Laundry is big business. How big? Roughly $9.3 billion worth of big annually! Market researcher Circana estimates that of that amount, 70% is spent on liquid detergent, 24% on packets and tablets (e.g. Tide Pods), and powder detergent is only 6%. Tide Pods were launched in 2012 and quickly reached $500 million in sales within its first year.
That’s a big shift in how consumers select detergents to do their laundry. And Tide (owned by Proctor & Gamble) is introducing yet another form of detergent – dry detergent sheets for your laundry – with hopes to repeat its success with Tide Pods.
Why the new form? The dry laundry sheets appeal to consumers who want to eliminate both plastics and waters that adversely impact our environment. The new technology also eliminates the need for heavy plastic bottles and thereby reduces shipping weight and cost for online purchasers. P&G isn’t the first to use this dry sheet format, but it is the largest laundry detergent brand and hopes to convince consumers to change the way they wash clothes.
What are they? The dry sheets are roughly the size of your palm and are composed of six layers of fibers that dissolve in cold water, reducing energy bills for washing. A package of 44-tiles will retail for $19.94, the same price as a 45-pod container of Tide Power Pods + Ultra Oxi.
Unlike the colorful Tide Pods, which presented problems with children mistaking the pods for candy as well as criticism of water pollution, the dry sheets will be colorless, a form preferred by consumers in the testing phase.
What’s your preferred laundry detergent?
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Show website: https://tide.com/en-us/our-commitment/tide-evo
- Discuss the importance of clearly defining a target market.
- Divide students into teams. For Tide evo, what is the target market? Include demographics, psychographics, behaviors, values, attitudes, etc.
- Based on the target market profile, what makes this product unique for these customers?
- Discuss newness from the consumers’ perceptive. Is this product an example of continuous innovation, dynamically continuous innovation, or discontinuous innovation? Why?
- How does this product fit into P&G product line?
- Who is the main competitor to Tide evo?
Source: Khan, N. (3 March 2024). P&G launches Tile Tiles in bid to change how laundry is done. Wall Street Journal; Weiss, G. (8 March 2024). Forget Pods. Tide wants to make fabric ‘tiles’ the future of laundry. Business Insider.
