Name

Modhura RoyRoll No.

13PGDM149Cootle Taylor :Expanding oral care group in India

Brinda Patel is the director of Cottle Taylor, an oral care firm which manufactures oral care,
personalcare and home care products. Michael Lang is her manager and he wants to increase the
sales andmarket share of his company in the mid-range and high range oral care sector in emerging markets,
dueto declining sales revenue from US. Having had success in Thailand, Lang wants to
implement similarstrategies in India. Brinda having a more definitive idea of the Indian market is
averse to the idea as sheis aware of the low awareness of oral hygiene in many parts of India. If
people do not understand thenecessity, how would they be attracted to costlier oral care products like
battery operated toothbrushesand their likes. Due to low discretionary spending and disassociation of
health issues to not brushingregularly, Cottle faced a otugh market with low spending capacity in
India.According to Lang, some of the alternatives to promote sales were focusing on marketing the
premiumproducts and persuading customers to switch to high range oral care products. Patel was
moreconcerned with focusing on persuading consumers to brush for the first time and
subsequentlyincreasing incidence of brushing. Lang wanted to unevenly distribute advertising
dollars across the threekey points of focus that Cottle-Taylor wanted to project. But Patel was
unsure if the increase inadvertising dollars would increase sales. She also considered the culture
barriers across urban and ruralIndia and how each region would react to the different messages. According
to Cottle-Taylors strategies, informing and educating the Indian culture on the importance of oral
care was of paramountimportance. One of the many alternatives could be introducing an oral
care program in school so thatawareness could begin at an earlier age. Also rigorous advertising
should be done at rural levels,including distribution of free toothbrushes and free dental clinics
so that people would not only beaware but stimulated to take up better oral care habits. Targeting the right
media for advertising wasalso important. Billboards, television, radio wer key media channels which
should be targeted by thebrand.The best alternative would be to create the correct product mix, that is
maximum low-end products andminimum high-range products and in turn to promote the low end products to
the market and whilekeeping a market share for the high range products also. People with higher discretionary
spendingwould be able to spend more on such products. Also promoting there advantages like reduction in
gumbleeding etc would be beneficial in promoting such products to high end markets.