Sea of the Same
So, one way to reach new audience is to launch new products to attract this new audience. But there are countless problems with line extensions. First of all, how uniquely different is this offering from the existing offering? Is it truly attracting a new audience, or are you just asking your existing consumers choose? For example, there are 62 different Oreo products, according to company website. Does each one of these 62 product serve a specific purpose to attract a specific set of consumers…?
Worst yet, if the choices are not vastly different, you may be asking consumers to choose base on value. For example, if your “new and improved” formula is not truly differentiating to your consumers, they may pick the cheaper “original” version. In another scenario, if all SKUs look the same anyway, consumers may just pick up whatever is on promotion. This trains consumers to shop on deals, which reset the price your brand is able to command.
So, the question becomes how to provide real choice to consumers?
This post was in part inspired by Tom Fisbourne’s post last week. But I thought his Marketoon from 2003 illustrated the point even better.
Let’s get the discussion started. Here are some tweetable bits:
Are you providing a real choice to your consumers? http://bit.ly/w8cFKM @jeannie_chan
Are you seeing a sea of the same on shelf? http://bit.ly/w8cFKM @jeannie_chan
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Jeannie Chan is a Brand Manager for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. She considers herself a marketer, a traveler, and a foodie. Jeannie lives in NYC. 
