Brita Case Study

1. What challenges face the Brita Brand?

* Brita is a flagship brand for Clorox but performance had been below expectation.

* Brita has two products:

* A filtration pitcher which required the purchase of replacement filters. Originally a market leader with 71% share of revenue in the water purification industry. At the time of the case study, the product had “stagnated” and was declining in sales due to significant competition from other companies and the innovation of substitutes such as tap filtration, fridge filtration and the boom in bottled water consumption.

* A faucet mounted filtration unit, although they were late into this market and have struggled to take market share from the PUR.

* In addition to the external factors, Brita had become confused about its target market as noted by Greg Frank and were sending out mixed and confusing messages through the different marketing campaigns with fluctuating focuses as noted in strategies 1 to 5.

* Given the limited R&D resources, Brita need to confirm their brand position and promise to provide a clear focus where to head with product innovation. Product innovation is important to ensure that Brita develops their product line to prevent all their products from entering the “decline” stage. Innovation needs to address consumer requirements, as shown by the poor results for the limited tweaks made to the pitcher system which were not seen to adequately address customer needs.

2. What marketing strategies are appropriate for meeting these challenges?

* Brita need to understand if they are focusing on a single product or a product-line. Taking the Brita water filtration products (pitcher and faucet mounted) are a range of products will increase the ability to service market segments. The faucet mounted product should be seen as part of the range of products rather than a competitor to the pitcher, whilst there is overlap both products will also have some specific...