The commissioner of my thesis is Hankkija-Maatalous Oy. It launched customer specific cattle feeds in the spring 2012. Those feeds are called Farmarin Sopiva. The company wanted to find out how the problem-solving point of view could be incorporated more in marketing, optimization and argumentation of the Farmarin Sopiva feeds.

The aim of the thesis was to plan a frame for the marketing tool which surveys the farms’ problems. The tool was supposed to support the work of the cattle feed salesmen and people who optimize the Farmarin Sopiva feeds. The tool had to be easy to use and the level of information had to suit everybody’s use. The information had to bring up possible problems in the farm and solutions for those problems.

The marketing tool included a questionnaire and an answer sheet. The questionnaire was formed with claims of the cattle heath. On the basis of the choices in the questionnaire, the answer sheet is filled with the causes of the symptoms and a suggested solution. The tool was formatted on the basis of the health effects of nutrients, vitamins, micro minerals and macro minerals. Also symptoms of the deficiency and excess levels and influences on other nutrient utilization were defined from the literature.

The basic idea and structure of the marketing tool was discovered to be workable when interviewing the cattle feed salesmen. In their opinion the tool would be very usable in sales work after some development steps. They thought that the information provided by the tool was adequate for the salesmen. For the optimization group the amount of the information could be even bigger.