Clean Edge Razor Case Study Analysis
Paramount, a well established and globally recognized personal care product company has developed their latest and highly innovative non-disposable shaving razor called Clean Edge. The Paramount senior executives were sure that Clean Edge would bring great satisfaction for consumers due to the 5% growth in the non-disposable razor product has experienced in the past 4 years (2007-2010). In fact, according to the case study, although with respect to non-disposable razors, price and quality were segmented into three dimensions such as value, moderate and super premium, the senior executives of Paramount unanimously had agreed to price Clean Edge razors in the super-premium segment since the razor industry as a whole has seen dramatic growth in the super premium segment for the past 10 years. In addition, the super premium segment was high in demand due to many new innovative features found in razors such as five blade technology, glide strips and lather bar, thus, innovation and new technological advances were the catalysts for astounding increase in production of 22 new stock keeping units (SKU) between 2008-2009 alone. Moreover, the growth in non-disposable SKU's also ignited the advertising expenditures, leading to an increased shelf space for this product by the distribution outlets. Yet, at the same time distribution was also beginning to move outside of the traditional food and drug stores with an 8% drop in sales revenue between the years 2000 and 2009.
However, in 2010, Paramount was one of three globally-based giants that dominated the non-disposable and refill cartridge market along with Prince and Benet & Klein. In fact, Prince had been in the non-disposable razor market since 1950's and currently sold both refill cartridges and non-disposable razors under two brands called Cogent and Cogent Plus-both considered to be super premium. On the other hand, Benet & Klein had entered into the non-disposable razor market 30 years after Prince (in 1985), however its newly created non-disposable razors and refill cartridges were based on innovative technology, possessing lubrication strips, non-slip handles and anti-corrosive blades. In addition, two other new comers Radiance and Simpsons had joined the competition and were considered to be well-established personal care product companies, which added to an already fiercely competitive market. For example, Radiance had launched a new product called Naiv that was very similar in design to Clean Edge -- it also featured a vibrating affect and it acquired 13% of the market share in the test markets as well. Indeed, Radiance and Paramount were both very fierce competitors. However, Paramount had managed to stay ahead of the rest by creating products that satisfied all three segments of the market thus appealing to value, moderate and super premium markets yet other competitors simply satisfied one or two of market segments. For instance, Paramount Pro-secured the moderate segment, Paramount Avail targeted the moderate segment, and finally Clean Edge covered super premium segment. In addition, compared to Cogent or even Victric (made by Simpsons) Clean Edge had 25% increase in hair removal, thus clearly demonstrating better overall performance of the product as well as consumer satisfaction in terms of improvement seen in skin tone and textures after product use.
Problem statement
Although Paramount's innovative flare had shown promising results for its latest invention (Clean Edge), its current products including Clean Edge had some challenges in terms of their life cycle. For instance, both Pro and Avail products were at their mature stage of the life cycle and were as a result of losing product positioning. In fact, in the past 5 years no new product were introduced for either one of these lines. Moreover, due to the fierce competition for new and more innovative and technologically advanced product demand, Paramount not only needed to deal with how to best position and brand its new products (i.e. Clean Edge) during the launch phase, but it also needed keep up to even stay ahead of the competition by introducing new products as well. Thus, in this case, the demand for cutting edge and innovative products certainly shortened the life cycle of their product lines.
Problem analysis
As previously mentioned, the non-disposable razor market has been segmented in three sections: value, moderate and super premium. Indeed, these segments correlate with the type of consumer and consumer behavior that best suits the appropriate category segments in the non-disposable razor market. For instance, those consumers who are considered to be moderate in terms of quality and pricing tend to differ among...
Clean Edge Razor Case Study Paramount Health established itself as a consumer giant with global sales of over $13 billion. Since 2009, it was the unit-volume market leader for non-disposable razor products. However, that category is entering a new phase based on technological innovations, particularly in the super-premium categories. This resulted in the need to continually innovate and improve razor technology. Paramount now must face issues and decisions regarding positioning of
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