Marketing Dental Floss

Marketing Dental Floss

Flossing: A new secret to good health?

Introduction:

Dental floss is one of those products we never notice on the shelves in the stores and never pay too much attention to in our bathroom. At the same time for many people it is a part of the "before going to bed" ritual along with brushing teeth, taking shower, etc. and etc. Those who don't use it on regular basis still have it in their bathrooms, because:

1. A mouth hygiene care item in regards to which everybody wants to be unlike everybody and thus follows the traditional patterns. It's the way it is for years - dental floss regular item in a regular bathroom picked up at a regular store right next to toothbrush and toothpaste.

2. Sometimes it's an extremely useful means of eliminating unwanted stuff stuck between your teeth.

3. It doesn't even take much space on your shelf :)) It doesn't cause any inconveniences.

Besides everybody knows the common truth about dental floss:

Flossing helps clean teeth in the areas that brushing alone just cannot reach (between the teeth and under your gum line). Flossing and then brushing helps remove plaque, a sticky substance that accumulates and hardens over time. Left untreated, plaque deposits can eventually lead to gum disease and tooth decay.

Being currently in maturity stage of its life cycle with rather steady curve, showing no surprises for a product in this category, floss has great potential for conquering the market again and experience its new growth stage resulting in turning the trend upwards as opposed to slightly declining current trend. It has that potential same as milk does. It's "very good for your health" and the target segment includes adults and heavily involves kids, what gives a hope to raise a generation of heavy users.

What has already been done in this direction:

Many developments in dental floss came about in an attempt to make flossing more appealing to children and adults. Flavored flosses and multi-colored flosses were attempts to inspire children to floss regularly. Parents have always been able to offer incentives to their children to brush and floss.

Problems:

Until now, the parent never really had the means to determine whether the child was actually compliant. Intuitively, children usually don't have the motor skills to floss their own teeth until they are 5 or 6 years old - and even then, they should floss only with adult supervision until the child can trusted. A slip can cut the gum and raise the risk of infection.

Just about everything seems more important to a child than good dental habits so unless the parent is going to stand over their child's shoulder every morning there is a good chance that there are regimen lapses either in flossing or brushing that the parent is not aware of.

How to get to the new growth stage?

Wise marketing programs should be developed and implemented respectively. To do this, a marketer should clearly understand behavioral specialities of the target audience, and then use those to identify present problems and work out ways to cure those.

Behavioral aspects connected with the product should be carefully treated and considered, such as:

* Low Involvement

a very routine and very lightly differentiated product from the customer's perspective, brands are either not distinguished or following the choice on primary tooth care belongings like tooth paste and/or tooth brush (for example many people use Oral B)

* Consideration Set of categories

Toothbrush is perceived to be the primary tooth care item and dental floss is getting the "leftovers"

* Perception

A tooth care activity that can be skipped, at least as a regular, and everyday one

* Brand Association

A message to be emphasized in different ways - cool kid with white teeth and good breath

* Experiential marketing

Use of dental loss with different situation for instance parents together with children flossing each other or flossing after meals. Consumption situation of the product, e.g. attach samples to products, which usually make you feel like using floss, popcorn for instance.

In order to understand how good the ground for potential marketing actions is, let's look at couple fact below:

According to St. Luis Post Dispatch:

§ 1 in 7 children have tooth decay,

§ Tooth decay is the single most common chronic childhood disease; five times more common than asthma and seven times more common than hay fever.

§ Twenty-five percent of children suffer 80 percent of tooth decay.

§ 1 in 5 parents actually teach there children about the importance of general dental care.

Poor dental care can escalate into health problems such as a poor diet due to difficulty in eating, not being able to speak clearly, or having low self-esteem because of bad breath or disfigured/discolored teeth. However, these problems can be prevented if parents use fluorides, and brush and floss their young children's teeth every day. In addition, educating children on the importance of regular oral hygiene should be the number one priority.

What to do to and where to start?

Thus marketing should target the decision maker and influencer, and finally the user directly, as soon as all three are to be communicated in appropriate ways.

As soon as modifying the product is obviously not an objective in this case, modifying the market becomes crucial and comes within different strategic and tactical moves:

1. Work with parents in a way to have them understand that they should teach children the skills and behaviors that help maintain good dental health. Helping children develop good preventive oral health care habits can be very difficult. But it is a common goal that should be shared by both parents and childcare providers alike. The real task is for parents to show