Brita Usa Case

The case study highlights the various events and market disruptions that happened for the Germany based water filter company Brita. Brita manufactured home and industrial water filtration systems. Couric a marketing executive from Clorox finds Brita pitcher as a new business idea and proposed Clorox to acquire the right to market Brita in USA.

In 1999 a small competitor PUR launched a faucet mounted filter which raised questions to Clorox whether to spend more on the launch of their own version of the product or concentrate on the pitcher system.

Brita USA had struggled for four years. Over 80% of pitcher buyers were using a year later and recommending it to friends. Brita had created a new industry worth $350 Millions and 70% revenue share. Each pitcher owner was also reported to buy 2 to 3 filters a year.

Brita USA had a 24% net return on sales highest among all Clorox business units.

Initially Brita sold its products only through health food chains but Couric believed it would flourish in traditional bas,grocery and drug stores.

They used a class to mass strategy where an upscale line pitchers called Ultra were sold in departmental stores with 35% markup and standard pitchers sold in Walmart and in drug and grocery stores with markup of 25%.

Retailers were discouraged to sell the products below the MAP. And would reimburse them for advertising their product if they don’t sell below MAP.

The market positioning and advertising for Brita was on taste benefit. They focused on highlighting the taste instead of other facts and results from their product as with $100 million of cumulative advertising on the taste claim behind them , they were impossible to dislodge. It also saved them from being investigated for any false claims.

Brita’s success had attracted companies like Culligan, Electrolux, Sunbeam, Kenwood, Corning, Melitta, PUR, Rubbermaid, Teledyne, Omni and Mr. Coffee in the industry. However the only brand with double digit market share was PUR. It recently announced that it would spend $40 millions for its faucet mounted and pitcher filters and its PUR plus pitcher system touted as the most technologically-advanced to date. The PUR filter would remove contaminants such as cryptosporidium and giardia.