Marico Bangladesh: Meeting the Value-Added Hair Oil (VAHO) Challenge

Even as Parachute oil is the clear brand leader in the branded regular coconut oil market, having rapidly taken away share from the loose oil market, there is a threat emerging. The fastest growing segment in this category is the Value Added Hair Oil (VAHO) market which is further divided into four sub-segments - perfumed, cooling, Coconut Oil + and non-coconut oil. In each of these four categories, Marico's offerings are laggards. Not only are their shares a lot lower than the individual brand leaders in these four categories, some of these brands are actually directly comparing themselves (in television advertisements) to the flagship Parachute coconut oil brand. Shome thus has to balance maintenance of the leading position in the coconut oil market, to minimise cannibalisation in promoting the various VAHO offerings of Marico, and to gain on the leaders in these other categories. At Kobe, Leong and her team provided end-to-end influencer marketing services for clients including consultation on marketing strategies for realising brand objectives, assisting clients in identifying KPIs, execution and monitoring of campaigns, analysis of campaign results and providing recommendations. In addition, Kobe's AI driven influencer platform allowed clients to choose the most suitable influencers from a database of over 5000 influencers. Millennials in Singapore were social media savvy and often-brought products based on recommendations of influencers they trusted. Targeting this customer segment through social media was therefore a viable option. However, the Jia Jia campaign had a few limitations including a small budget and a short timeframe. Another constraint was that herbal tea was not popular with millennials.

• Marketing
• Branding
• Consumer behavior
• Product management
• Advertising