Example research essay topic: Gillette Path To Global Success - 1,255 words

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The story of Gillette, one of the most successful global consumer-packaged good companies, well known for product innovation. It offers insights on the innovation, acquisition, and global strategies of Gillette. It is chronologically well organized and is filled with interesting examples and facts, as can be expected from its journalist author Gordon McKibben. This book is aimed at practitioners and students of business. Although it covers consumer-packaged goods, some of the lessons are applicable to all product categories.

There are five parts: "The Stage is Set, "The Search for Balance, "Fight for Survival - The Takeover Threats, "Fast Track to Global Leadership, " and "Gillette's Global Culture in Practice. " The last two chapters are perhaps the most important chapters in the book, considering Gillette is one of the truly global companies: 70 % of its sales, 72 % of its profits and 80 % of its employees are outside the U. S. This book does a good job of highlighting the keys to Gillette's global success. The chapter on the Sensor shaving system (razor and blade) is relevant and interesting. The Sensor shaving system is one of the enduring innovation successes of Gillette.

Al Zein, who became the Chairman of Gillette in 1991 and was the head of "Sensor" project, is claimed to have directed his engineering head to first get the product in shape for testing and conduct a broad-scale consumer user test ("CUT" in Gillette jargon). Only later did Gillette figure a way to manufacture it, underscoring the fact that consumers come before manufacturing for Gillette. Gillette's marketing acumen was another driving force behind Sensor's success. The now famous tag line "The Best a Man Can Get" was born in the late 1980 s for the brands Atra in the U. S. and Contour in Europe, but was used heavily for promoting Sensor.

This advertising blitz was preceded by a teaser ad campaign that announced "Gillette is about to change the way men shave forever. " Symons, who then was president of the Shaving Systems Group, was so obsessed with the masculine perception of the product that he wanted a proper masculine sound and feel as the package was ripped open! Gillette also has its own new product organization structure that has contributed to its success. It has a program management system under which all technical activity - R& D, engineering and manufacturing - is consolidated by product category. Such a program allows Gillette to a have a holistic approach to innovation in each category. Although this program faced initial resistance from employees, it eventually was well accepted.

There is also an interesting lesson on the tradeoff between price and quality that illustrates Gillette's extraordinary commitment to innovation. In the early 1980 s, low-cost disposables had become the hot shaving product worldwide, grabbing market share from shaving systems. Many at Gillette were about to throw in the towel on quality to concentrate on price. However, Gillette's leadership, comprising Zein and then chairman Mockler, stood its ground and continued to invest in quality spring-mounted systems, labeled Flag (Floated Angle Geometry). Sensor went on to far exceed all its goals: 24 million (versus 18 million target) razors sold and 350 million (versus 200 million target) blade cartridges sold in the first year of launch.

The book provides a good summary of Gillette's strategies and operations in Latin America, Russia, China, Poland, and India. For those interested in the multinational versus global debate, the book reveals something about where Gillette stands on the issue. By Gillette's own admission, it was operating more as a multinational company than as a truly global company prior to 1991. After 1991, Zein likens Gillette to Coca-Cola and Johnson and Johnson's Band-Aid in the sense of product uniformity. His idea of global mindset is that Gillette offers the same spectrum of products made to the same world standards under the same factory principles.

Although it may sell more of one product in Malaysia and another in Egypt, the product is the same. Gillette also has a global plan for its new products. For example, Sensor was simultaneously introduced in 19 countries. The book claims that Gillette's recipe for offering products in new markets is an evolutionary or "Stone Age" strategy. In the razor market, the strategy revolved around the principle that Gillette will always offer double-edged blades that would highlight Gillette's quality over those of the local products and will upgrade their customers to use higher quality products over time. This strategy has relied on the existence of a sizeable affluent segment in every country.

This upgrading strategy is not new to many companies, but what is interesting to note is that Gillette expects to continue with this simple strategy for the foreseeable future. There are several interesting facts and anecdotes. For those who appreciate minutiae, the book reveals that an average man has 30, 000 face whiskers and generates 27. 5 feet of facial hair in his lifetime, having spent 139 days of his lifetime removing the hair! Strangely, for a company with a long history, it was only in the early 1990 s that Gillette had a well-articulated mission statement. Al Zein came up with a mission statement with the key phrase "Our mission is to achieve or enhance clear leadership, worldwide, in the existing or new core consumer product categories in which we choose to compete. " It is interesting to note that Gillette's standard in its mission is tougher than General Electric's, whose mission is to be number one or two in a given geographic market, but not worldwide. For all the focus on razors and blades, it is worth noting that Gillette has diversified products in its portfolio.

In the writing instruments category, it now has the Parker Pen brand in addition to the Paper Mate and Waterman brands it acquired earlier. It also acquired Duracell in a much-publicized takeover in 1996. It has the Oral-B toothbrush and a slew of other products in toiletries. What sets Gillette apart from most other companies that also have a continuous stream of new products is that Gillette seeks worldwide leadership for all its new products. Gillette's success in achieving its new product goals is reflected by the fact that in 1996, 41 % of Gillette's sales came from products introduced in the past 5 years, up from 30 % in 1990. The most glaring weakness of the book is the lack of any deep analysis on how the strategies of Gillette were different from those of other companies and why Gillette was more successful than many other companies.

The book also does not talk about the recent problems faced by global companies like Gillette in the last 2 years due to economic and currency crises in South East and East Asia, Russia, and Brazil. It also is important to note that this book was commissioned by Gillette, so the views expressed appear mostly Gillette-centric. These limitations apart, the book offers important lessons for managers. First, in a day and age when companies like Wal-Mart and Charles Schwab are focusing on cost control and winning through price leadership, it is still possible to succeed through greater focus on quality and innovation over price leadership. Second, while most new products start small in one country before they enter other countries, having a global vision for a new product may be the key to long-term leadership. Finally, a successful growth strategy involves pursuing a combination of strategies that include the acquisition of innovative companies and frequent introduction of innovative products.

Research essay sample on Gillette Path To Global Success