#5 diferenciation

In the class, my group chose apparel industry for the mini-report, and I found that each companies has a different strategy and differentiate the company and position the company differently.

At first, apparel market value keeps growing during 2009 to 2014 moderately, and it is expected to increase about 5.5%. By 2018, total revenues will increase to $1,694 billion.

I was surprised at the fact that the apparel industry keeps expanding because apparel is not a new emerging industry, like animation industry, rather it is old. I could not understand why apparel industry increases because people have been buying cloths, so the industry should be stable.



Our group chose H&M, and looked at it closer.
According to the company profile,  H&M had about $19,708 million of total revenue in 2013 and H&M made 6.4% growth over 2012.

H&M's strategy to expand is
going into new markets, especially Asia, Oceania, and America, other that European countries,(market development)
starting on line sales (market development & market penetration), and
creating a new fashion brand, for example sports collections (product development).

The competitors of H&M are
Marks and Spencer Group plc.,
Otto (GmbH & Co KG),
Arcadia Group Limited, and
Fast Retailing.

Marks and Spencer Group plc. is a major British retailer.
What is different about Marks and Spencer group is that they started food business (product development).

They keep investing on food business by opening 150 new UK M&S Simply Food stores over the next three years, and starting food business overseas especially in Western Europe.

Otto (GmbH & Co KG) is a mail order company mainly based in Germany and France.
It has a notable characteristic as a mail order company.


There are a lot of way to expand. Product/market expansion grid shows 4 different way to expand. Within one way, for example product development, there are a lot of opportunities, like starting new food business and creating a new sports collection. Each companies identify their own growth opportunity. For me, apparel industry seems that there are no way left to expand, but I thought there are infinite opportunities in every industry.

product/market expansion grid

#4 marketing using Twitter

Twitter in Marketing!

Do you remember about ALS ice bucket challenge? That created a huge movement and thanks to it, ASL Association raised $100 million as well as awareness. Now SNS has a tremendous power in marketing. In the class, we also learned that many companies use SNS, such as Twitter, for their marketing research. We saw the video that shows Domino's Pizza collects customers' real and honest opinions from Twitter. So I looked for other companies that use Twitter for marketing.


First product I found interesting is HUGGIES!
HUGGIES is the brand of a disposable diaper marketed by Kimberly-Clark. Kimberly-Clark has the top market share in the baby wipes industry in the USA with 35.4% in 2013. Kimberly-Clark also has a famous brand Kleenex. Procter & Gamble Co.(P&G) has the second biggest market share with 20.9%. Procter & Gamble Co. has the brand Pampers.
 

In 2013, HUGGIES provides a unique service, TweetPee.
If you put the sensor to a baby's diaper, it will send you a tweet to tell you it's time to change a diaper.


By this unique service, TweetPee, HUGGIES got some customers' attention.
The app that cooperates with the sensor also tracks the number of diaper used, so parents can easily know the number of diapers left at home, and order HUGGIES's diapers on the Internet easily by the app. Therefore, Kimberly-Clark keeps the customer buying HUGGIES again.

Here is the link to the article about TweetPee.



Next is about Colgate.
Colgate is the brand marketed by Colgate-Palmolive Company, and it produces 
soaps, detergents, oral products, and so on.

The competitors of Colgate-Palmolive Company are
1. P&G, whose sales in 2013 was $80,062,000,000
(Colgate-Palmolive Company comes here with $17,420,000,000 sales)
2. Kao Corp. $14,593,150,000
3. Sun Products Corp. $11,401,000,000.



Colgate's campaign is "There's Something In your Tweet"

Let Colgate tip off your friends anonymously through Twitter about food stuck in their teeth. They’ll also send them a $1.00 off coupon for a new Colgate Slim Softtoothbrush to help make sure it never happens again.
You will also get access to the coupon once your friend has received their tip.
- See more at: http://www.simplyfrugal.ca/colgate-coupon-1/#sthash.cI60obkj.dpuf

Let Colgate tip off your friends anonymously through Twitter about food stuck in their teeth. They’ll also send them a $1.00 off coupon for a new Colgate Slim Softtoothbrush to help make sure it never happens again.
You will also get access to the coupon once your friend has received their tip.
- See more at: http://www.simplyfrugal.ca/colgate-coupon-1/#sthash.cI60obkj.dpuf

If you visit Colgate's SlimSoft site, you can anonymously send a tweet to your friend and tell him or her that there is some food stuck in the teeth. Then, both you and your friend can get a $1 off coupon for a new Colgate Slim Softtoothbrush. You can use this campaign to tell your friend the embarrassing situation without hurting the friend's feeling or just joke and make your friend surprised for fun.

Here is the link to the article about the Colgate campaign
Another link to the article


Marketing using Twitter has a lot of advantage. Twitter is free, and companies can reach a lot of people so quickly. However, it is difficult to create a big movement such as Ice Bucket Challenge, and if a campaign is not successful, the campaign cannot get a lot of people's attention. Actually I guess many of you have never heard of these two services I wrote here.

Another problem of Twitter is that many older people still do not use it.The figure below shows the number of Twitter users by age groups. It shows that only 5% of people over 65 use Twitter. Now many countries have aging population, so I think the usual ways of advertising, such as TV commercial and billboard, are still very important.

Number of people who use Twitter 

number of people who use SNS 

I got these figures from this web site.