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Some Data May be Cheap, but Could Prove Expensive: the Untold Stories
Companies are confronted on a daily, even hourly, basis with the need for data about their own businesses and intelligence about their competitors. Easily available, secondary data may be adequate for the purpose provided that they are reliable. Unfortunately, that is the essence of the problem: is secondary data reliable?
Complex Strategies Based on Questionable Data
All too often companies spend an inordinate amount of time and effort constructing complex strategies based on questionable, unvalidated data. Companies prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on an acquisition appear ready (or resigned) to pay for good legal, tax, and environmental advice, but may base the commercial analysis on casual data found on various unsubstantiated websites.
Procter & Gamble’s Beauty Divestitures are a Treasure Trove of Opportunities, According to Kline
Prospective acquirers are now diving into the details on the soon-to-be former brands of Procter & Gamble’s struggling beauty business. The assets reportedly include small yet prestigious fragrance brands, such as Gucci and Hugo Boss, the substantial professional and retail hair care businesses of Wella and Clairol, and the legendary Max Factor and Cover Girl color cosmetic brands. While this partial dismantling of P&G’s beauty empire ends an era of the company’s impressive growth trajectory in personal care, it sets the stage for exciting growth opportunities for strategic and financial buyers. The beauty research and consulting team at Kline has a unique and deep perspective on the history, performance, and potential of this array of brands, as well as what the future may look like for the new owners of these P&G equities.
Old Dog Learns New Tricks
A decade or so ago, Customer Satisfaction and Conjoint Analysis studies were all the rage. Virtually every company was carrying out these surveys on an annual or bi-annual basis. The fire was stoked by the necessity to conduct these surveys in order to obtain and maintain ISO certification. Chemical companies who had previously never performed these exercises found themselves using consumer industry type techniques to learn more about customers’ satisfaction levels. The questions were often general in nature and rather unspecific in direction. To make filling out forms easier, suppliers found ways of making them “fun” – scores were collected by moving smiles on a cartoon face or sliding a petrol pump gauge over from empty to full. Sometimes companies commissioned the studies because they thought they had to, but often the results were put in a drawer and forgotten.
