The Black & Decker Corporation (A):
Power Tools Division

Black & Decker, the creator of the power tools industry, caters to the three major segments of the power tools business namely, Industrial, Tradesmen, and Consumer. D&B’s market share is almost the same as Milwaukee and Makita in the Industrial and Consumer segment but with regards to the Tradesmen segment, B&D is behind. Despite its major presence in the industry, it faces a problem in the Tradesmen segment which only holds about a 9% share.

This problem has been caused by a bad perception of the tradespeople regarding B&D due to its expansion into the Consumer segment shown by its successful Dustbuster® hand-held vacuum. D&B’s expansion to the Consumer segment has proved to be successful but it has also affected D&B’s image with the tradesmen who worked on residential construction. One tradesman stated, “. . . Black & Decker makes a good popcorn popper, and my wife just loves her Dustbuster, but I’m out here trying to make a living. . .”

Tradesmen such as, electricians, plumbers, framers, roofers and etc are workers who are expected to show up to work with their own tools and this segment usually purchase their tools from home centers; and they regularly purchase tools for replacement basing their choices on conversations between co-workers at the job site. The fact that the households of these tradesmen use D&B as house appliances makes them think that D&B products won’t hold up in the work place making them choose other brands that focused more on the tradesmen segment.

D&B looked for the source of the problem and found out that product quality was not the issue. They also did a research on the brand’s awareness and found that D&B is the most known power tool suppliers with 98% awareness among tradespeople but ranked third with a 44% agreement on being the best. With this issue, D&B thought of options to improve the Tradesmen segment.

The first option was to harvest Professional-Tradesmen channels. This option tells B&D to focus on Industrial and Consumer segments and it doesn’t seem like the best option because it would be easy for other competitors to penetrate the Industrial and Consumer segments and defeat B&D by having a better perception by the public.

Second option was to get behind Black & Decker name with sub-branding. This option may have some potential because it will somehow give the products used in the Tradesmen segment a new identity but this is not enough because the name Black & Decker will still be associated with the products and the name B&D already has a bad perception and it is difficult to change the mind of the tradesmen.

The third option was to drop the Black & Decker name from the Professional-Tradesmen segment. This option seems to be the most feasible option because it will give the products a whole new identity as DeWalt® products that are serviced or warranted by D&B. This option also plans to change the usual charcoal grey color of the products to industrial yellow. A color often seen at sites which give the impression of safety.

The most recommended alternative is the third one, drop the Black & Decker name from the Professional-Tradesmen segment. By doing this, the brand will be able to start with a clean slate and with no bias against the brand. Given that the DeWalt® brand received a high awareness rating (70%) and got 63% of the tradesmen agreed that it is one of the best. Also, the Dewalt® brand has a high percentage of “purchase interest” with 51% and naming it as Dewalt-Serviced and Distributed by Black & Decker showed a 58% purchase interest in the Tradesmen segment.