Product Life Cycle
1.Introduction
2.Growth
3.Maturity
4.Decline
Many say we can save the skin of the company even after the maturity stage, but when there is an external threat, there is very less a company can do.
It all starts off well for any company: they design a product or services, devise strategies and decide upon the policies and framework and gradually expand the business! But after the business expands well - it’s very tough to stay only with core competency! We have to diversify. Even in India we know may companies who believed in one product or a business who have all closed their business!!
But, In HLL's case, i am not happy with the way its happening, It’s the most visionary company in India. As its logo suggests it’s ever green all the stake holders. But now everything is upside down.
HLL was the success story and even case study for many Unilever ventures outside India and Europe. But now the Big HLL is falling. What triggered this situation, they have never made losses, but why suddenly?
In the 80's and 90's they came up with many Brands and the concept of Brand Management was done well – in fact very well. They were the early entrant in this potential market and straight way they garbed the market share and started to dominate the market.
Now they are loosing in their core segment Soap and Detergent, even in Foods. Their exports are doing ok and other Brands are going on. It’s not because P&G reduced the price. The various reasons are:
- Reduction in Price
- Expectation of increase in volumes
- Local & Regional Brands
- Shift in buying pattern: Mobiles and Durables
- Customer savings
- Spending on visible factors as Vehicle, Shirt ….
Companies can land up in this situation any day; they cannot predict many external threats – Political, Economical, Technological, and Social. All they can do is try to diversify and focus on Management control.
In the beginning, company spends a little on marketing, Employees, Share holders, in the overall business - as the time progresses it spends more and more on each. We cannot simple change the culture of the Management, People, Employees, and Shareholders etc. So the current measures will help a bit, HR policy, Org. Structure, Cost reduction …..
HLL is still very good, its Power Brands, distribution, marketing, Pricing, Stakeholders will all help it, it is not under Decline stage, but under Maturity stage. They only thing that I don’t like about HLL is its HR policy.
But the never expected loss actually struck HLL - the Devil has already shown its face. Better Beware!!!
Source: My own Study – Marketing made me write stories
2 comments:
this article was a great one
but my views are that its too early to say that HLL is slowly crumbling down, because although
its profits are on the lowerside as compared to last year but still it is the market leader in detergent and soap sector.
the article is very interesting but i think that HLL is still not in its maturity, it is growing may be slowly because of the increasing competition and the price war every now and then its very difficult to keep up your price. HLL will grow but after few years because now Indian FMCG sector looks very enticing hence lot of competition. As far as strategy is concerned HLL has to us flanking strategy like the one used recently by Videcon in white goods sector.
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