How does a company extend its product category? The answer is: it uses product proliferation strategy. Companies such as PepsiCo have been successfully utilizing it to attract more consumers and minimize costs.
Do you want to learn more? Then, keep reading!
🔝 Top Product Proliferation Example Essays
- Product Accounting in Smartphones
- The Product Life Cycle in Business Area
- Nikon D800E Digital SLR Camera: Product Marketing
- Facebook’s Business Operation and Lock-In Strategy
🛍️ What Is Product Proliferation Strategy: Definition
Product proliferation strategy is the strategic steps companies take to broaden their product offerings and introduce new goods. Such tactics are highly successful when they match unique items with various consumer needs. Hovewer, they can also have negative consequences.
What Causes Product Proliferation?
Product proliferation is usually the fault of businesses when they sell numerous variants of the same product. Different color schemes, sizes, and applications of the same product all count as proliferation. The company benefits from employing this strategy because it captures a significant market share.
How Has Ecommerce Influenced Product Proliferation?
Businesses use a proliferation strategy to connect with their target audience more effectively. However, it is crucial to understand how to meet consumer needs and demands. No matter how many features and benefits someone offers with their product, if it fails to cater to the wishes of the customers, then it will never excel in the market.
How Does Product Proliferation Affect Consumers?
Product proliferation has a significant impact on consumers. If the company does not correctly classify the newly launched product, it can easily confuse the public, creating chaos in the market. Moreover, if the products fail to appeal to the company’s target demographic, they will quickly lose touch with the consumers.
📉 How to Reduce Product Proliferation?
Here are some strategies that help businesses reduce product proliferation:
- Considering the effect of assortment size.
Brands should avoid deeper and wider assortment because it takes more market space and leaves their consumers confused. - Sorting products based on consumer behaviors.
Classifying existing products will allow companies to determine the features and pricing of the new item. Furthermore, it helps them decide how to introduce and sell a product to consumers. - Using product pruning teams.
Product pruning teams help companies redesign a product to meet customers’ requirements rather than offer multiple features that fail to attract the audience. - Using mass customization.
Brands often customize their products to cater to their consumers’ needs. Redesigning and reintroducing the product help them take their place in the market while boosting sales. - Placing limits on product choice.
Since brands focus on reducing confusion among consumers, they set product limits to help them choose the most suitable variant.
✨ Product Proliferation Examples: Successful & Unsuccessful
To help you better understand what product proliferation strategy is, we’ve gathered some bad and good product proliferation examples below.
Lego Group Product Proliferation
Although Lego is a strong brand in the toy industry, it had faced multiple challenges. When the company introduced its first product, there were other toy brands in the market. Unfortunately, Lego began losing money because of a lack of transparency and increasing competition. Moreover, ineffective cost control policies and management strategies forced the company to rethink its strategy.
ING Direct Spain Product Proliferation
Although the company was doing well when it first started, the business did not realize that the people responsible for bringing innovation would not be facing future challenges. This led to significant problems across the bank.
Pepsi Co’s Product Proliferation
The company applies various generic strategies that further facilitate offering an extensive range of products. Pepsi Co’s product proliferation is successful, and it indicates how effectively the company implemented its strategy in the market. It focuses on the following:
- Cost leadership: minimizing the cost to improve financial performance
- Broad differentiation: attracting consumers by introducing unique features in their products.
Other examples of brands with great product proliferation strategy include:
As you can see, a company’s success largely depends on a well-chosen product proliferation strategy. We hope that our examples helped you to understand the topic better!