留学生作业：英国管理类dissertation作业

英国的头发护理行业的市场集中度较高，是一种典型的垄断竞争市场。有一定的差异，不同的产品特性的存在，他们每个人都有不同的消费群体和市场空间。以洗发水市场为例，宝洁的四大品牌：飘柔，海飞丝，潘婷形成集团优势，他们已经采取了市场的第一级和占领市场份额的50%左右。联合利华、丝宝集团的品牌如夏士莲力士，在二级市场，占约20%的市场份额。一些英国的国内品牌在第三级。这一级市场呈现品牌、实力较弱的大量的一个突出特点，和当地的竞争是非常激烈的（P & G的年度报告，2010）。基于市场结构，宝洁的产品差异化的战略选择。以头发护理产品市场为例，宝洁在头发护理产品市场领域的突出，其产品销售超过50%的总的国内市场份额。宝洁对消费者需求的洗发水市场调查，它填充不同性能的产品，进行营销推广的成功。飘柔集锦，产品能给头发光滑的感觉；潘婷注重营养与保健功能；海飞丝定位是其强大的抗头皮屑功能；对主要消费群体是年轻白领。
Procter & Gamble (P & G for short) was founded in 1837, during 2010-2011 financial years, the company’s annual sales was 79600000000 dollars. During the ten years when P & G entered into Chinese market, through the implementation of product differentiation strategy, P & G occupied half of Chinese hair care industry (as shown in Figure 1) (Ming, 2011). The concentration rate of the market of China’s hair care industry is higher, it is a typical monopolistic competition market. There is certain difference existing in characteristics of different products, each of them have different consumer groups and market space. Taking shampoo market as an example, P & G’s four brands: Rejoice, Head & shoulders, Pantene form group advantage, they have taken the first level of the market and occupied the market share of 50% or so. Unilever’s and C-BONS Group’s brands such as Hazeline, Lux are in the second level of the market, occupying around 20% of the market share. Some China’s domestic brands are in the third level. Market of this level shows an outstanding characteristic of a large number of brands and weak strength, and the local competition is very intense (P&G Annual Report, 2010). Based on the market structure, P & G selects product differentiation strategy. Taking hair care product market as an example, P &G is outstanding in the field of hair care product market, its product sales exceeds 50% of total domestic market share.  P & G undertook careful market research on consumer demand for shampoo, it packed products of different performance and carried out marketing promotion to achieve a success. Rejoice highlights the smooth feeling that products can bring hair; Pantene focuses on nutrition and health care function; Head & shoulders positioning is its powerful anti-dandruff function; VS’s main consumer groups are young white-collar workers.  http://www.ukthesis.org/thesis_sample/guanlileizuoye/
  

飘柔的定位是提供一种柔顺的感觉，其销量在全国排名第1，它属于典型的大型产品，飘柔具有较高的性价比，它也具有品牌优势和庞大的销售，限制利润其他大多数国产品牌在这一领域，P＆G的空间，利用其规模优势的领域迅速占据了很大一部分市场。头和肩膀，并潘婷属于以利润为基础的产品，抗-头屑，头和肩膀的利润和销售领域是最高的，但其整体的销售是不会飘柔一样大，但它的利润空间远远大于飘柔的。
Rejoice’s positioning is to offer a pliancy feeling, its sales volume ranks No. 1 in the country, it belongs to the typical large scale products, Rejoice has a high performance-price ratio, it also has brand advantage and large sales, limiting the profits of space of most other domestic brands in this field , and P & G uses its size advantage to occupy a large part market of the field rapidly. Head & shoulders and Pantene belong to profit-based products, in the field of anti-dandruff, Head & shoulders’ profits and sales are the highest, but its overall sales is not as large as Rejoice’s, but its profit space is far greater than Rejoice’s. Similarly, Pantene is also outstanding in hair protection and has enormous profit margin. P & G’s takes VS as its representative, its main positioning is fashion and trend, it is clearly positioned in the high-end consumer groups (China Hair Care Market Report, 2009). Judging from P & G’s existing products, they are distributed reasonably, each of them take the leading position in their respective fields, it is difficult for them to have a rival.  Although it is the enterprise’s overall strength which leads to the situation, its product differentiation strategy including precise positioning, effectively playing advantages of its various products to avoid strife among its brands and defeat competitors effectively is also an important factor for the success .

Therefore, the study of P & G’s product differentiation strategy's success is propitious to promoting its successful experience to help other enterprises which get into a price war to find out coup to go out of the quagmire, which is also the realistic significance of this study. In addition, P & G has achieved great success in Chinese market, it does not mean that there is no potential rivals, it also has its competitors such as Unilever, C-BONS Group, etc., these groups also take the product differentiation strategies which are similar to P & G’ strategy, in hair care industry, they have also launched many products to meet consumers’ personalized demand, their product differentiation strategies also have unique characteristics when they compare with P & G’s strategy, which has caused great shock in P & G's market share. In 2011, although the sales of P & G’ hair care products still ranked the first in Chinese market, but its profit growth rate was lower than the other two groups, during the latest three years, the average growth rate of P& G’s market profit in China was about 5%, Unilever’s and C-BONS Group’s profit growth rate have reached 15% and 20% (Ming, 2011). This indicates that the competitive advantage that P & G’ product differentiation strategy brings may be offset by its competitor, it must modify the content in its product differentiation strategy which does not have the unique to maintain and consolidate its leading market position (Williams and Jone, 2012). Thus the practical significance of this paper also lies in that it is through this study to investigate the deficiency in P & G's product differentiation strategy to put forward recommendations on its product differentiation strategy.