1) 案例故事 (Case Story)
At the end of 1990s, shampoo market was booming in China. With the flourishing Chinese brands, P&G was confronted with a tough time in company development internationally. In shampoo market, P&G was challenged by C-Bons and Unilever. In order to find a new growth point and change Chinese market situation, P&G focused on localization. In 1997, P&G made a new product strategy and began the market research and concept testing which lasted for three years. It adopted its usual methods which based on scientific and strict market testing in new product developing.
In 2000, a new brand Ascend (pronounced in Chinese: runyan) appeared in public with an implied meaning of moistening and beautifying hair. With target women consumers aging from 18-35, Ascend made its purpose as presenting oriental women’s beautiful black hair. The appearance of Ascend shocked the whole shampoo market, especially its packaging, advertising image and publicity propaganda gave people great impression because of the advanced level. Ascend espoused natural beauty, and regarded women ’s beauty as the glinting diamond. It aimed for helping women to present their attractively moving appearance. Ascend shampoo contained traditional Chinese herb, polygonum which is helpful in moistening hair. What ’s more, it was the first shampoo which contained natural herb ingredient.
Ascend was suitable for the Orientals because of its ingredient of Chinese herbal medicine. Attractively, a beautiful oriental girl with long black hair appeared in the creative advertisement which was designed to present black oriental hair. It fully revealed the natural beautiful concept of the Orientals.
Ascend was firstly sale in Hangzhou province on September 10, 2001. The firstly target market was chosen as Hangzhou province for its potential business opportunities and modern feeling. Moreover, as an international tourist city, Hangzhou possessed profound traditional culture. So women living in the city were inevitably owned modern and traditional feelings together, which were coincided with Ascend’s theme.
The product was completely different from two-in-one shampoo at that time; instead, it emphasized separately usage of shampoo and hair protector when washing hair. Actually, such a theme was to emphasize that the first step of possessing beautifully healthy hair was to use Ascend shampoo because there’s a faith of thoroughly washing every piece of hair, and then the usage of Ascend hair protector would moisten the hair and made it raven.
After coming to the market for two years, Ascend still hadn ’t taken up the marketing. Instead, Hazeline shampoo which came to the market at the same time had successfully filled the gap left by Olive Polygonum shampoo. However, the sale of Ascend was disappointing, because its rank of popularity was not among those of the successful on the published list. In 2005, P&G bought Clairol which marked the failure of P&G’s first local brand, Ascend.
The websites of Ascend’s online video ads:
2) 案例讨论 (Case Analysis)
It is known that there are a lot of factors contained in developing products for foreign
market. In general, developing products for foreign market should be made at the right time in the right place and by the right channel. However, according to the introduction of the background knowledge, it is obvious that there are some mistakes attributed to the failure of Ascend.
1. Primary target market setting
With the declining of Chongqing Olive, Ascend should have promising business opportunity. However, P&G set Ascend’s target consumers as modern high educated city women aging from 18 to 35, and position the shampoo aiming to make hair raven. In reality, such a consumer group is usually the most fashionable one. Though black hair was welcomed from 1994 to 2000, once the fashion concept altered, these consumers would abandon raven hair. In a word, the consumer market was not stable, which led to the insufficient target market capacity.
2. Product
From 1994 to 2000, Chinese domestic fashion trend was healthy raven hair. At that time the traditional two-in-one shampoo was still very popular. However, P&G spent three year to develop new products of shampoo and hair protector, and claimed that the best way of keep raven hair was to wash hair with shampoo firstly and then hair protector. The consumers’ habit and knowledge of shampoo were greatly challenged. Although Ascend concept was innovative at that time, it
advanced consumers’ hair washing habit at that time. For marketeer, if you want the new concept of your product can be accepted by the consumers, you should make sure consumers’ feedback in advance; otherwise, it will go against the following promotion. Influenced by the two-in-one concept at that time, Ascend lost many additional interests compared with other congeneric product. As a result, consumers’ purchasing enthusiasm was reduced.
3. Promotion
Although P&G endeavored a lot in product promotion, especially the perfect innovative video ads, distinctive public activities, considerate online promotion, and attractive sale, it also had some deficiencies leading to the choke point in marketing.
(1) Advertising deviation
Ascend advertising highlighted its feature of bring raven hair, but ignored a key point, containing of moisten herb essence which would make a great fortune. Then consumers couldn’t clearly distinguish features of Ascend and other shampoo product. As a result, though Ascend drawn a lot of attention, it couldn ’t arouse consumer s’ purchasing desire. What is worse, consumers ’ impression of P&G’s chemical constitution was removed by the beautiful raven hair in advertising.
(2) Blind online promotion
Although P&G’s online product promotion was innovative at that time, and is still of reference value, we should notice that some online promotion was made in online game. The target women consumers aging from 18 to 35 did not spend much time in playing online game, resulting the false believe that the high click rate was made by target consumers. At last, the high investing cost didn’t get expected payback.
Questions for group discussion
1. What inspirations can you get from the failure of P&G’s new product developing in China?
2. According to your understanding of developing products, when is the right time for product
promotion?
3. Do you know a successful product developing for foreign market? Please try to analyze its
successful experience.
3) 案例总结 (Case Summary)
海外新产品研发是每一个成功的企业的必经之路，它不仅可以冲出已经趋于饱和的国内市场，而且也为提高企业知名度做出巨大贡献，最终给企业带来巨额收益。然而，如果没有把握新产品研发和推广时机，抑或目标市场判断错误，这无疑是精力、财力、人力的巨大损失。通过以上对宝洁公司润妍案例的分析，不难得出以下结论：
1、 目标人群有误，失去需求基础
润妍从孕育开始，就应该是一个别人市场制造之后的延续产品，因为这一部分人群已经具有对黑头发的认知和使用习惯，也是品牌切入最为经济的办法。然而宝洁居然舍弃了已经存在的市场而独辟蹊径，将目标人群定位为18-35岁的城市高知女性，于是我们可以看到润妍具有唯美的广告形象和唯美的视觉冲击，其包装也是素雅和高贵的。但问题在于这部分人群是否是真正的购买者？ 事实上，这类消费群体往往趋向追逐潮流。虽然1994-2000中国
有一股强劲的“黑发风”，或许受之影响，润妍的黑发概念吸引了这类消费群体，但是随着潮流的前进，她们不会永远只停留在黑发上。况且，润妍正式推广已经到了这股潮流的末期，并不能逆转潮流趋势。而且润妍的网络广告宣传也出现失误，因为一部分广告投入到网游上，而润妍的目标消费人群是18-35岁城市女性，她们很少接触网游。可见所谓的网络广告高点击率的真实性值得怀疑。
2、 未突出新功能和配方，购买诱因不足
就现有成功运做的品牌而言，消费者真正的购买诱因更多的集中在植物、天然或品牌形象上，而黑头发的作用并不明显。事实上，黑头发我们都喜欢，也都认同，就象东方美一样，但是单纯东方美已经是我们所具有的特质，也是无法去感受到改变的，因此不会因为这个原有多少人去尝试购买，即使买了，也会因为效果不明显而放弃。由此我们不难发现，黑头发仅仅是符合现有消费者的认同和情感联想，而其它的支撑或利益才是购买诱因。这也就是为什么看夏仕莲广告的有24%左右的人愿意尝试购买，而润妍的不过2%的原因。
其实，润妍刚刚上市之初的策略还是较为有效的，突出中草药的概念而不是简单的黑头发，其所做的促销及赠品也都是在这一点上突破的。但是，遗憾的是，也许宝洁以为，形象的作用更为明显，于是在中草药的概念尚未深入人心之际就开始转变策略，将润妍的品牌完全形象化，在推广时犯了炫耀性销售的毛病。广告和赞助活动高潮迭起，但却不能给消费者真正的触摸，美则美，却似乎只是搭建了一个海市蜃楼。润妍在丰富的推广中没有把消费者最重视的利益点突出来，这就使产品脱离了根基，轰轰烈烈的广告中掩盖了润妍的植物中草药配方的特性，只留给消费者一幅美丽却苍白的图画。据调查发现，大部分消费者都不知道润妍的中草药成分，更谈不上知道它的功能了，消费者印象深刻的仅仅只是黑发，而没有滋润发质的中草药精华。
1) 案例故事 (Case Story)
At the end of 1990s, shampoo market was booming in China. With the flourishing Chinese brands, P&G was confronted with a tough time in company development internationally. In shampoo market, P&G was challenged by C-Bons and Unilever. In order to find a new growth point and change Chinese market situation, P&G focused on localization. In 1997, P&G made a new product strategy and began the market research and concept testing which lasted for three years. It adopted its usual methods which based on scientific and strict market testing in new product developing.
In 2000, a new brand Ascend (pronounced in Chinese: runyan) appeared in public with an implied meaning of moistening and beautifying hair. With target women consumers aging from 18-35, Ascend made its purpose as presenting oriental women’s beautiful black hair. The appearance of Ascend shocked the whole shampoo market, especially its packaging, advertising image and publicity propaganda gave people great impression because of the advanced level. Ascend espoused natural beauty, and regarded women ’s beauty as the glinting diamond. It aimed for helping women to present their attractively moving appearance. Ascend shampoo contained traditional Chinese herb, polygonum which is helpful in moistening hair. What ’s more, it was the first shampoo which contained natural herb ingredient.
Ascend was suitable for the Orientals because of its ingredient of Chinese herbal medicine. Attractively, a beautiful oriental girl with long black hair appeared in the creative advertisement which was designed to present black oriental hair. It fully revealed the natural beautiful concept of the Orientals.
Ascend was firstly sale in Hangzhou province on September 10, 2001. The firstly target market was chosen as Hangzhou province for its potential business opportunities and modern feeling. Moreover, as an international tourist city, Hangzhou possessed profound traditional culture. So women living in the city were inevitably owned modern and traditional feelings together, which were coincided with Ascend’s theme.
The product was completely different from two-in-one shampoo at that time; instead, it emphasized separately usage of shampoo and hair protector when washing hair. Actually, such a theme was to emphasize that the first step of possessing beautifully healthy hair was to use Ascend shampoo because there’s a faith of thoroughly washing every piece of hair, and then the usage of Ascend hair protector would moisten the hair and made it raven.
After coming to the market for two years, Ascend still hadn ’t taken up the marketing. Instead, Hazeline shampoo which came to the market at the same time had successfully filled the gap left by Olive Polygonum shampoo. However, the sale of Ascend was disappointing, because its rank of popularity was not among those of the successful on the published list. In 2005, P&G bought Clairol which marked the failure of P&G’s first local brand, Ascend.
The websites of Ascend’s online video ads:
2) 案例讨论 (Case Analysis)
It is known that there are a lot of factors contained in developing products for foreign
market. In general, developing products for foreign market should be made at the right time in the right place and by the right channel. However, according to the introduction of the background knowledge, it is obvious that there are some mistakes attributed to the failure of Ascend.
1. Primary target market setting
With the declining of Chongqing Olive, Ascend should have promising business opportunity. However, P&G set Ascend’s target consumers as modern high educated city women aging from 18 to 35, and position the shampoo aiming to make hair raven. In reality, such a consumer group is usually the most fashionable one. Though black hair was welcomed from 1994 to 2000, once the fashion concept altered, these consumers would abandon raven hair. In a word, the consumer market was not stable, which led to the insufficient target market capacity.
2. Product
From 1994 to 2000, Chinese domestic fashion trend was healthy raven hair. At that time the traditional two-in-one shampoo was still very popular. However, P&G spent three year to develop new products of shampoo and hair protector, and claimed that the best way of keep raven hair was to wash hair with shampoo firstly and then hair protector. The consumers’ habit and knowledge of shampoo were greatly challenged. Although Ascend concept was innovative at that time, it
advanced consumers’ hair washing habit at that time. For marketeer, if you want the new concept of your product can be accepted by the consumers, you should make sure consumers’ feedback in advance; otherwise, it will go against the following promotion. Influenced by the two-in-one concept at that time, Ascend lost many additional interests compared with other congeneric product. As a result, consumers’ purchasing enthusiasm was reduced.
3. Promotion
Although P&G endeavored a lot in product promotion, especially the perfect innovative video ads, distinctive public activities, considerate online promotion, and attractive sale, it also had some deficiencies leading to the choke point in marketing.
(1) Advertising deviation
Ascend advertising highlighted its feature of bring raven hair, but ignored a key point, containing of moisten herb essence which would make a great fortune. Then consumers couldn’t clearly distinguish features of Ascend and other shampoo product. As a result, though Ascend drawn a lot of attention, it couldn ’t arouse consumer s’ purchasing desire. What is worse, consumers ’ impression of P&G’s chemical constitution was removed by the beautiful raven hair in advertising.
(2) Blind online promotion
Although P&G’s online product promotion was innovative at that time, and is still of reference value, we should notice that some online promotion was made in online game. The target women consumers aging from 18 to 35 did not spend much time in playing online game, resulting the false believe that the high click rate was made by target consumers. At last, the high investing cost didn’t get expected payback.
Questions for group discussion
1. What inspirations can you get from the failure of P&G’s new product developing in China?
2. According to your understanding of developing products, when is the right time for product
promotion?
3. Do you know a successful product developing for foreign market? Please try to analyze its
successful experience.
3) 案例总结 (Case Summary)
海外新产品研发是每一个成功的企业的必经之路，它不仅可以冲出已经趋于饱和的国内市场，而且也为提高企业知名度做出巨大贡献，最终给企业带来巨额收益。然而，如果没有把握新产品研发和推广时机，抑或目标市场判断错误，这无疑是精力、财力、人力的巨大损失。通过以上对宝洁公司润妍案例的分析，不难得出以下结论：
1、 目标人群有误，失去需求基础
润妍从孕育开始，就应该是一个别人市场制造之后的延续产品，因为这一部分人群已经具有对黑头发的认知和使用习惯，也是品牌切入最为经济的办法。然而宝洁居然舍弃了已经存在的市场而独辟蹊径，将目标人群定位为18-35岁的城市高知女性，于是我们可以看到润妍具有唯美的广告形象和唯美的视觉冲击，其包装也是素雅和高贵的。但问题在于这部分人群是否是真正的购买者？ 事实上，这类消费群体往往趋向追逐潮流。虽然1994-2000中国
有一股强劲的“黑发风”，或许受之影响，润妍的黑发概念吸引了这类消费群体，但是随着潮流的前进，她们不会永远只停留在黑发上。况且，润妍正式推广已经到了这股潮流的末期，并不能逆转潮流趋势。而且润妍的网络广告宣传也出现失误，因为一部分广告投入到网游上，而润妍的目标消费人群是18-35岁城市女性，她们很少接触网游。可见所谓的网络广告高点击率的真实性值得怀疑。
2、 未突出新功能和配方，购买诱因不足
就现有成功运做的品牌而言，消费者真正的购买诱因更多的集中在植物、天然或品牌形象上，而黑头发的作用并不明显。事实上，黑头发我们都喜欢，也都认同，就象东方美一样，但是单纯东方美已经是我们所具有的特质，也是无法去感受到改变的，因此不会因为这个原有多少人去尝试购买，即使买了，也会因为效果不明显而放弃。由此我们不难发现，黑头发仅仅是符合现有消费者的认同和情感联想，而其它的支撑或利益才是购买诱因。这也就是为什么看夏仕莲广告的有24%左右的人愿意尝试购买，而润妍的不过2%的原因。
其实，润妍刚刚上市之初的策略还是较为有效的，突出中草药的概念而不是简单的黑头发，其所做的促销及赠品也都是在这一点上突破的。但是，遗憾的是，也许宝洁以为，形象的作用更为明显，于是在中草药的概念尚未深入人心之际就开始转变策略，将润妍的品牌完全形象化，在推广时犯了炫耀性销售的毛病。广告和赞助活动高潮迭起，但却不能给消费者真正的触摸，美则美，却似乎只是搭建了一个海市蜃楼。润妍在丰富的推广中没有把消费者最重视的利益点突出来，这就使产品脱离了根基，轰轰烈烈的广告中掩盖了润妍的植物中草药配方的特性，只留给消费者一幅美丽却苍白的图画。据调查发现，大部分消费者都不知道润妍的中草药成分，更谈不上知道它的功能了，消费者印象深刻的仅仅只是黑发，而没有滋润发质的中草药精华。