Competitions have always been an essential and indisposable part of any market. In the mobile market we have Iphone versus Samsung. In the beverage it is Cocacola versus Pepsi. And in the disposable diaper market, the diaper-war has been taken placed during half of the century between Pampers and Huggies. So how these two big players differentiate themselves from other and gain customers’ choice?
We already blogged detailed about each player in our previous entry
(Pampers: http://diaperwar.weebly.com/brands/pampers
Huggies: http://diaperwar.weebly.com/brands/brand-audit-huggies )
Now it is interesting to bring the two names on the scale to see which one is stronger in the customers’ mind.
Firstly regarding quality, both of them are confident with their high quality product and claim to be the leader of the market. There are also a lot of comparison between their products done by reviewers and normal customers. And the result is still controversial as those reviews finally are individual and the choice finally comes to the parents themselves to choose which is best suitable for their own children, not ever babies in the world. So regarding quality, we can say that both of them are at the first class of the industry.
However, the difference comes from the way that they present their quality themselves to consumers. While Pampers run advertising with both emotion-function-ensurance advertisement, Huggies seems to only focus on emotional aspect. In most advertisement of Pampers, the physical attributes of products constitute a large part of the whole content. Huggies, otherwise, just show the image of babies in their products with comfort, they mention nothing or just a little about the physical aspect of the products.
Looking concisely at the personality and equity of the two brands, we can find this difference reasonable. We would like to use the five dimensions framework by J. Aaker to clarify the type of personality that each brand represents. We rate each traits in the band-score of 5 point, 1 = not at all descriptive, 5 = extremely descriptive). The score is given based on our estimation according to the way each brand is presenting themselves to customers.
We already blogged detailed about each player in our previous entry
(Pampers: http://diaperwar.weebly.com/brands/pampers
Huggies: http://diaperwar.weebly.com/brands/brand-audit-huggies )
Now it is interesting to bring the two names on the scale to see which one is stronger in the customers’ mind.
Firstly regarding quality, both of them are confident with their high quality product and claim to be the leader of the market. There are also a lot of comparison between their products done by reviewers and normal customers. And the result is still controversial as those reviews finally are individual and the choice finally comes to the parents themselves to choose which is best suitable for their own children, not ever babies in the world. So regarding quality, we can say that both of them are at the first class of the industry.
However, the difference comes from the way that they present their quality themselves to consumers. While Pampers run advertising with both emotion-function-ensurance advertisement, Huggies seems to only focus on emotional aspect. In most advertisement of Pampers, the physical attributes of products constitute a large part of the whole content. Huggies, otherwise, just show the image of babies in their products with comfort, they mention nothing or just a little about the physical aspect of the products.
Looking concisely at the personality and equity of the two brands, we can find this difference reasonable. We would like to use the five dimensions framework by J. Aaker to clarify the type of personality that each brand represents. We rate each traits in the band-score of 5 point, 1 = not at all descriptive, 5 = extremely descriptive). The score is given based on our estimation according to the way each brand is presenting themselves to customers.
Pampers show its personality as caring and they want to prove that they can do their best for the customers. Their logo is the heart and the slogan: Love Sleep & Play create a warm impression on customers, giving them the feeling that they are a caring brand and Pampers diapers are gentle for the babies they love. Then in their advertisement, they mention a lot of physical attributes of the products just as a proof to concrete the first feeling that parents get from the brand name, logo and slogan.
Huggies, on the other hand, communicate their brand image in the reverse order. They start with claiming themselves as the leader of the industry: they have the slogan “Nothing hugs like Huggies.”, which emphasize the unique of their products. And then in advertisement, they only focus on promoting the emotion of consumers by images of vivid children playing and enjoying themselves, implementing that Huggies diapers could ensure this comfort for the babies. Huggies present a more or less dominant personality. They want to crave the image of a leader in the customers’ mind and that there is nothing that can be compared to their products. Because they consider themselves the leader, so they emphasize more on the emotion instead of the physical attitudes of the products in their advertisement. And as they considered themselves the leader, they seem not to pay enough effort on their image in social channel. Their Facebook and Twitter have far less followers than Pampers and the content is less attractive than their competitors. They even do not have an official Youtube channel and the one which appears to be their official one only contains videos in which customers compare their product quality with Pampers. And the truthfulness of those is hardly to identify.
In conclusion, Pampers still run a little further than Huggies in the brand race. We would like to give some recommendation for the two brands. For Pampers, they are doing good job but to get over their competition and to stay outstanding, they must set up something special. For Huggies, they should pay more attention to the social channel like Facebook or Twitter, and put more efforts on researching to get over to the number one place.
Huggies, on the other hand, communicate their brand image in the reverse order. They start with claiming themselves as the leader of the industry: they have the slogan “Nothing hugs like Huggies.”, which emphasize the unique of their products. And then in advertisement, they only focus on promoting the emotion of consumers by images of vivid children playing and enjoying themselves, implementing that Huggies diapers could ensure this comfort for the babies. Huggies present a more or less dominant personality. They want to crave the image of a leader in the customers’ mind and that there is nothing that can be compared to their products. Because they consider themselves the leader, so they emphasize more on the emotion instead of the physical attitudes of the products in their advertisement. And as they considered themselves the leader, they seem not to pay enough effort on their image in social channel. Their Facebook and Twitter have far less followers than Pampers and the content is less attractive than their competitors. They even do not have an official Youtube channel and the one which appears to be their official one only contains videos in which customers compare their product quality with Pampers. And the truthfulness of those is hardly to identify.
In conclusion, Pampers still run a little further than Huggies in the brand race. We would like to give some recommendation for the two brands. For Pampers, they are doing good job but to get over their competition and to stay outstanding, they must set up something special. For Huggies, they should pay more attention to the social channel like Facebook or Twitter, and put more efforts on researching to get over to the number one place.