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YOU DECIDE Scenario Summary
Chocoberry (CB) is a major independent importer and processor of cacao beans from West African countries. They sell to major chocolate manufacturers in Europe and the Americas.
CB roasts and grinds the cacao beans offering chocolate liquor to the major candy makers and block liquor to small candy shops. Chocolate liquor is what most consumers know as baking chocolate – dark and bitter. In later years, CB has pressed some of the liquor to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter – a high fat, white component that can be added to chocolate to render it smoother.
Cocoa powder could be further processed to form the base for beverages and coatings. Q & Q, Neshey, Cadmerry and Hershel added sugar to the liquor to form dark chocolate, which was not the most popular product. But the blending of sugar, liquor, and cocoa butter produced milk chocolate, one of the most popular food products ever. The candy makers made and distributed their milk chocolate products almost everywhere – and continue to expand their offerings.
Raw material and ingredient supplier CB, meanwhile, has been watching this gradual transformation from fun to health food; pondering the issue of how to take advantage of this revolution. To determine its future strategy in the new universe of chocolate and cocoa, CB must determine the potential for a new family of added value chocolate or cocoa-based products among consumers in the United States and, later, other countries. To start, the United States would be a target market to determine if one or more product concepts might be feasible.

Your Assignment
You are a consultant who has been engaged by CB to create and evaluate their alternatives.
The following are some areas your report should address:

Idea Generation (50 points)

• What techniques will you propose to CB to generate ideas that can be developed into viable concepts?
• Of the many methods for ideation offered in contemporary literature, which represents the best for CB in this situation, and why?
• Who might be selected to perform the ideation, and why? Why might you not select certain groups to perform the ideation?
• Having screened the ideas to a select few, how are concepts generated from the ideas, and when?

Idea Evaluation (50 points)

• Once the ideas are generated, how might they be evaluated to maximize the number that has the greatest potential and to minimize the probability of rejecting excellent ideas?
• Enumerate the criteria that might be applied to appropriately assess the ideas and to eventually rank them according to their potential for CB.
• Who would conduct the evaluation and why?
• Focusing on the select few concepts, what are the evaluative criteria that might be used to isolate the one or two that should be recommended for further development?