Individual Case Analysis Colgate
Apparently, Colgate has won this teeth-whitening competiton. Usually, a new product would have a strong brand image and consumers would form a habit of the usage if the product is the first one to the market. It’s difficult for the followers to compete in the same market with the same target consumers.
Crest Whitestrips is definitely an effective product and it even won the challenge before the NAD. P;G did a test about Simply White and came out the results that it was gone in five minutes which means Whitestrips is more effective than Simply White.
However, the perception of the consumer about the product is much more important than its actual effect. About 50% of the consumers whou had tried Simply White thought the product worked, which is significant for Colgate to win over P;G. Colgate is the second to the market.
Sometimes second-to-market could be a good strategy cause the fisrt one has already opened the market and you don’t need to do much marketing to help the consumers understand the new product. You just get in and share the market. But if you want to be dominant of the market, an efficient marketing strategy is needed.
Actually, the strategy of Simply White is quite simple, convience and a lower price. Meanwhile, Colgate emphasize that Simply White bleach teeth as effectively as Whitestrips.
So from te perspective of the consumer, they’ll definitely choose Simply White because they’ve have the perception that Simply White is of similar effectiveness but cheaper and easier to use comparing to Crest Whitestrips. Is there any possibility for P&G to win the whitening competition again? Definitely yes! As mentioned, P&G had worked to test the Simply White prior to its launch.
The result is that most of Simply White was gone in 30 senconds to a minute and completely gone in five minutes, so P&G just looked down upon this major competitor. The mistake P&G had done is that it didn’t do the loss-prevention before Simply White’s launch to the market. It’s impropriate for P;G to announce that Simply White is not as effective as it markets itslf after its great popularity, which may lead to a negative effect for P;G.
What P;G can do is to find a third party which is authoritative to do the test again and announce the results to the public.
The effectiveness of Whitestrips is doultless cause it have won the challenge before the NAD. Once the consumers notice that Simply White is not as effective as it claimed, their trust towards Simply White wouled be lowerd and very possiblely switch to Whitestrips. Although Colgate is the leader in the oral-care business, from Exhibit 2 and Exhibit 3, we can see that from the perspective of the whole company, P;G is a much larger commodity company over Colgate, which means, P;G should have more channels and stronger bargain power than Colgate.
P;G can negociate with the channels to offer the P;G products preferentially and instead, the channels provide Whitestrips only. We can always see this happen between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
If Whitestrips can directly reach more consumers than Simply White does, it could be a great advantage. As a conclusion, what we can learn from the competion between P;G and Colgate are as follows: 1. If you are the first one to the market, you should pay attention to the followers and do loss-prevention before they launch to the market and snatch the market share. . If you are the first one to the market, it’s important to make the consumers form the habit of using your product, just like the invention of the keyboard. 3.
If you are the sencond to the market, you should have advantage over the previous product, such as design, ease to use and lower price. Then market and emphasize these advantages. 4. Comparing to the actual effect, consumers’ perception of the product is much more important. We should put effort to help form a positive perception of the product.
