Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper

Michael Dearing

Willie Wonka's newest invention, the Everlasting Gobstopper, has the potential to upend the candy market. The product of insane amounts of research and development investment, the candy treat will either wreck the economics of the business or ensure Wonka's leadership against his bitter rivals -- Wonka's not sure which. The debate inside Wonka's general management team is this: how should we take the Everlasting Gobstopper to market? Emotion runs high on all sides. Production, Marketing, Engineering, Finance -- they all have different positions on go-to-market. We'll use this case study to reflect on positioning, pricing, and product marketing for new products. This class is open only to alums of General Management.