Sealed Air Corporation Case Analysis

Sealed Air Corporation Case Analysis

Executive Summary

The case is about Sealed Air Corporation which provides protective packaging to both heavy materials as well as lighter materials. Sealed Air is registered as AirCap in the protective packaging market. Sealed air has been the market leader for 10 years from 1971 to 1980, it was in 1981 they realized few imitations of AirCap in the US that have been taking up the market share of Sealed Air. Sealed Air has also gained good market share even in European countries specially England and France and has also entered Germany. Sealed Air is facing tough competition from companies manufacturing uncoated packaging bubbles and selling them at a much lower price compared to AirCap both in US and Europe.

Hauser, the product manager of Sealed Air’s Air Cellular products is in a dilemma whether to enter the uncoated bubble market or to think of any other strategies to cope with the competition in both US and European markets.

After going through the case, we thought that the case has to be dealt geographically and we have come up with different conclusions and strategies for US market and the European market.

• We think that Sealed Air has to continue the same prices and production in the US market as there is huge market share coming from the positioning, blocking and bracing segment which deals with heavy materials that are shipped. We think that cheap quality uncoated air bubbles will not work for these products and thus Sealed Air can still have its market share unchanged, In case of Flexible Wrap and Void fill, we think that AirCap should retain its current pricing and should divide production ratio to be 80 to 20 for coated to uncoated bubbles respectively. Sealed Air however should be carefully observing the market trends from time to time to understand the strategies of competitors and might need to change their strategy if needed in the future, but in current situation Sealed is doing very well in the US market.

• In the European market where price is given more importance over quality, we think that Sealed Air has to immediately move in to uncoated bubble packaging to retain its market share and reduce further losses.

o In England Sealed Air has to move immediately

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