Gillette

Gillette is leading worldwide home applicants, such as razor, battery, electronic and manual toothbrush, manufacturing company. On April 14, 1998, the company introduced the world’s first triple blades razor and begun to sell July 1, 1998 in the United States and September in the

Western Europe. Since Gillette launched new razor in

1998, the company expected high returns in short-term; however, the result of the new product has been defined yet. SWOT ANALYSIS - Key Learning The areas of the internal factors are Finance, Management, Manufacturing,

Market position, Personnel, and Research & Development.

All these factors can be defined as either strengths or weakness or both. First of all, the company as a whole gained net sales amount of 10.1 billion dollars and net income of 1.4 billion dollars for the 1997 due to acquire leading battery company “Duracel” in 1996 and grow of

“Sensor Excel” razor. As a result, company could spend 1 billion dollars to invent “Mach 3” which is triple blades razor. Even though Gillette had sufficient fund to invent the new product, the company took high risk of financial side that if the new product’s sale does not reach to company’s expectation, the company will face shortage of capital resources and can be lead to bankruptcy. But if Mach3 turn out to be a New Coke or McDonald’s Arch Deluxe – much-hyped new products that were mostly duds and fizzle- the gloom will be heavy from Gillette’s corporate headquarters in Boston’s Back Bay to the South Boston factory that Gillette has overhauled to produce 600 million

Mach3 blade cartridges per year, or about half of Gillette’s annual target of 1.2 billion Mach3 blades. (Boston Globe,

4/15/98) Since Gillette introduced "Mach3" in April, the company changed its manufacturing tools to produce

Mach3 South Boston's factory. Gillette already spent 300 million dollars for advertising and promotion worldwide for the year that company introduced new product. The amount is twice as much as the company put for advertising

"Sensor Excel" in 1989. Gillette released the new product to retail stores on July 1, 1998, and starts to advertise on

TV and the other media six weeks later; however, many people went to the company's web site to look at the new product. Even though company spent tremendous amount of fund for the advertising, some people from Asia did not recognize the product according to our group's survey. For customers, there are satisfaction and complaints for

Mach3. People, who satisfied with Mach3 according to our survey, said there are less irritation and faster shaving time. Customers who complaint about Mach3 argue that they do not want to spend more money on better outlook.

According to our survey, one hundred percent of