Pond's Competitors Analysis

Competitor Analysis:

Vietnam cosmetic market is considered as continuously growing market with stiff competition. At the present, in terms of whitening products, there are 13 main product lines present in the same product benefit.

Brand Product lines

Unilever (5) Pond's Double White, Pond's UV White, Pond's White Beauty Detox, Pond's Flawless White and Hazeline whitening

P&G (1) Olay UV Whitening Cream UV

UNZA (1) Eversoft White Effects

Shiseido (1) Shiseido White Lucent

L'Oreal (3) L'Oreal Plenitude White Perfect, Lancôme Blanc Expert NeuroWhite and Clarins White-Plus Care

LG Household and Health (Debon) (1) ISA KNOX White Focus Clear Whitening and Lacvert White Power

Regarding cosmetic products, consumers often associate price with high quality and safety. Therefore, price is important to the image of the product and perception of consumers toward the brand. As a result, the actual competition happens among products belonging to the same range of price. Because of time and resource limit, we only select Olay UV Whitening Cream UV and Eversoft White Effects as two main direct competitor of Pond's Flawless White since they are premium but ottainable products belonging to the medium price range (75,000 to 168,000 VND per 50ml) . Their strengths and weaknesses relative to Pond's will be assessed as follow.

Olay is a brand of P&G, a US based corporation. P&G together with Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive cover 50% of the cosmetic market in Vietnam. The first strength of Olay is that it has successfully positioned Olay brand in consumers' mind as a product of advanced technology and safety standard. Promotion campaigns play an important role in shaping consumers' perception toward the brand. Since its launching into Vietnam, Olay has been widely advertised as the best seller in the United States in term of skin care products. This reputation definitely met Vietnamese's preference for foreign goods. As a result, Olay was undoubtedly perceived as a qualified product. Besides, many celebrities such as My Linh (singer), Le Khanh (actor, People's Artist), Ngoc Khanh (businessperson, Miss Vietnam 1998), Jennifer Pham (Miss Asia in the US 2007),… have been invited to show up in some TV commercials. The recommendation of those successful women is just as a guarantee for Olay's quality.

Research and Development is the second advantage of Olay. Each year, Olay conducts over 400,000 safety and quality tests to ensure an excellent experience for women around the world. All Olay ingredients must be substantiated for safety over a lifetime of