Max Fresh Analysis of the Us-Launch

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Background Colgate Palmolive (CP) is the dominant player in the global toothpaste market. With its global market share of 39.7 percent in 2004 the New York City based company outplaces its closest competitor Proctor & Gamble (P&C, 14.7 percent in 2004) in a considerable way. On the first look CP had a successful financial year in 2004: + 6.5 percent unit volume growth + 7.0 percent sales dollar growth +0.1 percent point growth in gross-profit-margin to 55.1 percent, whereas operating profits (-2 percent) and net income (-7 percent) were negatively influenced by higher marketing spending as well as higher raw and packing material costs. The rationale behind this is CPs new strategy to focus on its higher margin core businesses. Advertising was carefully targeted at new high margin products and high potential markets. Almost 40 percent of 2004 overall sales were generated by products launched during the last 5 years and helped to drive market share growth and market leadership in key categories. Although CP brought the first commercial toothpaste to the market, the first product with therapeutic benefits (cavity, gum-desease prevention) was launched and patented by P&C. As a result CP was not allowed to launch a similar product until 1967 and had to focus on the cosmetic sub-segment of the market, by promising “fresh breath” benefits. US-market since 1990s By the 1990s fluoride protection was a commodity feature in the US-market. Customers called for additional benefits. In order to meet this demand CP launched a premium product in December 1997, which promises a 12h-protection against a wide range of oral health issues named Colgate Total. Moreover, CP was able to break the 30 year reign of P&Cs Crest brand as the leading US-toothpaste and kept this position until today (2004). In 2004 the US-market had a size of 2.438 Mio. USD, grown by

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