Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Is Dettol overextending its Product Usage ?

Today i saw an advertisement of Dettol , in which the ad was promoting the use of Dettol as a disinfectant to clean floor.
According to theories of marketing one of the ways of increasing the sales of a particular brand is by promoting multiple usage of it. The marketer tries to teach the customer multiple usage of a product in a view that the customer would learn one of the new ways of product usage and use the product more. This would result in increased demand of a brand .
The current adv of Dettol seems to be motivated by the same thought , but the question to be asked is whether Dettol is doing it correctly ?

For years Dettol has been synonyms with a brand which has been used as an antiseptic against cuts and bruises , fit for use on human body . the brand has been also used and promoted to be used to disinfect the nappies of babies , this was also fine coz it promoted the mildness yet the strong disinfective nature of the brand.

But now whn the executives of Dettol are promoting the brand as floor cleaner the question to be asked is whether they are doing the right thing . Dettol never comes in the evoked set of customer when they consider floor cleaners , secondly it is also questionable whether the customer consider it strong enough and as effective as the products likes Domex etc. which are positioned exclusively in this segment boasting of the same product attributes .

To conclude I think that dettol might not only loose in this segment but also in its home turf where customers might confuse it as a floor cleaner or an antiseptic and Savlon might have been waiting for an opportunity like this

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