Colgate-Palmolive Company profile Essay

Colgate –Palmolive is a well-known brand that served more than a billion of people all around the world in different country. This company is founded in 1806 and the founder is known as William Colgate. For now, Colgate is running in a multinational consumer products company that focused on the production, distribution and provision of household, health and personal care products. Meanwhile, the mission and goals of Colgate is by reducing total delivered cost, extending technology resources and developing excellence in purchasing, logistics and sourcing processes to provide Colgate with a significant competitive advantage (Colgate World of Care, 2014). Product Overview Nowadays, Colgate provides oral care, personal care, home care and pet nutrition product under different trusted brands like Colgate, Palmolive, Speed Stick, Protex, Ajax, Axion, GLO, Softlan and Lady Speed Stick. In our opinion, Colgate should come out with a new production line extension for kid’s toothpaste by adding more different flavor. As what we know, nowadays most of the parent will let their kid’s to choice their own toothpaste, so that they will more likely to brush their teeth daily with using their favorite toothpaste. Besides, this new product line extension will also provide Colgate to have a more competitive advantage in the market. Competitor Analysis The major competitor for this new product line extension is Kodomo Lion. This company is the leading company in Malaysia for kid’s toothpaste as they are the specialist in this region (Kodomo Lion, 2014). Next, the strength of this strong competitor is they are specialist in producing kid’s toothpaste for many years, their brand is well-known by a lot of customer that have children and the consumer have bigger confidence for Kodomo kid’s toothpaste against other competitors as the toothpaste that produce by Kodomo contain ‘Xylitol’, which is something that could reverse early formation of tooth decay in teeth (Shen Li, 2014). But, there is also a weakness of this strong competitor. Kodomo Lion is not often to have an advertisement for their product, therefore, Colgate have a very big chance to increase their market in this region by attracting more new customer like new mother and father  that just have their kid’s. Target Market and Positioning Strategy By using the bases for segmenting consumer markets, demographic segment is the most suitable segment for this new product line extension by dividing the market into groups based on variables such as family size, family life cycle and age. On the other hand, the consumer in this target market must have the characteristic as the consumer household must have at least a kid`s and have the knowledge to maintain the health of teeth for kid`s. Example, parent and guardian; that both of them have the highest consumption of the product as there are the one that decide to purchase which brand of kid`s toothpaste even though they are the non-user in the product category. Then, when come to the positioning strategy, this new product could use the benefits, needs or solution positioning strategy. With adding more new flavor to this product that the competitor do not have, it will give the product a distinctive edge and this will also help the product to differentiate from the competitor as there is only a single company is producing this kind of flavor for kid`s toothpaste. Core Product The core product is the intangible product that cannot be touched (Cuccureddu, 2011). It is the benefits of the product that makes it valuable to the customers, which determine customer’s decision (Friesner, 2014). Therefore, when Colgate comes out with the kid’s toothpaste, it will emphasizes on the benefits that it enables clean, strong, and healthy teeth as well as the prevention of tooth decay for kids. It will also point out in all Colgate kid’s toothpaste advertisement that the calcium contain in its kid’s toothpaste is able to lead to a stronger and healthier teeth since calcium has been widely believed to have strengthen the teeth. Actual Product The actual product is the tangible and actual physical of product (Cuccureddu, 2011). It includes the level of quality, special product and service features, branding, styling and packaging (Friesner, 2014). In the case for this Colgate kid’s toothpaste, its actual product would be the toothpaste itself that contain high level of fluoride and calcium and also include different color of packaging for different type of flavor in order  to persuade customer to buy the toothpaste. For example, pink packaging for strawberry, orange packaging for orange, purple packaging for grape, and red packaging for apple. The most importantly is the logo, Colgate, which color can only be white to promote clean and healthy teeth. Augmented Product The augmented product can be referred as the non-physical part of product (Cuccureddu, 2011). It usually consists of additional features or benefits and added value to the actual product (Friesner, 2014). For the Colgate kid’s toothpaste, the important augmented features that it will have include is the flip-cap package so it will be more easier to use and also more convenient to store for the kids. Another augmented feature Colgate kid’s toothpaste has is that it offers a very lovely and likeable taste as well as fresher breath. Branding Colgate can develop a stronger branding for the kid’s toothpaste through advertising. For example, Colgate can advertise their product through magazine ads, commercial ads and printed ads that can be placed in billboards on roadsides, sides of buses and dentist offices. This can be done to promote the new kid’s toothpaste and create parents awareness at the same time as well as remind them of existing products. Packaging As for the packaging, Colgate kid’s toothpaste has to come in eye-catching and attractive colorful pack in order to get attention from customers. As mentioned earlier, the kid’s toothpaste should come with different packaging color according to the types of flavor so that parents or kids can easily locate it from the retailer shelf. Labeling When comes to the labeling, it is important for Colgate to have include label in the kid’s toothpaste as reference for the customers like parents. For example, it should include the list of active and inactive ingredients, purpose, direction to use, warning and many more to provide necessary information for the parents. Provision It is a wise idea for Colgate to market the kid’s toothpaste with user-friendly packaging such as flip-cap package to replace the old twist  cap. It provides a more convenient and ease of use of the toothpaste not only for parents but also for the kids so they won’t left the cap open. Promotion in the marketing is like a tool, which helps a company to let the people know about the product. The main purpose of the promotion is to Create Awareness, Persuasion, Education, Information, Emotion, Brand Loyalty, and Understanding. Adopting a good promotional strategy Colgate has succeeded to retain its customers and image. By this Colgate strongly focuses on different promotional strategies i.e. mass selling, advertising, publicity and sale promotion etc. Colgate has done in the past and still doing at the moment. Advertising Advertising is the paid and non- personal communication of a marketing message by an identified sponsor through mass media such as television, newspapers, magazines, Internet or radios (Levens, 2012, p. 228).Advertising is typically done to promote and inform consumers about the new products as well as build awareness among them. The reason we choose advertising as one of our promotional strategies is because it is a cost effective and creative way to communicate with group of customers, can effectively inform consumers about the features and benefits of the new product, it can help begin and maintain a dialogue with a target market. Our advertising objective is to inform and provide consumers with features and benefits of the new product as well as build awareness in the market to attract consumers. Our target market for this new product is kids, so we have decided to advertise our product through mass media such as commercials on TV, magazines and reading materials. Almost all groups of people will spend their time on watching TV so commercials on TV are essential and necessary to build awareness and attract our target market, kids. For example, when kids saw something they are interested in, definitely they will request their parents to buy it for them like every kids do. Of course, attracting kids only will not be enough to attract consumers. We have also decided advertise through magazines and reading materials to aware parents of the new product. Every parents are definitely willing to buy a product that will be best and benefits their kids. These will definitely stimulating the demand and hence boost the sales of this new product. Sales Promotion Sales promotion is defined as short-term activities that encourage the sales of a product or service. Sales promotion usually involved a wide assortment of tools such as coupons and premiums to attract customers. For examples: organizations use sales promotion to create response in the market by adding urgency, and changing what the customers perceive value for money. In this assignment we put our main focus on customer promotions. We would set up few kiosks in healthcare section of different shopping malls, and offer consumers our new flavor Colgate toothpaste in small packing for free when they tending to purchase Colgate toothpaste. Besides that, we will encourage those customers who tried the new flavor Colgate toothpaste to make a repeat purchase. To achieve that goal, we will offer them a value pack of our toothpaste in order to get their attention and make immediate purchase. With all these efforts, the purchase time will be shorten and achieving high sales (Hose, 2014). The cost will be high at initial stage, but eventually this would boost up the sales with low profits. Most important is we may achieve repeated sales of our new product, and also increase the market shares. In long term, if we putting more efforts on sales promotion, this will pull consumers away from our competitors such as Darlie, Sensodyne, Fresh & White and others. Lastly, the sales promotion can be used as a helpful marketing tool in order to achieve company promotional goal, as it may benefit Colgate to attract more new potential consumer further enhance the market share with their new flavor toothpaste (Boundless, 2014) Public relations Public relations is a communication that is designed to improve and enhance mutual understanding and positively affect relationships between marketer and its internal and external publics (Levens, 2012, p.233). The internal and external publics are people inside or outside the company such as customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, community members and others. The objectives of public relations are building product awareness, providing information and building goodwill among an organization’s target market through events, conferences, public appearance and sponsorship. We have decided to include public relations in our promotional tools because public relations objectives can be attained at a very low cost compared to other  promotional tools, well-structured public relation conferences, events, campaigns and sponsorship can reveal and expose more detailed information to target market. For example, we can organize special events on holidays to interact with consumers face to face in a more crowded area such as shopping mall, provide a talk for consumers about the features and benefits of the new product on how can it benefits the target market. We can also offer giveaway prizes of the new toothpaste in a smaller package to the consumers who have participated in the event to attract more consumers to attend the event. By this, consumers will have a chance to try our products thus we can get feedbacks from them. Besides, we can also organize ‘Health and Care’ campaigns in primary schools to inform the kids about the importance of brushing teeth and taking good care of our tooth. Hence, demonstrate on how to brush our tooth correctly and provide them with the new toothpaste in a mini package so that everyone can have a try. With the new flavors in the toothpaste, it is believed that kids will definitely attracted to the flavors and ask their parents to bu y for them. References List Boundless (2014) Sales promotion. Available from: https://www.boundless.com/definition/sales-promotion/ [Accessed 10 May 2014] Colgate World of Care (2014), Global Procurement Mission & Goals. Available from: http://www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/US/Corp/ContactUs/GMLS/MissionAndGoals.cvsp [Accessed 10th May 2014]. Cuccureddu, G. (2011). Co-creation And The Impact On The Three Levels Of Product. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/co-creation-and-the-impact-on-the-three-levels-of-product-2011-9?IR=T& [Accessed 13 May. 2014]. Emily, W (2014) Marketing Mix – Promotion and Promotional Strategies. Available from: http://www.learnmarketing.net/promotion.htm [Accessed 9 May 2014] Friesner, T. (2014). Three Levels of a Product – Marketing Teacher. [online] Marketing Teacher. Available at: http://www.marketingteacher.com/three-levels-of-a-product/ [Accessed 13 May. 2014]. Hose, C (2014) Difference between Advertising Strategy & Promotion Strateg y. Available from: