Tambrands-Overcoming Culture Resistance

Provide a short background for the reader

Tampax, Tambrands's only product, is the best-selling tampon on the planet, with 44 percent of the global market. North America and Europe represent 90 percent of those sales. (Cateora, Graham: 2007) Tambrands is a company that has prospered throughout North America and Europe yet it has faced numerous barriers that have made it more difficult to grow due to competition and likewise, due to its incapability to broaden globally. In planning for growth into a worldwide market, Tambrands divided the world into 3 clusters, based not on geography but on how resistant women are to using tampons.

The goal is to market to each cluster in a similar method.

Determine what the group believes to be the key problems

Tambrands wished to promote the use of tampons among ladies all over the world, but they did not have of the experience and resources to do so. They released a marketing project which planned to reveal women that the misconceptions that existed in their cultures about tampons were not real.

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These campaigns were too aggressive for people in nations such as Latin America's or China. Tambrands decided to offer its brand TAMPAX to P&G, which represented the best chance for tampons to be utilized all around the globe due to the fact that of the size of the business, its circulation channels and its reliability.

P&G effectively grew the use of tampons in those countries which refused to utilize them. Tambrands choose to work with Procter & & Gamble, getting benefits for both.

Both business understand that culture is a crucial subject for marketing, and they establish a strategy that enables them to get faithful consumers. P&G and Tambrands understand that culture modification in every nation, and because of that, both companies establish different plans for every culture.

Identify the elements of critical thinking and decision making that came into play Marketers decide to do market segmentation, and they subdivide this market into 3 clusters, but the market are the same for all of them Tambrands decided to work with Procter & Gamble, because Tampax had not the amount of money they needed to develop its market plan; in the other side, P&G had not power in this market, and this plan will bring benefits for both Tambrands and P&G develop a great plan, they understood what the main problem for marketing was, and they found cultural problems. Then, they develop a plan and with these ads they explain that this tampon is a product that won’t affect their bodies (their virginity).

Tambrands make a very interesting choice by choosing P&G to achieve their global expansion because P&G is number one in the market worldwide, so Tambrands create the perfect strategy to help their only product can be sold around the globe with the shadow of a leader that generates, confidence and seriousness through their customers in every continent, if Tambrands would have chosen to keep opening the global market alone probably the have gone bankrupt by now, and the same scenario if the have chosen another company to launch them that wasn’t that strong.

P&G should keep in mind the idea of the 3 clusters Tambrands previous have developed because it was an interesting and intelligent way of approaching to their objective of global advertising but they must, as they did, go deeper on that idea as they did in Mexico in the state of Monterrey they went deeper by interacting with the women , making focus groups within specific countries and targets. Within the Cluster number 3 ,which the one with more resistance , they must focus on the teen girls from 12-20 years old because their mothers and grandmother have lived already and maybe they have passed that stage of their lives, and the teen girls are about to enter that stage, so without fighting their culture and ideas previously breed in their minds about using a tampon = loosing virginity approach to them with an innovative and secure style of advertising making a priority their HEALTH. Most of the Latin Americans’ countries have similar cultures so maybe the strategy used in Monterrey can be adapted to try to re-open the market in Brazil, applying the model previously describe, the features of this model must be:

-Target: teen girls 12-20

-Respect previous ideas
-Respect culture
-Create innovate advertising
-Focus on the HYGENE and HEALTH

Identify the group' s assessment of what might have been done to change the situation to produce a positive outcome, if necessary Before launching a global crude “real” campaign, Tambrands should have done the proper research in those markets they wanted to enter. Of course, research meant spending economic resources they were not able to obtain. In the other hand, the world might be globalizing but no country is the same as other, at least not yet. So it is really difficult to create a proper global marketing campaign because of the cultural differences between them.

The only thing Tambrands achieve with this campaign was to make women in those markets to refuse even more to use Tampax. Perhaps, they could have searched for a more viable market, where they did not need to change women’s perceptions about their product, in order to expand the company, obtain better profits, increase their economic resources and, when ready, launch their product into a more difficult market like Latin America. But, since they did things wrong and almost ruined their opportunity in those markets, they did well in selling the brand to a more experienced company, which was able to increase the tampons’ consume.

References
Cateora, P. R., & Graham, J. L. (2007). Tambrands––Overcoming culture resistance. In International Marketing (13th ed., p. 656). New York: McGraw-Hill.