CONSUMER IS THE BOSS: TURN 1 BRIEFING
Situation
Manila, January 2009
You are in a meeting with rest of the multi functional P&G laundry team. The meeting has been called by the GM who is extremely concerned about the state of the business in Philippines. She expects the team to come up with an action plan on how to turn the business around. You know that you need to come up with clear action steps, backed by solid reasoning, and fast!! You decide to start at the logical place, by reviewing how things went wrong in the first place.
Background
The laundry business, contributing 40% of total P&G sales in Asia, is a key priority for the company in the region. Amongst the various ...view middle of the document...
The Task
Think of your role as a CMK manager, you know the business situation, but how does that reflect how well we have met consumer needs? Remember the principle, if we do a good job of meeting our consumer needs, the consumer would reward us with strong business results. To get the answers, you need to a) Define the business question b) Define the consumer and shopper knowledge needed to answer the business question c) Review existing information to determine whether the consumer knowledge needed is available (refer: Appendix B: General information on Philippines market) d) Choose the appropriate research plan from available options, to give you any additional knowledge you need.
Remember that the business question you choose can dramatically alter your subsequent actions and results! A tip sheet has been provided to you (Appendix C) which illustrates this with an example.
Research plan options (Please bring this sheet for Round 2-4)
• Choose at maximum two consumer research projects that would give you the knowledge you need to answer your business questions. You cannot choose more than 2.
• Budget for learning plan – USD 9000. You cannot exceed this budget. There is no benefit to you if you spend under your budget.
To help you with the research choices, description of the various research techniques has been provided (Refer Appendix- D)
Enter your team name here
Following are the research projects you can choose to run, and the cost of each.
Choose two by putting a tick to the left of your choices
Tick # Description of research Cost (USD)
1 Qualitative discussions/ interviews with 15 consumers., interviewed individually. These interviews are simple way to get a qualitative feel for consumer attitudes across a cross-section of consumers. Interviews will be conducted with consumers of 2 kinds:
Surf powder users
Surf powder users who stopped using Tide and switched to Surf powder
Interview topics would cover questions like:
What do you like about Surf?
How is it better than Tide? 2000
2 Purchase Quantitative Study – A quantitative study based on a survey of a representative sample of consumers. 300 consumers will be selected for interviews using random sampling.
Survey would answer questions like
What % of households have bought Surf?
Why did they buy the brand for the first time? Did they buy it again? If so why? 4000
3 Picture Projection Qualitative – In-depth interview with 6 Surf users (interviewed individually). This research technique gets consumers to use pictures to communicate their thoughts & feelings. The use of pictures helps consumer talk more freely about their emotions. It also helps them to communicate ways to improve the brand; in a ‘normal’ interview they’re usually too shy to share their ideas for improvement. Interpreting the research requires some effort. 4000
4 Brand Image Monitor – A quantitative study based on a survey of 600 consumers. It measures the images of leading...
