Ice Cream Market

After introducing the French ice cream market, we will present the different main brands more deeply in several articles in order to understand their positioning, values etc…

We will start with the brand Ben & Jerry’s. Created in 1978 by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, this American brand succeeded to impose itself in a global competitive market, and especially in French.

The owners based their brand around three strong values in favor of the society, the economy and around the product. In fact, since the 1980’s, they established initiatives for all the people involved in their ice cream production and tended to have a sustainable development. They could help family farmers and promote sustainable agriculture; choose fair trade products like vanilla, chocolate, milk etc…, or even around the packaging.

Their business model based on transparency and their goal which is to positively change the world seduced more and more customers and that is the reason why they had to move their production from the initial manufacture in a transformed oil station.

Ben & Jerry has a strong positioning, a significant brand image and that is why it makes that brand unique: its original flavors, its singular ads, its strong involvement in public debates (environment, homosexual marriage etc…), their values and the fact that the brand is close to its customers.

All this background interested the Unilever group, which purchased it in 2000. Once again, the founders succeeded to impose their sustainable values: Unilever has to deposit funds yearly to promote Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, which supports comminatory projects in the USA. We can clearly notice their huge success, with a strong and sustainable development, even in France, where Ben & Jerry’s represents around 15% of the total French ice cream market.