Gillette

Summary of Gillette

This article mainly talks about Gillette’s strategy of entering the new India emerging market. In order to successfully enter the new market, Gillette designed the Gillette Guard as the main product.

In this article, the author says the main purpose that Gillette wishes to achieve is to seek for new customers and growth. Gillette wishes to be more modest on scale and more flexible on price. The long term goal for Gillette is to boost the company’s customer base for its many products to five billion of the world’s expected population of seven billion.

Right now, Gillette has taken about 70% of the global razor and blade’s sales. However, the Indian market is an exception because people in Indian can’t afford to buy Gillette’s flagship products. Based on this reason, Gillette Guard was designed in order to meet the local needs by applying reverse engineering strategy. This is product has successfully cut off the cost through adjusting features and manufacturing process. By successfully cutting off costs, it makes Gillette to have more competitive advantage against local brands, such as Super-Max.

Gillette also has a thought which the company would probably bring the Gillette Guard back to some developed countries where the company has different designs for consumers there.

My question is:

Let’s suppose that once Gillette brings the Gillette Guard back to developed countries, it is obvious that the price of Gillette Guard will have a compared low price. Its price would probably be around 2 dollars. What would be the competitive advantage for Gillette to be successful in this market segment? People would like to buy a substantial double edge throwaway razor with the same technology for like 40-50cents each in a 5 or 6 pack.