Cottle Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India

       Managerial Analysis & Communication: Assignment 2

Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care group in India

Submitted by:

Sukriti Dang (P36165)

Rohan Shah (P36148)

Prakhar Ranjan (P36138)

Tony Thomas (P36170)

Sanjeev Kumar (P35177)

Ankit Bazad (P36099)

Situational Analysis:

Cottle Taylor (estd. 1815) is a Philadelphia based Multi-National Corporation with sales across 200 countries across the world offering more than 200 oral, personal and home care products. With annual revenue of $11.5 billion, the company has been focusing on increasing global sales of higher margin products along with geographic expansion.

With manufacturing and business operations in 75 countries, it is generating 50% of the revenue from emerging markets. As business is facing declining market revenues in the US, Cottle-Taylor has to cash on emerging markets to offset losses. One of the most promising markets for the company is India. According to Mr. Michael Lang (VP Marketing Greater Asia & Africa), India with a population greater than 1 billion is a potential market to accelerate market development and achieve a growth of 25 to 30 percent in the tooth-brush unit, just as Cottle-Taylor did in Thailand. While Ms. Brinda Patel (Director, Oral Care Marketing) was skeptic about Mr. Lang’s belief of the Indian Market as spending power of Indians was relatively less with 80% of the population living on less than $2 per day. Combined with a general lack of knowledge, a majority of the population is not concerned with Oral hygiene and care. Although she was fully confident that her conservative marketing plan would work well even with price increase, she had her doubts about the volumes which Mr. Lang was targeting. Another factor which has to be taken into account is the increased spending on advertisements, as Cottle-Taylor is price sensitive.

With 22% residents living in urban settings and 78% in rural, the question here is of increasing market share or choosing profitability over it. Working out on the financial models of Ms. Patel & Mr. Lang, as described ahead gives an idea for the course of action to be followed.  

Objective:

• Short Term: To pursue profitability in the market for toothbrushes by increasing toothbrush unit sales by 25 - 30%.
• Long Term: To establish the products of Cottle-Taylor in the Indian oral care market.

Criterion:

• The chosen alternative should give the highest returns to inputs compared to others - advertisement.

Model Analysis: