Personal Care

Products (India)
Ltd
Group 1
F20091 – Jiji Justin
F20115 – Shweta Joseph
F20138 -  Dilip Kumar
F20160 -  Rinu Treesa Thomas
 SUMMARY
• Personal care products India Ltd, cosmetic company wants to
develop its toilet soap market through a new product in the
high price zone. 
• Mr. Rohit, the product manager (Soaps) implemented a
unique product idea of introducing sandalwood flavour & veg
oil base instead of animal fat in the soap. 
• The USP was on perfume as well as it's vegetable oil appeal. 
• According to the plan, the research team developed 2
varieties to be tested on the audience in the age group of 25-
40 yrs & the advertising agency developed a scheme on the
USP’s.
• A test marketing was done in Nagpur & Hyderabad for 8 to 10
months to get feedback & select customers & to identify the
best marketing mix
• After the successful test marketing, the soap was launched &
commercialized. 
• Tracked the sales and feedback of new product & continued as
'Personal Care Product’ which was the Indian winner
sandalwood flavoured soap.
Team Views

• From the Toilet Soap market analysis, it can be noted, both market share
and competition are very less, hence, risky to introduce  products in high
price sector.
• Indeed, a USP, to have vegetable oil content and fragrance, unlike their
competitor's product which has the presence of animal fat.
• There's uncertainty regarding the two variants produced for test marketing.
• Two variants in this case being , first one solely focusing on the purity
factor, I.e., vegetable oil content over fragrance. Second being, equal
balance over fragrance and vegetable oil.
• Consumers naturally seemed to have accepted the one with more features,
hence second one got approved to get launched.
• As the next step towards commercializing the product,  one of the main
concerns to focus on would be to identify the segments that did not
approve Sandalwood during testing, get feedback from different age groups
and to also focus on developing medicinal advantage. 
Reference Questions
1.Evaluate the GAP analysis done by the company?
• Upon the successful completion of gap analysis of the soap market
segment, the management was able to identify a gap in the highly-
priced sector, huge enough to accommodate two to three new
brands.
• Company identified two categories of soaps already existing -
medicinal advantages & superior fragrance and perfume appeal 
• The company also found out that there is a common ingredient
present in all their competitors' soaps, which was the presence of
animal fat in them. It was used to soften up the soap that resulted
in dissolving the soap in water at a quicker rate
• The management was able to find an alternate ingredient that was
using vegetable oil in the soap, thus making it harder and last
longer
Perceptual Mapping of Soap Brands
Reference Questions
2.USP of the new product?
The USP of the new product is using the
vegetable oil as a substitute for animal fat
which was used by their competitors along with
the fragrance of sandalwood. 

3.What data would need to decide on

continuation of the product? 
• Customer feedback
• Customer demand for the product
• Customer repurchase frequency
• Market share in high price category 
• Product ability to penetrate low price
category