3M India: Launch of Filtrete Sarath Kumar

Yuvaraj
Roll no : BJ21X04
Aim:
To provide recommendations to 3M India for their filtrete product on their brand plan for
sustained market in India. Also, to find the possible reasons for the huge gap between the
product potential and actual sales of the filtrate product.
Introduction:
3M is an American Multinational conglomerate who has different industries working under
different entities. They provide different product offerings to make an impact to the society in
terms of product innovation and applied sciences. 3M India was formed recently to
manufacture own products that would make an impact to the country and to the other
developing economies.
The launch of filtrete was planned in a view to purify the polluted air since top 15 cities in
India rank among the highly polluted cities in the world. The filtrete was tested and launched
to the market at a price of 450 in the e-commerce websites as well as with the tieup offered
with Housejoy.in. Though the estimated sales were achieved, scaling up of operational cost
was difficult due to higher cost in training.
Since Marketing and Testing are the penultimate stages of the Stage gate model before the
launch of the product, the need for testing in the market plays a vital role for the success of
the product.

Reasons for huge gap between product potential and actual sales:
1) Lack of consumer awareness and brand promotion strategies to emphasize the
importance of the product.
2) Since the cost to benefit ratio is less compared to what could have been the potential
area to explore for the competitors, there would have been a negligence from market
side to change it on frequent basis. i.e the purchase frequency would have come
down.
3) Though the A/C using households were broadly studied by 3M as part of market
testing, the market testing factor depends on geography and demographics. Some of
the cities need not have the necessity to own A/C considering the climate conditions.
Hence the air filtrete which is to be fit in A/C sales are nullified based on geography.
4) The potential to install the filtrete in other products too should have been studied as
part of market testing, as it will give wider scope to the product usage and sales.
Recommendations for higher take-off and brand plan in India:
1) 3M’s other viable products combined with filtrete should be provided as offering as
India has this curiosity to eye on the second product offered more than the first
product.
2) Training costs should be tried to make it minimal by providing the recorded sessions
of training and as a series of regional workshops rather than company-based
training.
3) Find more potential companies for tie-ups to expand their product offerings.
4) Pseudo market tests to be conducted by conducting online marketing surveys and
taking feedbacks. This will strongly consider the cutomer’s opinion.
5) Advertise the product based on the demographics and the consumer interests in the
social media based on the consumer buying patterns.