Executive Summary:
The Gillette Company was founded by King C. Gillette in 1901. Gillette has provided the best shaving care products for men and women since its inception. It didn’t meet any serious competition until 1962 when Wilkinson Sword brought its stainless-steel blade into market. Fortunately, Gillette’s first primary competitor could not exploit the niche it had created was sold to Gillette. Through the years, Gillette has strived to stay on the lead in wet-shaving market. For this reason, one-upmanship has become the major impact to the market. In 1998, Gillette introduced Mach3 shaving system with three thin blades design. In 2003, Schick introduced four-blade razor, Quattro. In 2005, Gillette introduced five-blade Fusion. Gillette and Schick became major competitors to each other. Although many analysts believe the meaningful product innovation has come to an end for both firms, Gillette was still challenging this thinking and tried to expand its established and dominant market share worldwide. Now, under the ownership of P&G, Gillette needs to allocate its resources wisely and efficiently to R&D and other departments in order to create a better product to replace currently near perfect Fusion in the future.
Questions & Answers:
1. Evaluate product innovation at Gillette throughout its history. Has Gillette been a victim of its own success? Has product innovation in the wet-shaving market come to an end? Explain.
Gillette’s product innovation was majorly affected by Wilkinson Sword since this English firm had launched stainless-steel blade in 1962. Before this time, because Gillette had dominated market for a long time, Gillette did not focus on product innovation very much. As a result, ...