at some adult consumers will use the new flavor).
Situational analysis covers the internal and external environment of a company and its market. Colgate-Palmolive is remarkably well positioned from both an internal and external standpoint when it comes to launching a new product or brand (Sasseen, 1994, p. 56), and it can use its current toothpaste offerings to build a new product around.
Colgate-Palmolive's internal strengths are in its financial status and its manufacturing and production side. It had no major weaknesses to hamper its introduction of a new product (Landry, 1996, p. 1).
Colgate-Palmolive already has the processes in place to manufacture toothpaste since it already has a number of product offerings in this category and is one of the market leaders (Sloan, 1994, p. 36). Because of this, launching a new product would not require additional capital investment by the company, and the company would be able to realize economies of scale since the flavor of the toothpaste would vary, but not the way in which it is produced.
Colgate-Palmolive will also realize benefit from its existing research and development with regard to toothpaste. The company has established that it is able to develop oral hygiene products which receive acceptance by the American Dental Association, and its large presence in consumer goods means that the company is able to test market its products and use feedback from consumers in order to improve the performance of its product offerings. This strong research and development base means that the company can quickly fine-tune its new lemonade flavor in response to test marketing efforts.
Just as the company benefits from having the right equipment and the right infrastructure in place, it also benefits from having people already on staff who have experience in marketing toothpaste. While this new toothpaste will be targeted at children as the end user, it will focus on their parents as...