This week in class we talked about

This week in class we talked about the lifecycle of products. The lifecycle curve starts with innovators which are very few people who essentially test out the product. They are then followed by early adopters and the early majority which is when about half the people that will end up with the product get it. This is followed by the late majority, and finally the laggards. Diffusion is the process in which these innovations get communicated amongst people, which is how people start adapting to using products. We learned in class how different products over time have had different diffusion rates. For instance, phones took a while to catch on over the years, but cell phones showed a more immediate surge in sales and reached its top percentage of ownership in much fewer years.



The case that we went over for this topic is the Colgate Palmolive one where the soap company started marketing a new soap line in France. There was much success in France early on, so they decided to start selling the product in Canada since they also spoke French (as if that makes sense…). They tested the product out with groups of people with positive results. This made them move forward with the product to produce and sell more throughout Canada. However, this turned out to be a big disaster and they ended up with a lot of losses off of this product. We were given the choice to get rid of the project, tweak the strategy a little, or completely come up with a new marketing strategy. My group looked at the analysis and easily decided that we think they need to terminate the project right away. They were not even close to reaching desired margins, market share, or a positive profit. We thought the overall idea was not thought out well and that they should ship the rest of their leftover stock to France since the product was serving well there. This product’s lifecycle was never meant to exist in Canada.