1. Kotex Brand Research (Executive Summary)
April 2003

2. Background
Kotex launched its Soft-Dri pad in Beijing in 1996, followed by liner in Now Kotex enjoys 10% market share.
Sofy is very active both in launching products with new features and communication
Majority of the Kotex users are mixed users of value brands such as C&B, Yiyi and premium brands.
Kotex is going to launch an improved new product with the features of protection channels and breathable material.
Together with this new product launch, Kotex plans to have a marketing and communication campaign to drive brand image and sales
Therefore a qualitative research is needed.

3. Key Research Objectives
The key objectives are to identify
What are the category issues / insights which Kotex can leverage on?
What are Kotex brand equity/issues which should be address in the future marketing and communication
To achievement these main objectives via the sub-objectives of

4. Research Objectives The relationship between Kotex users and brand
The role of products: Why Kotex users keep using Kotex? What do they satisfied about the product? Is there any un-met needs about products? Shall we keep our original brand positioning ie. Security?
The role of brand image: Perceived user image? Emotional feeling with Kotex? What factors drive this image?
Competition situations
Consumer perceptions: What is the role of Sofy celebrity advertising and product innovation?
Attitudes towards category
Brand loyalty: Is there any brand loyalty in feminine care category? In what way? How do they view new products?
The differences of product under different brands among the same segment
Category communications

5. Methodology Three groups have been conducted in Beijing
Two groups are Kotex users defined by using Kotex most often, with one group started using Kotex early than 1998, and another group start using Kotex after They are likely to be mixed users of Kotex and other premium brands.
One group is Sofy users defined by using Sofy most often. They are likely to be premium brands and value brand users
The fieldwork time is April 28th

6. Key Findings: Category Issues/Insights

7. New Products
Facing to a category with a lot of brands, large variety of “new” products and different sale promotions, women’s behaviors and attitudes are:
Choose one brand as the major brand, but not reject trying new products with appealing product news such as “弹性贴身”“立体护围” “扇形尾翼“
Keep curiosity to new products, because they believe that the firms will product better product
Having a list of 2-3 brands to switch around. The brands in this list should be trust worth, reliable and among the same price range (RMB per 5 pads for premium segment)
Once they choose a new product, they will use their experience of the most familiar brand as a bench mark to compare with new product. Any over claimed product benefits will lead to the perceptions of “It is the same. I didn’t see the improvement”.

8. Advertising
The role of ads is not only on messages, but brand presence on media as well
Advertising itself contribute to brand image
“It must be a famous brand, if it can do a lot of advertising.”
Price and product features strongly influence people’s perceptions of the brands.
“Given the price and basic product features such as wing, cover material, we know which segment it belongs to.”
The tangible differentiation among products are weak, so people are looking for brand value such as trust, familiarity, product performance
“Pads have been improved very much. All of them have SAM and wings.”

9. Brand
Trust, reliable, feel safe are fundamental for a brand image, if women put a brand in their brand list
There are still some perceived brand switch risk for a feminine care product
“Once I try a new brand, I still start at light time, in case some un-expected thing happens”
Familiarity drives women’s perceptions of a brand image especially to those brands they use most often.
“I use Kotex every month. I feel comfortable of using this brand.”
The key driving factor of mixed usage are as same as before ie save money, have best protection at most needed moments
“When I go after safety and comfort, I also need to feel value for money. Use Sofy fan shaped pads is a waist.”
“Good brand should be used on important moments.”

10. Brand
Familiarity of a brand comes from usage experience and brand presence in market place.
“Once you watch the ads in home; you see packages on shelves, you feel familiar with this brand.”
The brand differences are on advertising, packaging and brand name.
“Little umbrella; it likes a brand name for kids. I won’t choose it.”

11. Kotex

12. Loyalty
The loyalty to Kotex is driven by satisfaction of usage experience. “It delivers my expectations to a premium brand products on safety (Heavy flow day protection). Other products are more or less the same as Kotex.”
Familiar to product, therefore less risk is also important to loyal customers.
The brand image of premium, elegant is perceived by those women who adopted Kotex in the early stage, due to the premium price and communication at that time.
The value of Kotex (Product performance vs price) has been highly perceived, which is also the key factor keeps customer loyalty
The role of communication didn’t contribute customer loyalty significantly. Therefore the brand added value is not as high as Sofy

13. Image We found some key attributes of Kotex brand image:
Elegant (高雅, professional women：Packaging (Kotex blue), price, product (film cover), communication in launch stage
Trust, reliable like sister or mother: product safety performance is reliable, trustworthy brand (not necessary to be thick)
放心, 体贴，关心：Familiar with product (blue strip), package
Distance, 可望，不可及：No active communication, and promotion

14. Competition

15. Overall Situation
Sofy’s active communication influences Kotex current users to try this brand.
Sofy’s celebrity advertising campaign contributes to its brand image significantly. Sofy also has premium brand image because of price, product features (innovative product features) and communication.
The loyalty of new brands starts from product performance perception on heavy flow days (safety performance). We observed that some Kotex current users start using Sofy on their heavy flow days
It seems that Whisper’s image is relatively old due to user image (my mother’s brand) and fixed product functional oriented communication (no added value)

16. Sofy
Although some Sofy users are emotional oriented (communication attracts some of users), and they are not very satisfied with its price (relatively higher than Kotex), they try to rational their behavior and try to use the product in their heavy flow days.
The overall image is:
Active, for young people, energetic brand (有活力，积极）: Have frequent brand presence on mass media. Celebrity is appealing to young women. First claimed some of the product features such as fan shape pad, 立体护围，弹性贴身
High class (premium): Product features, price and celebrity advertising
Trust: Trust because of celebrity image.

17. Advertising

18. General Attitudes
Advertising plays an important role for people to to try new brand.
“I won’t try a brand without awareness. A brand has advertising won’t be very bad.”
People believe there is an fixed category model ie Whisper model to do feminine care products ads, which is product feature demo in a lab environment.
People do enjoy good advertising such as 立邦漆 , Coca Cola. However they don’t believe feminine care napkin brands is able to have good ads.
Sofy ads is appealing, because of the way of communicating product features (analogy) and celebrity
Libra “Murder” is interesting, because of interested story line and the way of using product. (The product message is clearly perceived fast and good absorbency). However, Chinese consumers can’t accept the idea of murder
Korea “Cotton Cover” is appealing because people get the product message of cotton comfortable feeling, but not seeing physical product demo.