PROJECT REPORT ON

HAIR CARE

SUBMITTED TO:

Prof. MILIND M. FADNAVIS

SUBMITTED BY:

AKANKSHA GUPTA

ROLL NO. : 2011020

SECTION ‘A’

INTRODUCTION:

Garnier is a brand that epitomizes smart marketing practice.

Garnier attributes its performance to being the first player in India to introduce a cream-based hair color below the price of Rs 100 (2002) and the first home-highlighting kit (2005).

One of their key ingredients is a fruit concentrate used in all their products. It is a combination of fruit acids, vitamin B3, B6, fructose and glucose.

Garnier believes in beauty through nature. Scientifically developed and enriched with selected natural ingredients, its products help look healthy and feel good every day.

Garnier can be considered as a masstige brand. Although positioned as a premium offering, the brand was wise enough to price it reasonable. Currently Garnier is targeting the middle and upper socio-economic class.

POSITIOINING:

Globally L’Oreal is a company that is famous for its product innovation. Garnier too has built its brand by launching new products on a regular basis. A strategy based on product innovation works best for a brand like Garnier. When the consumer sees regular new product flow from the brand, it creates a sense of excitement within the consumer which will prompt her to stick to this brand. Garnier was the first brand to introduce a cream based hair coloring solution.Garnier is now present in a diverse range of personal care product categories. It is present in the hair-care and skin-care segments.The brand have two sub-brands:

o Garnier Fructiso Garnier Ultra Doux

Fructis is an interesting sub-brand which has clicked in the Indian market because of its positioning as a fruit based product. Consumers readily embraced this variant because it made sense to depend on a natural shampoo rather than chemical based one.Garnier is positioned as a nature-based (Green colored packaging) innovative personal care brand which takes care of your skin.

PRODUCT:

RECENT PRODUCT LAUNCHES:

Recently Garnier launched another new innovative product in the Indian market - Garnier Shampoo + Oil 2 in 1 shampoo. This is something that Indian consumer has never seen before. And a product which Indian consumer find little difficult to believe. Shampoo and oil are something that is not supposed to work together. In fact shampoo is used against oil. Indian consumers are habituated to using oil regularly and time usually works against using them both. And since these two products are supposed to work against each other and time factor prevents them from using both, Garnier has thought of a plan to integrate north-pole and south-pole together.Garnier Oil + Shampoo is a blend of 3 oils and shampoo. According to press release, the oil will work within to strengthen the hair and shampoo will clean the hair. This shampoo variant contains three oils - Olive, Avocado and Shea oil.

Whether these innovations fail or succeed, Garnier gains much equity through these steady streams of product launches. The premium positioning, smart pricing, heavy investment in brand promotion, innovative products and strong distribution reach has enabled this brand to create a special place in the Indian personal care industry. A lesson for aspiring brands.

GARNIER FRUCTIS KIDS:Now, Garnier is all set to cover the entire shampoo market with the launch of Garnier Kids Shampoo in the Indian market.

The launch of Garnier Fructis kid's shampoo is expected to revive the kid's personal care category in India. The kid's hair care market is dominated by HUL's Clinic Plus brand and the other players being Parachute Starz. But recently the activities in this category have been minimal.

HAIR COLOR MARKET:

The early years also taught L’Oreal that me-too products or those with superficial tweaks will not work in India. A global halo does not impress the value-conscious Indian. L’Oreal got its biggest breakthrough when it rethought hair colours for the Indian market in 2002. Its Garnier Nutrisse had failed to strike a chord with the consumers (and L’Oreal Excellence was positioned at the higher end of the price spectrum.) That was when it launched Garnier Color Naturals which came in a Rs 99 hair-colouring kit with blacks and browns.Godrej had had a free run in the market till then with its Rs -7 pack of powder dyes.

Indian women are touch-up specialists because of their long, parted hair. Grey roots show more often; as a result they need to re-apply colour at the roots while not colouring the entire length of their hair. The habit made existing small packs meant for Westerners with short hair expensive and inadequate.

L’Oreal’s research team created a cream colorant that could be priced well below premium, spread uniformly and calibrated for touch-up doses. They knew we were still priced more than the leader but they wanted the consumer to try them first.What helped was that L’Oreal had trained a large number of hairdressers in India — more than 50,000 on last count — in the country. To drive trials for Garnier Color Naturals, its teams went beyond the salons in metros. “The category was still small then. They wanted consumers not only to eye the low price but also the features of the product. Education, then, was very important.They even went to the single-seat barber shops one finds in small towns to train them in everything about hair and the product.I t h a s h e l p e d t o e s t a b l i s h a b o u t 3 0 0 s a l o n s i n t h e p a s t f i v e y e a r s . T h e t h e o r y i s simple: If there is no natural demand for your goods, stimulate it. “We have created a profession and a market,” Didier Villanueva, L’Oreal India’s country manager, said. “If you train people they will use your products.”

PROMOTION:

G a r n i e r h a s b e e n v e r y a c t i v e a n d u p f r o n t i n a d o p t i n g n e w p r o m o t i o n a l t e c h n i q u e s t o m a r k e t i t s p r o d u c t s . T h e c o m p a n y f o l l o w s a v e r y p o p u l a r t e c h n i q u e t o a d v e r t i s e a n d market its products that is the Viral Marketing policy. Viral marketing is a term coined to define the productive ways a marketing message is made available. And corporate are using the medium to circulate brands and brand messages. The idea has caught on like a virus, as efficiently as Information Technology has entered households and businesses. Firms are now structuring their businesses in a way that allows them to grow like a virus and lock out the existing brick and mortar competitors through innovative pricing and exploitation of competitors' distribution channels. The beauty of this marketing technique is that none of it requires any marketing. Customers, who have caught the virus, do the selling. Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a m a r k e t i n g m e s s a g e t o o t h e r s , c r e a t i n g t h e p o t e n t i a l f o r e x p o n e n t i a l g r o w t h i n t h e message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions. Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth'', "creating a buzz'', "leveraging the media'' and even "network marketing.'' It's a deceptively simple concept: Create a message, send it via e-mail, and make it so compelling that recipients want to pass it on to everyone in their address book. Advertisers are hot on the tactic and the idea of putting consumers to work spreading the word about a brand or service seems sound. W h a t i s u n i q u e a b o u t t h e c o n c e p t i s t h a t w h e r e b r a n d s o r b r a n d i d e a s a r e e x c h a n g e d within communities, they are idea-led, not advertising-led.When Garnier launched its Fructis shampoo, they latched on to the idea. The firm had to i n t r o d u c e t h e a s p e c t o f f i v e t i m e s s t r o n g e r h a i r a n d t h e f i r m h a d a ‘ b r a i d c o m p e t i t i o n ’ whereby consumers could register on a site and create a knot on the Fructis braid, as part of their entry into the contest. The knot creation was actually created (visually presented on the site) and as a next step, consumers were expected to invite their friends to visit the braid and add to their score. A record 76,000 consumers created their own knot on the b r a i d a n d f o r w a r d e d t h e l i n k t o m o r e t h a n 8 2 , 0 0 0 o f t h e i r f r i e n d s , a s u r v e y r e p o r t indicated.

Viral marketers practice Delayed Gratification . They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit soon and for the rest of their lives. Since 'Free' happens to be the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary, most viral marketing programmes have attached themselves to it. The idea is to give away valuable products or services to attract attention. And, more importantly, someone else's resources are depleted rather than our own. Garnier has positioned itself as a lifestyle product mainly targeting teenagers and young girls. This is very evident from Garnier ads be it for Garnier Fructis shampoos or for hair color.

ADVERTISING:

The brand has a very catchy tagline "Take Care ". Garnier's positioning strategy is more products based in the sense that it has tried to emphasise individual product properties rather than a common brand image. Most of its commercials are emphasizing on product strengths and innovation. The brand is an example of the success of Rational Product Based Advertising success. The brand is also sending a message that Indian consumers are also influenced by rational messages and product innovations rather than mindless emotional blah-blahs.Another interesting marketing strategy adopted by Garnier is its Advertising Execution. True to its global parentage, Garnier was careful in its advertising theme.

It uses a blend of foreign and Indian models and themes for its campaign. Garnier ads can be termed as localized international advertising which has a global touch but does not appear alien to Indian realities. The brand uses a careful blend of celebrities and models in their campaigns without relying much on their individual persona. Their products are always the stars in their campaigns.

PLACE:

L’Oreal’s retail strategy also rewrote its fate in India. India was very different from servicing a thousand departmental stores that we do in other countries. But Garnier were quick to bring in different strategies, including one for kirana stores as well. Signalling a hands-on approach, managers were told to roll up their sleeves and spruce up the in-store while on a round of the market. “Shopkeepers saw the same men in business suits who had presented L’Oreal’s plans to them working with sales representatives to clean shelves, windows and place the Garnier merchandise.”This is important. Except in the premium category, shampoos, conditioners, hair colours and deodorants are impulse purchases where the advice of the retailer plays a crucial role. A better display therefore helps sell better. If one compares their market shares with the share of shelves in urban stores, it is evident L’Oreal spends a lot on retail display. It introduced a lot of new concepts at the store level. Garnier reps were the first to roam about in the aisles of modern stores to induce trials, even before Hindustan Unilever did that with Lakme.

PRICE:

The target segment for any product i s that homogeneous group of people which i s purported to be the most potent ia l customer for the product .Trying to strike a balance in its pricing strategy for the Indian market, `L'Oreal India Private Ltd believes that by introducing more stock keeping units (SKU's) it will be able to tide over the steep pricing of its products.Considering the company has set up its manufacturing facilities in Pune and has also been sub-contracting its products, it has been easier for it to control its prices in the Indian market.

OFFERS:

TO CUSTOMERS:Discount on product price during dulling of sales.Offers like ‘Fortifying Conditioner free with Garnier Fructis Long & Strong Shampoo’.

TO RETAILERS:Offers of upto 25% off on bulk-buying.Such offers are introduced during seasons of low sales.Retailers buy the product at low prices and stock it through the low demand period. Eventually when demand returns, the product is sold off at a higher profit.

TO WHOLESALERS:Offer of higher profit margins to wholesalers with higher buying counter.For example, am margin of 2% for a bulk buying of 200 pieces and that of 6% for a 1000 pieces.

PACKAGING:

In 2004, L’Oreal came out with Garnier Fructis shampoo and conditioner. “Sure it was an international product, but the formulae were all for India. With Garnier Fructis Long & Strong in 2006, they played with the braid as the imagery and immediately connected with the contemporary Indian consumer. The look was international but the product still spoke about long and strong plaits”. The unisex brand is seen as a high-energy and lively brand. V Sitaram, the former chief operating officer (consumer care) of Dabur, says: “It has established a strong franchise by depicting young people identifiable as a South Delhi or Mumbai youth as its core consumer. The fluorescent packaging stands out on shelves as well.Every Garnier product launch is initiated with the simultaneous launch of a trial pack.

SHAMPOO & CONDITIONER:

Bright green plastic bottles with snap-open lids for ideal amount of shampoo dispensing. Both plastic jars as well as bottles used for conditioners. Containers have a very funky look to them.

HAIR STYLING GEL:

Plastic bottles for spray or spritzing gels that give a natural look or mild gels; jars for stiff gels for a firmer hair style. Aerosol containers for hair sprays.

SATCHETS:

Available in cheap 5 ml sachets for travelling or new product trial purposes.

HAIR COLOR:

Opaque plastic bottles & tubes for product preservation since it is sensitive to light.

ONLINE PRESENCE:

Use of Facebook page to interact with consumers for feedback and product rating.The page is pro performance, which is the tag-line of Garnier Men’s range in India.It features performance quizzes, shares healthy recipes and even answers personal queries of consumers.

CSR ACTIVITIES:

In collaboration with the TIMES OF INDIA, started a Green Campaign called “TAKE CARE TAKE CHARGE”.People were invited to register online and give in their ideas for a greener planet. Organization of campaigns in major cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Mumbai with activities like ‘Planting of 2500 Saplings in Delhi’ and ‘Collection and Recycling of 30,000 Kgs of Tetra packs into Recycled Paper & Roofing Sheets every month in Bangalore’.