing campaign targeting Pakistan’s student demographic across all three SKUs; and the anchoring of all Cadbury Cookies and Cream & Choc communication on a “Real Cadbury Chocolate” positioning claim to distinguish the range from compound-chocolate competitors. All three recommendations are executable through CBL’s existing ambient distribution network.

Document Type

Restricted Access

Document Name for Citation

Experiential Learning Project

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