HE waterless facewash

Abstract

Male grooming in India has seen a huge boom in recent years growing by 42% in the past 5 years.1 The increasing disposable income and focus on looks and appearance substantiated with increased push by leading players on promotion has propelled this growth. Additionally, the entry of all major brands has made the segment a cluttered one owing to which brands are coming up with major product innovation to differentiate themselves. The men’s grooming segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5% with sales set to reach INR105.5bn by 20212 . Facewash continues to be a major driver of the personal grooming category accounting for 20% of the space.3 Our study aims to analyse the attitude of consumers towards new products in the facewash category with specific focus on Emani’s HE Waterless facewash. Emami is a leader in men’s grooming and our study focuses on the product “HE On The Go” waterless face wash which aims to leverage on its unique proposition of washing your face without the use water on the go. The persistent habit of cleansing the face with water and men’s repulsion towards carrying grooming products calls for us to determine the pre-existing attitude of consumers regarding facewash and analyse the consumer attitudes towards HE Waterless facewash. Our study focusses on determining the nature of the cognitive, affective and conative components of attitudes primarily towards HE Waterless facewash and its ads. We performed literature survey and analysed journals on various concepts related to attitude to devise dimensions that affect attitude development towards new product adoption. These dimensions were used in the development of a questionnaire. Appropriate sampling (snowball) and scaling techniques were then chosen which was followed by the formulation of hypotheses for analysis. We used a 5-point semantic differential scale to analyse the responses of 45 male consumers who were regular users of facewash in the age group of 20-30 years. Consumers were then exposed to advertisements of HE Waterless facewash. Since HE is a comparatively new product, product trials were then conducted for all respondents. Consumer responses were then collected post exposure to ad and product trial. t-tests were conducted to determine the level of significance of the three components of consumers towards HE waterless facewash. The analysis of attitude towards HE waterless facewash concluded that consumers exhibited a fairly positive but not a strong cognitive attitude, exhibited almost a neutral affective attitude, exhibited favourable conative attitude towards the product The study helps in understanding consumer attitude towards HE Waterless facewash and extending its results in re-designing the promotion and marketing strategy for the effective development of favourable consumer attitudes.