Shampoo market

People used different shampoos for different needs and concerns.“X” shampoo has keratin treatment, “Y” shampoo has total nourishment while “Z” shampoo rebuilds your damaged hair and control dandruff. Aggressive marketing and media blitz has made it a frothy year for shampoo marketers. Making the hair flow, and flow and flow, were the unique strategies for generating growth adopted by the three principal players in the shampoo market. A flurry of new launches which saw the introduction of 32 new brands, five brand extensions, 100 new variants, and 122 new pack - sizes, adding up to an unparalleled excitement in what was till then a - one - kind - fits - all product category. So long as it was a generic, generalized - benefits product whose primary value, was that it cleaned hair, no shampoo brand had the loyal following. With a broad swath of appeal, brand USPs were not sufficiently differentiated from one another for any of them to crave out a committed niche.

Also, the limited repertoire of benefits acted as a deterrent to frequent usage and hence growth. The shampoo - marketers fragmented a once homogeneous market furiously, pegging a unique differentiated benefit to each brand and line - extension so as to build a clearly defined segment of users for each. While this helped each brand build a franchise, it served the more important function of giving every user a definite, focused reason to use a particular brand.