Brand Analysis Report for Pampers Diapers
Background
Pampers is a brand that belongs to Proctor and Gamble. This brand was discovered in the 1950’s by a chemical engineer of P&G named Victor Mills. Victor discovered Pampers while trying to find a better way to diaper his grandson. The audience for Pampers is targeted toward parents and healthcare professionals of babies and toddlers. Other audiences are also targeted such as family and friends to encourage them to purchase Pampers products as gifts. There is a global market for Pampers products.
The basic product positioning for Pampers is in the development stages of babies and toddlers. It is a brand that is inspired by babies; keeping them comfortable, clean, and dry. Furthermore, Pampers is a family brand as well as a convenience product.
Marketing Mix Analysis
Product
The product mix for Pampers is broad and it contains a deep line. Pampers Baby Dry has the deepest line with six different sizes of diapers available. Their product line includes diapers, training pants, wipes and Kandoo/other (such as Bibsters and Clean N Spray). Pampers offers many different sizes of their diapers and training pants. Each product has been developed to fit each developmental stage of a baby’s/toddlers life. For example the Swaddlers diapers were developed with the newborn baby and the baby that doesn’t move around much in mind; whereas, Pampers Cruisers were developed for the child that is moving around.
Using colorful packaging helps make Pampers stand out from the other brands. The use of warm colors such as yellow help to convey comfort in the consumers minds. Furthermore, the use of bright packaging such as pink, blue, purple convey the fun exciting developmental stage the toddler is now in. There are many different sized packages for consumers to purchase. These different sizes help to fit the different needs of the consumer.
Furthermore, labeling is also important to Pampers. Every label clearly shows the Pamper logo on its package. Labeling is also used as a way to educate consumers. For example, Pampers had a public campaign educating parents of the importance of placing their baby on their back to sleep to help prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Back to sleep). The “Back to Sleep” message was printed on the back of all packages on Swaddlers diapers in order to educate and inform consumers of this serious matter.
Price
Pampers is a premium product that has a wide variety of substitutes available; such as Huggies, Luvs, private and generic brands. Pricing is done so that Pampers is economically affordable by all households. In addition, they use psychological pricing; all of their products prices end with a nine. This makes the consumer feel they are receiving a good value for their money.
Pricing is also elastic; consumers may buy a different product if the price of that product is better. This is one reason why Pampers uses competition-based pricing when determining what the price for their products will be. Pampers major competitor is Huggies who is owned by Kimberly & Clark. Both companies’ prices for the diapers and training pants are basically the same. This helps to maintain their portion of the market share. However, Pampers diaper wipe line costs a little more than Huggies, which gives Pampers the advantage of focusing on the quality of their diaper wipe line.
Distribution
Distribution for Pampers is intensive, allowing them to reach their target markets; thus staying competitive with their biggest competitor Huggies. Pampers can be found in most grocery, convenience, drugstores, and retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Target. Since Pampers products are convenience products distributing their products in many stores helps Pampers to remain competitive, maintain their market share, and gain a portion of the market as well.
Promotion
The promotional mix of Pampers contains a variety of elements through nonpersonal selling. These elements include advertising, product placement, sales promotions, and public relations. All these methods of promotion are consistent with Pampers message.
Advertising is done in magazines that pertain mostly to parenting, TV commercials, billboards, and through direct marketing. Recently Pampers decided to cut back on their TV commercial air time and concentrate more of their advertising using product placement (Flint, 2005). Pampers uses product placement in various movies and shows. For example, they paid $50,000 to have their product featured in the movie Three Men and a Baby and in the show called Make Room for Baby that is aired on Discovery Health, Pampers gives each new parent a changing table that is fully stocked with Pampers diapers (Wikipedia).
Sales promotions are done on a continuous basis with Pampers. These types of promotions most normally include sweepstakes, coupons, displays, rewards, and samples. Furthermore, they utilize direct marketing by sending books, brochures, and pamphlets that educate parents about their child’s development stage while promoting and informing consumers about their products.
Pampers uses public relations throughout its entire global market. They make donations to many causes and are associated with many prominent organizations such as the March of Dimes. They have a website for parents and healthcare professionals that help educate them on many aspects of babies and toddlers. Furthermore, they sponsor many educational programs such as Sesame Street (Pampers �®, 2005) and Dora the Explorer. Their sponsorship is evident by the characters that are placed on their diapers and training pants. These sponsorships have allowed Pampers to integrate several elements of the promotional mix.
Overall Conclusion
Pampers has been successful in developing a well integrated communications strategy. Their message is consistent and they have coordinated their promotions to ensure that the consumers are well informed about their products. By educating parents about the developmental stages from newborn to toddler, Pampers has been able to successfully promote it products at the same time.
Indicated Action/Recommended Changes
Even though Pampers has a well built strategy in place, there is always room for improvement. Two areas where improvements could be implemented are in extending their product line and developing new promotional strategies. Their product line could be extended to include bath products such as baby soap and shampoo for the baby. This would be good in educating parents the importance of teaching cleanliness to their babies even before they begin to potty train.
Lastly, Pampers could promote their product a little more vigorously. For example, to gain new customers and keep loyal customer they could place a coupon for diapers on their package or inside the package of diapers. This could help increase sales since fewer customers would want to switch to another brand that has a better price. Even though they do have the rewards program for purchasing Pampers, not all customers get to reap these benefits due to lack of internet or just not being aware of the program. Coupons would give all the fair chance of being rewarded by saving money when they purchase their products.
