Clairol’s touch of yogurt shampoo
Behavioral Analysis for Marketing Decisions Report
Clairol’s touch of yogurt shampoo
Behavioral Analysis for Marketing Decisions Report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo is our product which is launched by P&G. Our product is extracted vitamin and lactic acid from yogurt perfectly combined with shampoo to provide a neutral care to your dull and dry hair. In 1979, P&G first launched Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, however it didn’t gain enough market share and fail to survive in the market. Today, we want to re-launched a brand new repackaging yogurt shampoo with new advertisements, new positioning and new target market. We believe that yogurt shampoo is a really good personal care product which fits perfectly into the “back to natural and organic lifestyle” trend in today’s society. In order to understand who will be our target consumer and how people’s view about ‘back to nature’ lifestyle, we conducted interviews and survey. From the result, we understand that most people do love the back to nature lifestyle as we assumed before and it also confirms our original idea about our new positioning.

After a redesign of packaging with a transparent bottle and metal pump, we want to target our yogurt shampoo to a premium shampoo product in the niche market, aiming customers who are seeking high quality lifestyle, pursuing a natural, organic and healthy lifestyle. Our target consumer would be female who are coming from a middle to high level of household income. In specific, we want to cooperate with resorts and spas in order to focus on our target group, people who love high quality and back to nature lifestyle. At the same time, cooperate with resorts and spas means a stable revenue in a long run.

There are different brands of natural or organic personal care emerged every year. All these brands are committed to provide a healthy and organic body or hair care. However, for most of these brands are emerged recently and don’t have a strong background. For our Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, we will be launched by P&G which could convinced more people not only by our special yogurt ingredient, but also by the reputation of P&G.

As our company build a stable relationship with different spas and resorts, we will expand our sales channels to professional hair salon, shopping mall counters, even independent retail store where we could provide people a chance to experience our product inside of our store and acknowledge them in person about the benefits of yogurt shampoo through our personal sales people.

MARKETING ISSUES

Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo was launched by P&G in 1979. It was a brilliant idea actually since yogurt was a trendy new food that was seen as healthy and there was a “back to nature” movement, which made the natural ingredient in personal care products popular at that time (Haden, 2013). This idea did work well in the first place by generating the revenue of $8.1 billion. However, after the year released, it failed eventually. We believe the reason behind was that P&G didn’t spend enough effort marketing this product, which made consumers confuse about the purpose of adding yogurt to shampoo and how they could be benefitted. There was almost no advertising about the product at all. The ineffective marketing along with the bad packaging design made this new product, Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, not attractive to the majority of consumers.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ISSUES

Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo was launched in 1979 when yogurt was trendy new food in the market. At the same time, natural ingredients in the personal healthcare category were also popular, such as honey, herbs, ginger, and fruit. Since yogurt contains vitamins and minerals that are healthy for human bodies, why not launch yogurt shampoo that had both natural ingredients and super wash-friendly to our hair? P&G stepped up the trend and brought Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo to the market. However, the actual market was not as positive as they had pictured. Consumers did not like the concept of having yogurt in the shampoo, they were confused by the design of the product, and were not informed well of the benefits of using yogurt shampoo.

The first consumer issue is associated with attitude—consumers did not embrace the idea of adding yogurt in the shampoo. Even though dairy products are deemed by the public as healthy and trendy food that provide vitamins and minerals, they can also be associated with stink and smelliness as dairy products are easily to go stale. P&G was trying to challenge the concept of “putting yogurt in your hair”, yet it had a long way to educate the public.

Then it comes to the second consumer issue which is linked with perception. The packaging and design of the shampoo is confusing as it looked like a real yogurt that is edible. According to the news report, there were a number of cases of people mistakenly eating the yogurt shampoo and getting sick as a result.

Meanwhile, due to no advertising to promote Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo, consumers had less chances to be exposed to the products’ information. When they were trying to retrieve the memory, there was nothing for them to refer. According to the pre-attentive processing rule, people prefer and like the objects to which they have been previously exposed. Therefore, consumers had little knowledge and low perception of the benefits in terms of using yogurt shampoo, let alone liking the product.

Due to the addressed consumer issues, P&G did not make any profit on Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo and the product was soon out of the market. There are certain lessons P&G should draw from the past failures, such as delivering informative product packaging design, communicating with consumers through various channels to educate the public, and increasing their exposure thus enhancing product identity and brand retrieval.

INTERVIEW AND RESULTS

After we figure out the problem of Clairol Yogurt Shampoo, we conducted interviews to get insight of current shampoo market and customers’ preference as well as resorts’ preference, and to provide initial landscape view for the following survey and test. We have three purposes of conducting interviews: * Get information about customers’ shampoo using and purchasing behavior. For example, how do they choose shampoo brand? What do they care most about a shampoo product? What do they think about purchasing shampoo in supermarket or over the counter in malls? * Get insight about customers’ lifestyle who pay close attention to organic products. For example, their preferred vacation place and style, eating habits, products using habits, etc. * Get information from resorts and spas about what they care most about shampoo products they use or recommend for customers? And how do they choose the partner brand?
Our interview targets three groups of people as our interviewees: managers of resorts, spas, and hotels; normal customers; and customers who choose or pay close attention to organic products and brands. And in practice, we interviewed seven people via email interview and face-to-face interview. One of them (Jake Perdue) is the manager of Red Door Spa, where 10 minutes’ drive from harbor east. And one of them (Maureen Flynn) is the therapist from Red Door Spa, and five customers, three of whom purchase organic products from certain organic brands. We got three main points from our interviews: * First, although customers will choose shampoo by themselves, they actually are following advices from friends or relative professionals, rather than study these shampoo brands by themselves. And most of the time they had made decision before they went to supermarkets or counters in shopping malls, instead of making decision when they face to hundreds of brands and products. Thus, we consider that friends and therapists’ recommendation will mainly influence and change customers’ purchasing behavior. * Second, customers’ preference of brands is consistent with their lifestyle. We observed customers who walked out from Lush retail store and Wholefoods after purchasing several products, and found that most of them have slim body shape and performed confident and professional. And we chose five people among them to do interview. Three people delivered that they will prefer organic brand when choosing shampoo, one of whom only buy organic products from organic brands for herself and her baby. Two people said that they like to visit resorts with family and friends during vacation, and they will use products offered by the resort if they consider which is premium. But if they live in hotel, they will not use products offer by the hotel whatever it is high-end or not. Thus we consider resorts and spas are more suitable for our products than hotels. But this insight need to be tested further by our following survey. * Third, spas and resorts care much more about organic than we thought before, and they regarded organic as a big selling points of their products or their partner’ products to customers when they offer service to customers. Jake said that the famous organic product – Milk Lotion in their spa are usually sold out very quickly. At the time we call, there were only two bottle Lotion left. Maureen told us that if she tell customers the products are organic or from an organic brand, customers are much more willing to try the new product. Otherwise, customers will prefer to use the products they familiar with. In addition, customers who come to spa very often are usually white collars, so they have enough spare money to purchase organic products, which are more expensive, if they like these products after trying.

SURVEY AND RESULTS

After a group analysis of the yogurt shampoo, we want to understand how people consider about organic hair product and how people’s view related to ‘back to nature’ lifestyle. Our group conducted a survey which helps us better understand who will be our target consumer and our potential market. Our survey consists of 10 questions and there were 78 people aged between 18 to 54 took our survey. Among these 78 people, 57% of them are female, 30% of them have the yearly income below $45,000, 60% of them fall into the range between $45,000 and $75,000 and 10% of them are above &75,000.

Besides some basic questions, our survey concentrated on some focus questions, including ‘What matters to you the most when it comes to a shampoo product?’ For this question, we provide a scale from ‘extremely important’ to ‘does not care’ for people to rate in 7 different aspects. (Brand, scent, functionality, natural ingredients et cetera.) For all the aspects, we really want understand how today’s customer viewing natural ingredients of shampoo. The results show that about 69% of people view functionality as extremely important, 60% of people view brand as important and 45% of people view Natural/Organic ingredients as extremely important. These results indicate that besides function and brand as two main focus when purchase hair product, an increasingly number of people are concerning the natural or organic ingredients nowadays as we assumed.

The second focus question is “ How often do you buy shampoo?” About 60% of people purchase hair shampoo once every three months, 18% of people purchase shampoo every month, and 16% of people purchase shampoo once every 6 months. This results help us to better comprehend the hair product purchasing frequency across people.

The second focus question is ‘do you know any organic/natural shampoo brand?’ The results demonstrate that about 78% of people have the knowledge of ‘Lush’ and then is ‘Burt’s Bee’ and ‘Aveda’. To some degree, today’s customers still lack of information about natural or organic hair shampoo. This is a great opportunity for us to promote our own natural yogurt shampoo, since now, it seems the competition is not that much competitive.

Our third focus questions ‘where will you go to buy hair care products’ is designed to better understand what is the shopping habit when people purchase hair shampoo. Nearly half of the people who took the survey answered they usually go to supermarkets to buy hair care products. Only 20% of people go to shopping mall and 5% go to professional hair salon. This result indicates some marketing insights for our product that we could focus on how to change people’s hair product purchasing habit from supermarkets to shopping mall or in our own retail store which could differentiate our product to other hair care products that display in supermarkets.
For the purpose of understanding whether people like the ‘back to nature’ lifestyle, we design the fourth focus question “Do you like ‘back to nature’ kind of lifestyle or vacation? (resorts, beach, mountain etc.) We gave them a scale from ‘Like a great deal’ to ‘dislike a great deal’ for people to rate. The results from the survey tells us that about 41% of people chose ‘like a great deal’ and 23% of people chose ‘like a moderate amount’. Only 2% of people chose dislike a little. Nobody chose dislike a great deal. We could conclude from this result that almost all people like “back to nature” kind of lifestyle or vacation. This result just further confirms our own idea about how people be fond of “back to nature” lifestyle and vacation could associate our product, since our yogurt shampoo is produced by milk coming from natural farm.

Our last focus question is “If you go on vacation, will you use shampoo provided by the hotel?” Because as we relaunch our yogurt shampoo, we want to first cooperate with resorts and spas to build a stable relationship and gain a steady revenue in a long-term. Whether people love to use the shampoo provided by the hotel become significant for us. The results from our survey shows that about 56% of people sometimes will use the shampoo provided by the hotel and 29% of people definitely will use the shampoo provided by the hotel. Only 15% of people will not use the shampoo provided by the hotel. It is clear from the results that cooperate with resorts is a good start to promote our yogurt shampoo, because people have the chance to experience our products even they don’t switch the shampoo brand they used at home as most people will use the shampoo provided by the hotel.

THEORY AND CONCEPT

Anchoring
Anchoring usually used in psychology to describe that when people make decisions, they tend to rely heavily on piece of information that they familiar with. When anchor is set by people, there is a bias towards that value (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

However, in marketing area, we can use anchoring when we launch the new product to add credibility to it. Our Clairol yogurt shampoo, which under P&G, is a new product to most of our potential customers. When customer do not familiar with the new product and its brand Clairol, they may do not want to try it because people tend to avoid risks. Thus, when we launch Clairol yogurt shampoo, we can make strong relevance between this products to its master brand P&G in packaging and advertising. In this way, when customer get to know this brand, they will use P&G as an “anchor” to evaluate the yogurt shampoo. And because P&G has a really good reputation among customers, they will perceive less risks when trying this new product.

First, in packaging. Normally, products from P&G just have a small trademark behind the bottle. But in our redesigned outer package, P&G is as a background picture. So when people see this product in shopping malls, they will directly know that this is a new product launched by P&G.
Second, in advertising and promotion campaign. We not only end up our TV commercial with P&G, but also will emphasize that our products are from P&G when we seek for corporation with resorts and spas. With research and development investment from master brand P&G, Clairol yogurt shampoo will be accepted by premium resorts and spas more easily as well as be accepted by customers. And this why our organic yogurt shampoo is more competitive than other organic products from small brands.

High-tech preference
According to the finding from Wang, Dou & Zhou (2006), consumers’ adoption of marketing innovations is associated positively with preference for high-tech process. That is to say, if one product delivers its high-tech making process clearly to potential customers, customers may have higher possibility to adopt this product.

Based on this theory, we consider to display customers with our high-tech shampoo making process and educate them detailed knowledge about yogurt and its nutritional value in our advertisement.

In practice, we can shoot videos from our shampoo making factory, showing customers every high-tech steps, for example, how to extract nutrient from yogurt, how to combine nutrient from yogurt with other hair care conditioner cream, and how the acid value of shampoo can perfectly neutralize with pH value of hair, which is slightly alkaline. With this way, we will educate our customers about yogurt shampoo to let them trust our product that is truly good for hair and then want to try and adopt the yogurt shampoo.

Social validation
According to Cialdini’s The power of persuasion (2014), the author introduced six basic tendencies of human behavior which come into play in generating a positive response. These six basic tendencies are reciprocation, consistency, social validation, liking, authority and scarcity. One of the tendency social validation we could applied to better understand our customer. To simply understand what is social validation, it means that when you are uncertain about what to do, you will look to other people to be your guide. Especially people like to take others such as friends or family’s recommendation when making a new decision.

Today, there is a fast growing trend of making a natural and organic lifestyle choice. People have been told that back to nature lifestyle and organic living can have many health benefits. Advertising, supermarkets, TV shows and consumers are value the natural and organic lifestyle the most in everywhere. People who don’t have a natural or healthy lifestyle may have the pressure from other people or even from the society. Every year, there is a growing number of people diagnosed with cancer or other diseases which affect people's attitude about their life. To some degree, a healthy, natural and organic lifestyle could bring you a better life quality and keep the doctor away. Because our product is focus on a back to nature lifestyle which is just coincide what the trend is today.

Authority
According to Cialdini’s (2014) Authority principle, people respect authority and they want to follow the lead of real experts. Business titles, doctors, and real experts are proven factors in leading credibility to any individual.

For Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo, our advertisement has delivered a compelling message from a real expert in an organic farm that yogurt shampoo is made of natural and fresh milk from an organic farm. Its acid can balance the PH value in the shampoo, thus preserving a healthy and balanced hair condition. The view of an organic farm and pure milk is an obvious and effective stimulus for consumers to process our shampoo ingredients. The transparency of our information further increases Clairol’s brand credibility.

STP ANALYSIS

According to our research data, we will make recommendations based on the following segmentations, target and positioning by analyzing why customers will like our product, who will buy our product and what we can do to make our product be part of customers’ daily life.

Segmentation
The fundamental philosophy of segmenting customers is to understand how to convince customers to take actions in buying a yogurt shampoo that would solve their hair problems as well as fit their lifestyle. In segmenting the healthy care products market, Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo should rebrand and reposition its image by focusing on analyze the following four criteria: geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral.
Since there are numerous organic and natural shampoo products, it is crucial for Clairol to be positioned differently in order to stand out from the competition. Geographically, we recommend P&G should collaborate with resorts to place Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo as a complimentary product in each room. The continental U.S. has never short of elite resorts, which provide gourmet restaurants serving regional fare, rooms so comfortable you'll feel homesick upon departure, and unique programming to help you connect with the locale (Lieberman, 2015). Nowadays, people go to resort because they want to get away from their busy working life and enjoy a moment of relaxation. People who choose to go to resort for short-term getaway have a certain level of consumption capability to afford the expenses.

In terms of demographic factors, we want to market Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo as a premium organic shampoo that contains natural dairy products that are good for both adults and children. We recommend P&G to focus on consumers who age from 30 to 55 in a higher socioeconomic class, both female and male consumers, single as well as married, middle to upper class with relatively higher level of education background, and have stable household income. Besides individual consumers, P&G should also focus on all family settings regardless family sizes. This segment group of people are highly aware of the benefits that natural and organic ingredients would bring to them, and their ideas would often influence others around them in terms of making decisions to buy organic and natural products.

Making organic lifestyle is a part of growing trend. As people start to care about what they eat, they also concern about what they will use to put on their body. By putting psychographic factors into consideration, P&G should reposition Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo correctly in order to educate the benefits that yogurt shampoo would bring to consumers, thus would eliminate consumers’ confusion and prevent them from mistakenly eating yogurt shampoo product. This segment group of people would be consumers who concern about using products that contain natural and organic ingredients, care about personal healthy and living standards. Also, this segment group of consumers consider that natural and organic product would fit their back to nature lifestyle.

In addition, P&G needs to inform and educate its consumers the benefit of putting yogurt in their hair, and ultimately change consumers’ perception and behavior of using shampoo that have dairy products in it. People purchase different type of shampoo for various hair care purpose, such as hair fall, dryness, roughness, conditioning, etc. As it comes to yogurt shampoo, the neutralization of acid-base yogurt and alkalinity of other organic and natural hair care ingredients would function as well as other non-organic and non-natural ingredients based shampoo products.

Target
Instead of targeting the competitive mass market, we recommend P&G to target niche market with the Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, aiming at consumers who have high ethical life standards and have strong health conscious, seeking for natural, green and organic healthcare products to put on their skin and body. The potential targeted group would majorly be female, male consumers and family settings regardless family size, who regularly go on family vacations to resorts to enjoy natural scenery. Target consumers who have middle to high level of household income that could afford to go to resort.

Positioning
In the beginning, P&G has falsely positioned its Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo by emphasizing the nature ingredients in its product to answer the “back to nature” movement at that time without educating the public first. It has challenged a conception that yogurt was a food not something that can be put in your hair. Consumers lack of knowledge about the effects or benefits that natural ingredients could bring to them had failed the Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo and eventually exit out the market. Therefore, we will help P&G to reposition its Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo as a premium shampoo product for people who constantly pursue a “back to nature” lifestyle.

PACKAGING DESIGN TEST

Given that the original product design was so confusing, our group members have conducted an experiment to test the packaging design. There exist three major changes compared with the original design.

First, the less transparent plastic bottle is changed into transparent glasslike plastic bottle, which is more transparent to the consumers and echoes with the product positioning—bringing us back to nature. Second, we have placed press release metal to replace the bottle lid so that mistakenly eating shampoo cases will be effectively avoided. Additionally, it also functions well when consumers apply shampoos from the bottle to their hands, saving the trouble of squeezing. Last, we have revised our shampoo body design, stressing “back to nature” concept, which goes hand in hand with our brand position. We will apply more natural color (keep it simple) to present the words meanwhile enlarge “yogurt shampoo” so that consumers will have a clear knowledge of its functionality. For the outer paper packaging, we will add natural elements, such as farm and cows, to stand for our brand positioning and yogurt concept.

With these in mind, our group has elected three different packaging styles to test our consumption and hypothesis. Please refer to Appendix 3 for the three chosen packaging designs. We have asked 78 participants to select their favorable design amongst the three choices for yogurt shampoo, 69% of the respondents gave us the 2nd option, 12% liked the first design and 19% favored the third one. From the data collected, we can conclude that our initial hypothesized design has won the majority vote and is more appealing to the consumers across all ages and of different gender groups.

MARKETING MIX - 4Ps

Product
Yogurt, a widely acceptable food nowadays, has seldom been considered as a hair care relative ingredient. However, the fact is, as a multi-vitamin rich food, yogurt contains high levels of lactic acid that especially benefit the dull and damaged hair. The four main functions are to get rid of dandruff, to tame hair frizz, to add shine to dull and dry hair, and to reduce hair fall (Luis, 2014). Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, being the first mover of milk-based hair products, has the advantages of opening a new area in this market.

We will redesign the packaging to better match with the concept of the product and to fully distinguish from other shampoos. Firstly, we will change the container to be a transparent bottle with a metal pump, which will leave consumers the impression of being classic and high-end. Secondly, we will have a more attractive label to better convey the idea of being back to nature and to catch consumers’ eyes at the first glance. Thirdly, using the pump instead of the regular cap could reduce the risk of consumers thinking the product to be a real yogurt. The past news of people eating Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo caused the company in trouble and hurt the reputation of the product somewhat.

Price
We want to set Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo to be a premium product targeting the niche market. According to the research of U.S. Shampoo market by price levels, premium shampoos are priced above $10 (compared to value shampoos priced below $2, mid-tier priced between $2 and $4, and masstige shampoo priced between $4 and $10). Based on that, we further investigated the salon-based shampoo brands and found the price range to be $20 to $40. Thus, we set the 26oz bottled Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo to be charged at $29.99, which is a reasonable and affordable price among the segmentation.

Place
To begin launching Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, we choose to cooperate with resorts in the first place. On the one hand, the demand would be relatively stable and high by signing the contract if we finally meet the agreement, which could help P&G to generate profits quickly in order to support the advertising campaign of increasing the product awareness. On the other hand, all the people who go to a resort would meet the requirements of our targeting consumers since they prefer to enjoy the nature in their spare time. In this way, P&G could better advertise Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo and convey the concept to the right people efficiently and effectively. The biggest advantage of putting Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo in resorts is that consumers would have little chance to refuse trying since that is the only available option they have.

At the same time, we want to negotiate with spas and salons. People going to these places care about their hair and live in a healthy lifestyle normally. They are more easily to accept the education of adding yogurt to shampoo provided by the specialist they have trust. Also, they will see the result immediately after feeling by themselves and will make decisions of whether buying or not.

Finally, when the idea of Yogurt Shampoo is not strange to the public anymore, we believe P&G could open counters in shopping malls. The reason we choose shopping malls over supermarkets or grocery stores is that we want to differentiate Clairol from the regular low- or middle-end shampoos. Also, at the counters, it is feasible to have well-trained salespeople provide the education of yogurt shampoo to consumers. We want to make sure consumers truly accept the concept and feel the benefits.

Promotion
The promotions we set aim to improve customer experience, to gain loyalty, and to expand customer base. In order to enhance convenience, other than the regular bottled packaging, we will launch the refill pack as well. Consumers could keep the empty bottle and pour the shampoo into it from the plastic pack. The refill pack will be charged at a lower price, which is more attractive to customers and cost-efficient. Also, this idea meets the trend of environmental friendliness and may contribute to the good reputation of the brand.

To gain customer loyalty, we will develop the membership system. On the one hand, it is easy for P&G to gather customers’ data for the future use of doing email marketing directly. On the other hand, for consumers, they will feel engaged within the community of users sharing the same belief and lifestyle.

Finally, we would produce gift sets in order to expand the customer base. Since the new Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo is set to be a premium hair care product, it meets the standard of being a gift. The regular users could buy the gift sets and give to their friends or families who do not belong to the typical targeting consumers. However, once they have tried, the chance of them being our potential customers will increase.

CONCLUSION

WORK CITED

Cialdini, R., & Kanopy. (2014). The power of persuasion.

Haden, R. (2013). The Consumer Graveyard: Touch of Yogurt Shampoo - Selling to the Masses. Retrieved February 29, 2016, from http://www.sellingtothemasses.com/2013/10/the-consumer-graveyard-touch-of-yogurt-shampoo/

Luis, V. (2014, July 26). Benefits of Yogurt for Hair | Healthy Living. Retrieved February 29, 2016, from http://www.indiatimes.com/health/healthyliving/benefits-of-yogurt-for-hair-241710.html

Lieberman, M. (2015). Best Resorts in the Continental U.S.. Travel + Leisure. Retrieved 28 February 2016, from http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/best-resorts-united-states