Consultation Report Regarding Introduction of the New Product into the Maldivian Market

Introduction

L’Oréal is the world's biggest company in beauty care products and cosmetics. The company started in 1909 by Eugène Schueller at Clichy France. It is present in 130 countries with more than 68,000 employees and has 23 global brands controlling 15% of the cosmetics world market. L'Oréal’s success is based on its state of the art research and investment growth. It exploits new promising market segment with its unique products innovation. L'Oréal laboratories have come up with novel innovations such as first hair color, which does not contain ammonia, shampoo without soap, a light enhancing shampoo and quick hair decolorizer (Berenbeim 32). L'Oréal’s mission is to help women and men around the globe to realize the aspiration of beauty to everyone and be able to express their individual personalities fully. This gives the company its value and meaning and to the employees. The strategic marketing department is a result of the anticipation of evolutions worldwide to steer the company towards vital transformation in areas of consumer understanding, advertisement creation, marketing creativity, and distribution methods (Cravens and Piercy 56).

Elements of marketing process

The company uses the push and pulls strategies in its marketing. The most crucial element in marketing strategy is the end customer where the products are sold. In the salon premises, the company communicates with their customers through different ways such as loyalty programs where they are given shampoo for free. The second most important marketing element is a customer with a group of friends are targeted by tools such as referral programs (Berenbeim 69). Random passers-by are another key element in the communication conduit. Mostly the customer attention is drawn by the physical appearance of the salons. The other way of marketing is in stores that are proximity to the salons, for example, clothes shops. The stores can collaborate with the salons by way of cross-marketing. This can be done through discounts in hairdressing products if a consumer buys goods in a nearby store. The last element of communication is in the shopping offices and shopping centers in concentrated areas where the company uses various ways of advertisements such as promotional leaflets.  Another key marketing strategy is the company’s innovation process (Cravens and Lamb 104).

Evaluation of Benefits and Costs of the Marketing Orientation

In marketing orientation, advantages of the consumers are measured, and their wants prioritized. The benefit with the market orientation is that the company has top consumer value with a coherent big performance in the company business. The orientation is mainly focused on three elements, which include customer emphasis, profitability, and effective marketing.  Through the customer's focus, the company finds out the emotional and material wishes of their consumers. This enables the company to obtain a wide variety of products for all customers. The profitability, when weighed, helps in analyzing the short and long term financial strength of the L'Oréal. The marketing assists to meet each customer’s expectations while adapting to the distribution channels of the company. All these enable the company to achieve its key goals (Berenbeim 88). Though strong market orientations also incur some costs as the marketing research is very expensive. This is enlightened by the company’s needs of high market customer intelligence in order to respond whenever a need arises appropriately.  L'Oréal’s technological infrastructure is very critical in its research, however, very costly. This is because the company has to use collected data from customers in order to analyze it, making the maintenance of the system expensive. The ongoing training and product modification through research is also a costly affair since the company has to invest in new equipment (Murphy and Laczniak 92).

Products Development for Sustained Competitive Advantage

L'Oréal Company has a divisional structure, which determines the way products are distributed. The products are developed depending on the customer needs and the level of income. The divisions are divided into professional, mass sales division, luxury products, and active cosmetics. These divisions have their own autonomy and are relatively independent. The professional division is used by the hair salons worldwide to sell its products.  This makes the company able to satisfy all categories of salons, and their customer needs through their professional services (Cravens and Piercy 73). 

Distribution arrangement for Provision of Customer Convenience

The mass sales are universal to all people, and products are at accessible prices. This is used in order to attract more customers into the ready market. The products are distributed through the traditional stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets. L'Oreal luxury division integrates together the best brands. Here the company concentrates on three key company segments that are fragrances, make-up and skincare (Cravens and Lamb 31). The products through the luxury division are delivered via perfumeries, department stores, the retail outlets and through the online business websites. The active Cosmetics division uses the dermatologists, drugstores, and medical spas to sell its range of products globally. The active cosmetic in the company has been able to meet the costumer’s health. The division partners with the dermatologists, pediatricians, health professional and esthetic medicine doctors in realizing its objective (Berenbeim 55).

Price setting to reflect Organizations objectives and Market Condition

L'Oreal develops a pricing structure, which reflects its objective and the market conditions. The main factors that determine the pricing of the range of products are the market, costs, and the competitors.  The company sets the price depending on the product demand. The high technological products in the company are distributed at competitive prices via the channels of retail mass marketing. It is focused on customer participation in the determination of product design and features, which universally make it unique in the market and delivered at the right price with the desired benefits. In addition, the set price reflects on the developmental and research efforts in the long run (Thain and Bradley 101).

Analysis of Additional Elements of the Extended Marketing Mix

In the promotional activity, Kérastase and L'Oréal Professionnel are the dominantly used products in the European market. Kérastase represents the recently developed products of hair care in the European market. L'Oréal Professionnel brand represents the area of hair coloring with the latest technologies. L'Oréal professional division meets all the needs of salons markets worldwide covering all market sectors (Murphy and Laczniak 11).  The slight differences in the brands that overlap increase the chances of retaining the customers who are brand-switchers. All of the company’s division brands have no specific name adaptation, which means that they are worldwide. Various brands in the company aim at their customer covering specific ethnic and cultural characteristic. This means that each of the brands in the market is built with its own easy identity and uniqueness (Murphy and Laczniak 41).

The Matrix brand offers hairdressing salons a wide range of products allowing the salons to express their talent and creativity to grow further. The basic standards of Matrix are fun and simplicity, trust, reliability and availability in hairdressing salons. Their products are intended particularly for medium-sized and small hairdressing salons using reasonably priced professional products. The brand has a high product lines (Jain 29). Also, the application is safe and simple. The lower cost of the Matrix brand characterizes it in achieving wide distribution. Matrix distribution is based primarily on its objective based on the accessibility of products for hairdressings salons and their purchasing power. The communication of matrix is primarily based on the red color that attracts attention of a customer. The push market strategy is applied based on the hairdressers’ target (Cravens and Lamb 117).

Differences in Marketing Products and Services to Business Customers

The main difference between marketing products and services to business consumers is the complexity to obtain correct data on the universal market. The information on the marketing products is collected using panel research where products sold in salons are measured. However, it becomes difficult to obtain data on the products, which are sold in salons. The major challenge in marketing products is through education whereas in the service to a consumer is differentiating the products to convince the customers at the sale point (Jain 39).

Reason for Difference in International Marketing and Domestic Marketing

Liberalization of trade in the international markets with elimination of obstacles in the business has led to a continuous competition in the world market. The globalization has resulted to common needs of the consumer leading to new large homogeneous divisions in the national markets. Strong bargaining power, low costs, good management and financial resources are the key elements making global companies flourish rather than focus on local consumers and brands (Cravens and Piercy 91).

Conclusion

In conclusion, mutual complementarities are a common strategy used by all product brands, training of hairdressers and innovation of its communication strategy. Learning programs for different sales promotions and hairdressers usually support the sales volume. Marketing communication is mainly focused on the push strategy, which in the hairdressing salons, the customers who are the pull strategy mainly through the public relation of the company. However, the positive references by word of mouth to customers play a vital role in the whole communication process.

Recommendation

It is recommended that while establishing the new product in the Maldivian Market first the market target should be determined and their purchasing power in order to determine the type of brand to be introduced. The advertisement should particularly be used when the new product is introduced into the market.