Colgate-Palmolive: Cleopatra

After much research, Colgate-Palmolive decided to introduce

the Cleopatra soap line in Canada and market it as the “premium quality,

premium priced beauty soap.” The target

group for Cleopatra soap was to be women between the ages of 18 and 49.

The product

in this case is Cleopatra Soap made by the Colgate-Palmolive Company. Cleopatra Soap is a premium quality skin

care soap and its main competition would be the skin care segment leader, Dove. However the soap had been developed in

France and the company decided not to make any changes to the product for the

Canadian market. Cleopatra soap has a

unique formula with the best ingredients with the equivalent of 15% beauty

cream. The perfume of the soap, which

was also blended in France, was said to have an “unforgettable fragrance.” The bar itself is carved into a special

shape to make it easy to hold and also has the Cleopatra logo stamped onto the

bar. Each bar is then packaged in a

gold-colored carton as opposed to the paper packaging it had in France. All of these features were designed to

differentiate Cleopatra from the other soaps in the market.

For this

case the place is Quebec, Canada.

Quebec is the second largest province in population and the largest in

geographical size. Most of Quebec’s

population originally came from France and Colgate-Palmolive took this as a

good sign after Cleopatra fared so well in its launch in France.

Price wise,

Cleopatra was marketed as a very premium product. In fact they decided not to offer discounts of any kind on the

product. Cartons were packed 48 to a

case at the price of $41.71 and Cleopatra’s pricing strategy was to be higher

than Dove which had always been the most expensive brand. Although soap is considered by most as a

commodity, Colgate-Palmolive decided it would not launch Cleopatra like many

other soaps by competing on price.

For the Canadian launch there were many of promotions used. They wanted...