Marketing of Huggies Brand Pull-Ups - Research Paper Example

?Huggies brand Pull-Ups Any organization’s survival as well as its successful growth mainly depends on the products it manufactures or assembles, or on the services it offers. Thus, the products and the services only provide the organization the avenue to reach the customers. Only if the product and services are ‘reached’ to the customer, or if differently said, only if the customer is ‘made’ to buy those products or services, organizations can survive and succeed. To reach the customers or make the customers buy it, organizations has come up with effective marketing strategies. A set of effective marketing strategies can be formulated if the organization or specifically the marketing department or team does a marketing research. Marketing research involves studying and analysing the ‘market’ in which the product or service is going to be sold, and it specifically involves studying the prospective customers, to whom the product or service is going to be sold, as well as other related aspects. As defined American Marketing Association (cited in Onkvisit and Shaw, 2008) “Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of data about issues relating to marketing products and services.” In addition, its goal is to identify and analyze the factors that impacts customer behaviour. Thus, when a product including baby related products like Huggies Pull-Ups is to be sold to the customers, the marketing research will be done, and as the first process key data about the customers or market to be targeted will be gathered. Then, the gathered information can be analyzed and arranged with certain tools before being presented to the management or the marketing team to study and come up with apt marketing plan. So, this paper focusing on the product of Huggies Pull-Ups will discuss how the data about it can be gathered, analyzed and presented to the management or the marketing team. Pull-Ups, manufactured by Huggies, is the brand name given to the disposable training pants, used as part of potty training for small children. Huggies range of products for babies and small children is mainly marketed by Kimberly-Clark, an American corporation which manufactures paper-based products. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Kimberly-Clark manufactures and markets sanitation, hygiene related and other cleaning products for women, children and also to the general population. Thus, it caters to the whole family by variety of products. “It's no surprise that our family and personal care brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, Poise and Depend, are instantly recognizable to millions. After all, we've been in the business of providing essentials for a better life for nearly 140 years” (“Overview”, n. d). Among those products, the products for children are marketed under the brand name of Huggies, which includes the Pull-Ups. Pull-Ups are actually disposable inner pants that can be worn by children to prevent urine and motion discharge. However, it is different from normal diapers, as it uses a simple pull up method, thus enabling even small children to use it by pulling up and down like a normal pant or trouser. This product was first introduced in the year 1989, with a motto of “I'm a big kid now!”, thus implying that diapers are only for toddlers or babies, and children who have grown a little and into a small kid, needs different wear to manage their bladder and bowel movements. As a further extension of their marketing strategies, Huggies Pull-Ups incorporated colourful picture designs on the pants. For example, the pants for boys had designs in blue and they feature characters and other action figures from the children’s movies Cars and Toy Story, while, girls’ pants were predominantly designed in pink colour with pictures of Disney Princesses featured in the pant. These pictures apart from making the product entice-able have been added to reflect the unique feature of the pants, and to make the children, using it, fulfil its purpose. That is, these unique pictures are fading designs which starts to fade, when the Pull-Ups training pants becomes wet. Thus, the toddlers are made to understand that if they cannot control their bladder and bowel movements and go to the potty or a toilet soon, and instead pass it in their pants itself, the pants will become wet and the designs will fade. “Toddlers quickly understand that to keep the pictures they have to use the potty - that's the power of visual.” (“Helping make potty training easier”). Thus, it is clear that the product of Huggies Pull-Ups was introduced and being introduced in different variations with some added features. To introduce these new models or different purpose pants, and to come up with apt marketing strategies for each them, it is important on the part of Huggies and Kimberly-Clark to study the market. “With respect to its existing products in the market, good market research enables a company to know if it has been able to satisfy customer needs and whether any changes need to be made in the packaging, delivery or the product itself.” (“Why is Market Research Useful?”). As mentioned above studying the market involves analyzing the behaviour of the prospective customers and their other demographic aspects. However, in the case of baby products like this, the prospective customer base can be divided into two, the buying customers and the customers who use the product. As baby and other children related products are mainly bought by the parents and other elders, they need to be focused and studied as part of the marketing research. At the same time, the children and not the elders are the users of the products, and so their behaviour to the product also has to be studied as part of the marketing research. This way both the buyer of the product as well as the end user of the product can be catered. Marketing will not be successful without accurate marketing research. One must understand the importance of marketing research to have a product released successfully. To maximize organizational resources one must do their research. In the case of Huggies, marketing research will provide better understanding of both their buying customer base and its end user. Establishing research objectives and selecting some marketing research methodologies are very important during marketing research. Searching for resources and information sometimes takes a lot of time and cost some money. Introducing a new product and coming up with apt marketing strategies is a strategic process, which takes time and patience. To do that effectively, research objectives have to be established first. Having research objectives are important in any type of marketing research including for baby brands like Huggies, as it will help the researchers to focus only on the key areas needed. Setting objectives will also help the researchers in avoiding unnecessary collection of data and will help organize the collected data in clearly demarcated sections. The research methodology that should be followed as part of marketing research and importantly to formulate the marketing strategies can be based on primary and secondary data. The primary data used in the research methodology mainly constitutes the details of the various product categories under which Huggies is selling their Pull-Ups, the performance of each product or model, the collected feedback of the customers to each of these product range, financial results of each of these product range and importantly overall financial results of the Pull-Ups as a brand, etc, etc. These data can be easily collected from in-house data storing facilities at any time feasible, and can be analyzed in an in depth manner. As all the above mentioned company and its products related data will stored in various computers hard drives and other large scale databases, all can be retrieved for analysis. Retrieving these data will not be a problem, as the marketing research team can have access to these details from other department, without any obstacles. The marketing research team in Huggies or Kimberly Clark can also gather primary data from its trading partners and suppliers as well. Although, this data will be already accumulated inside the organization, sometimes the very recent data can be accessed from the partners and suppliers. As part of this research methodology, the marketing research team can use details about the redirects from the trading partner’s website, details about the number of hits in its home website, details about mutual benefits, etc. These data could play an important role in the formulation of optimum marketing strategies. In addition, primary data can be collected from the focus group constituted within the organization. This focus group will brainstorm and share ideas about various product options and the accompanied marketing strategies. As an extension of this focus group, case study method can be used to gather apt information. Under this method, the company can send individuals to the trading partners, retailers and other outlets of their products to study about their sales and the response of the customers. Those same people can come back and can be involved in the focus group to share what they have discovered and learned. “Managers need information in order to introduce products and services that create value in the mind of the customer” (McQuarrie, 2007). This method can be helpful, when the company introduces new models or variations of the main product as in the case of Huggies. The research can be carried out and the resultant marketing strategies can be brought out based on the secondary data. The secondary data in relation to Huggies Pull-Ups mainly constitutes the happenings outside the organization’s internal environment including demographic profile of the buying customer and end user, the buying customer’ purchasing power, the competitors’ product range, their price range, their marketing strategies, as well as end user’s behaviour to that product, including their comfort, interests, expectations, etc. When all these data can be collected as part of the research, it will achieve the research objectives, thereby enabling the marketing department to come up with effective marketing strategies. There are many types of marketing research methodologies that a company could practice to get these above mentioned secondary data. In the current computer savvy environment, internet is the main marketing research methodologies that the company like Huggies can use. The internet can give good information on demographics of the buying customer and end user, product range, marketing strategy and the price of the competitors, and even consumer’s insight and thoughts about the product including Pull-Ups. Although, information that can be found on the internet is extensive, it is not in-depth as it will be mainly general in nature, and importantly the company must also worry if the information is accurate or not. To corner in on the correct information and to check its reliability and feasibility, statistical analysis can be used. Statistical analysis and effect size are the key tools for marketing researchers, as better attention to these two factors can improve the planning, execution, and reporting for marketing and consumer research. (Sawyer and Ball, 1981) All the data gathered and analyzed through the above discussed methods, can be aptly used by the management to come up with apt marketing strategies. As Huggies continuously comes up new products, gathering apt data about its customers, both buying and end user, about its performance in the market place and its competitors will be beneficial in formulating effective marketing strategies. That is, after introducing the main product in 1989, Huggies have been coming up with variations of that product, fulfilling the same purpose of prevention of ‘toilet accidents’ and importantly potty training. Currently, the Huggies Pull-Ups are available in 3 types. Apart from the earlier discussed design fading type, Huggies Pull-Ups are also available under Huggies Cool Alert Pull-Ups and Huggies Nightime Pull-Ups. In future also, it can come with newer products, incorporating additional features. These new products and existing products have to be marketed in an optimal way to reach both the buyer customer and the end user. For that, following the above discussed gathering, analyzing and presenting techniques, Huggies or Kimberly Clark can carry out optimal marketing research. The collection and analysis of the primary and secondary data through various methodologies could provide the marketing team with good corpus of data. When the marketing team provides that corpus of data as part of focus group’ case study and as results of statistical analysis to the management team, they can initiate the process of formulation and implementation of the optimal marketing strategies. References “Helping make potty training easier.” Huggies Club. Retrieved from: https://www.huggiesclub.co.uk/bump-on-board/products/pull-ups McQuarrie, E. (2007). Marketing Reasearch. Retrieved from: http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/research/ Onkvisit, S and Shaw, J. J. (2008). International marketing: strategy and theory. Taylor & Francis. “Overview”. Kimberly Clark. Retrieved from: http://www.kimberly-clark.com/ourcompany/overview.aspx Sawyer, A. G. and Ball, A. D. (1981). Statistical Power and Effect Size in Marketing Research. Journal of Marketing Research 18: 275-290 Why is Market Research Useful? The Importance of Market Research (2009). More Business. Retrieved from: http://www.morebusiness.com/running_your_business/management/Market-Research.brc Read More