More market share

In a market category that is growing at a snail's pace, is there place for another brand new brand?

Why launch another brand in a segment when you already have one, especially when you have worked very hard over the years at making the existing brand a success?

These are the questions that most practitioners of marketingTide1.jpg (5237 bytes) have been asking recently! The new brand in question is Tide, which Procter & Gamble (P&G) recently launched in India. And, it has been launched in the premium segment of the detergent powder category, where the company already has Ariel (P&G defines premium in the detergents category as being any product over Rs 70 per kg). Stranger still, Tide and Ariel are seemingly seen by the company as interchangeable and are normally not launched in the same market anywhere in the world. So in the US, Tide rules the roost but there is no Ariel. In Europe, Ariel is what the company offers; Tide has not been launched in any country out there. In Japan, there's only Ariel.

Moreover, by P&G's own estimates, the overall Indian urban detergents market has been growing at a dismal pace of just over one per cent per annum. But, points out Mr. ShaileshShailesh Jejurikar1.jpg (2615 bytes) Jejurikar, marketing director at P&G India, the premium detergents market has been growing at three-to-four per cent in value terms. "And compacts have been growing at around 13 per cent (in value terms); Ariel, in fact, has registered a 14 per cent growth over the last quarter." He adds that over the last quarter, the maximum growth in the detergents category has been from Surf Excel (a product from competitor Hindustan Lever's) and Ariel, both compacts.

A portfolio of brands
Mr. Jejurikar responds, "In some categories, it helps to have a portfolio of brands. While it may be true that in the US, P&G has only Tide, there are different variants to it. And there are other brands from the P&G stable -- Cheer, Bold, Gain. In Europe, there is an additional brand in Daz, besides Ariel. But in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both brands exist side by side. In Saudi, Tide and Ariel have a 60:40 share of the two brands' total turnover. In Egypt, it's the reverse."

It all depends, he says, on one question: is there a consumer need? In India, the premium segment is growing. There is a specific consumer need for great quality of cleaning -- a dimensionalisation of whiteness. Tide has been launched to address that -- the quality of whiteness in cleaning.