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A specific
brand of fungicide in pellet form seemed particularly popular
among farmers. The manufacturer, however, was concerned because
a number of me-too products had appeared, all in the same pellet
form but more critically, using the same mottled colouring.
From a distance, the original brand and the copycats were therefore,
almost identical.
No-one doubted that farmers had noticed the appearance of the
clones and because there was a considerable price difference
between the various products, farmers had to be switching away
and trying the clones.
Because
of "channel lag", the manufacturer couldn't tell whether
distributor stocks were depleting or whether sales had gone
stagnant on the front line.
Taking on the project, we decided to look at:
• farmers'
attitudes and preferences, to determine what they thought of
the original product versus the new clones, and if they
were indeed
switching away, what might persuade them to switch back,
• competitive
product offerings, to see how the clones were sold,
• sales
force organization and procedures, to establish why a relatively
simple task of organizing market intelligence and feeding
it back to the
manufacturer, seemed so challenging, and
• distributor
sentiments, to see how they felt about this market event
generally. |
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