Cottle Taylor

If we were responsible for solving the problem, we would go for the following split of advertising budget over the three messages-

1) Persuading customers to brush for the first time- 70%

2) Increase the incidences of brushing- 25%

3) Persuading customers to upgrade to mid-range and premium toothbrushes- 5%

The split suggested above is against what Lang had suggested to Patel where he had implied to give a higher allocation and focus to the third point above, i.e. persuading customers to upgrade to mid-range and premium toothbrushes.

The working done to arrive at the allocation suggested above is as follows-

Total population of India is 1160 million. The 2009 tooth brush sales of cottle-taylor in India is 344 million units.

| |2009 |

|Tooth brush categories |units sold |

| |(millions) |

|low-end |299.5 |

|middle range |43 |

|battery operated |1.5 |

|Total |344 |

Since cottle has a 46% market share, total toothbrushes sold in 2009 in India is 747 million. Further assuming that on an average, a toothbrush user changes his/her toothbrush every 6 months (we are given that 8% of the users change their brush every 3 months; going by that figure 6 month seems a reasonable assumption). Thus 747 million units sold translated to approx 374 million users. This shows that out of a population of 1160 million, only 374 million people use toothbrushes. This balance 786 million people still use other methods than toothbrushes. This 786 milllion is the potential market that is available to us.

Further the case tells us that 429 million people are below poverty line (earning below $ 1.25 per day). We assume...