Consumer Brand 'Line Extensions' Show Uneven Success for Nestle, Kraft and Others

Excerpt from our One Page Annotated Wall Street Journal Summary (which you can get emailed to you every morning by signing up here):

Flavor Experiment for KitKat Leaves Nestlé With a Bad Taste

• Summary: How to leverage one successful consumer product into a full range of hits? Nestle-owned KitKat was one of the UK's biggest sellers, but its ambitious 'new flavors' campaign has flopped. Kraft (KFT) is trying something similar with 'multi-themed' Oreos, and Unilever (UN) is branding its Dove beyond soap, into shampoos and lotions. Overall results from so-called 'line extensions' have been mixed, but now only 5% of new food and household products are entirely new brands, down from 20% 10 years ago. In the U.S., Hershey (HSY) owns the rights to KitKat, and has been more conservative with the brand, but sales have been flat in recent years. Cadbury Schweppes (CSG) has been outperforming Nestle in the UK chocolate market, which, per capita, is almost twice the size of the U.S. market.
• Comment on related stocks/ETFs: Nestle trades in the US as an ADR (NSRGY.PK). Hey, Jim Cramer likes Cadbury Schweppes.