L’eggs is one of the few ‘‘new products’’ that has lasted over thirty years, and there are several reasons for this longevity. One of the main reasons is that L’eggs did such an excellent job of marketing when it was launched. The brand equity that was created through excellent positioning and promotion has carried over [...]
In 1969, when the original L’eggs marketing plan was being written, the market environment was ideal for the launching of a major new brand of pantyhose in supermarkets and drugstores. One of the biggest fashion trends of the times was the miniskirt, which made pantyhose almost a necessity. In addition, large numbers of women were [...]
Because of capacity considerations and the unusual sales/distribution program, with its requirements for personnel and training, L’eggs had to expand region by region and required approximately three years to become fully national. The anticipated start-up costs and gradual buildup of distribution and consumer acceptance prevented L’eggs from achieving a profit during its expansion phase. However, [...]
L’eggs made the assumption that no viable competitors would enter the market. If competition did appear in one or more of the rollout markets planned for L’eggs, the company had some flexibility to change the sequence of the rollout markets. This and other alternatives were to be considered only after careful evaluation of the competitive [...]
The L’eggs program was tested in four medium-sized U.S. cities. A high-level plan was tested in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in Sacramento, California. A low-level plan was tested in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Portland, Oregon. The four markets covered approximately 3.6 percent of all U.S. television households. These markets were selected to be representative of [...]
During the introduction of L’eggs, a traveling spokeswoman was used to discuss the L’eggs product and program with the media. The publicity program entailed personal appearances on television and radio plus selected interviews with key newspapers in each area. The introductory publicity program also included a contest for the most creative and/or humorous secondary use [...]
One of the things that Hanes determined during interviews with retail executives was that the best way to achieve broad-scale distribution on L’eggs would be to merchandise the product on a freestanding display. The result was a display unit that tied the entire merchandising program together. The original L’eggs display was a tall, round unit [...]
The main thrust of the original consumer promotion was to achieve trial and retrial by women in the target audience as broadly and as deeply as possible at a reasonable cost per woman. This was primarily done through the use of high-value coupons. The promotion plan consisted of sending high-value direct-mail store coupons to 50 [...]
To promote L’eggs during the introduction, a great deal of television advertising was done, along with some print advertisements to support the television ads. This advertising was front-end-loaded, with the largest portion of the advertising dollars being spent during the first few weeks of the introduction. Because the program was rolled out eleven different times [...]
The primary objective of the initial L’eggs advertising was to convince women that L’eggs was the best-fitting hosiery they could buy. A single line was developed that summed up the entire L’eggs position. This line was intended to create permanent brand registration in the minds of consumers by inextricably tying the product and its name [...]
Service was identified as the main obstacle to the successful marketing of a hosiery brand in supermarkets. Most retailers were unwilling to service a new brand of hosiery. Therefore, Hanes designed the L’eggs distribution system so that there would be no risk and no investment for retailers. This eliminated the barriers identified during meetings with [...]
Pricing was a very important part of the original marketing mix. The original price points represented a good deal for the consumer. These prices were in the average price range for supermarkets and drugstores, making L’eggs an excellent price/value product compared to the variable-quality hosiery products offered in these stores. Consignment terms were offered to [...]
The original strategy was to market a compact line of women’s one-size products in two styles (stockings and pantyhose). Hanes felt that this would avoid multiproduct confusion during the introduction of the program. There was to be consistent product quality, with all products delivering a single primary consumer benefit—good fit. When they were originally introduced, [...]
The new supermarket and drugstore hosiery venture was named L’eggs. One of the reasons that the name L’eggs was selected from a list of alternatives was that it worked well with a packaging concept that looked like an egg. The name also made interesting use of language by combining the word egg (which referred to [...]
Hanes management decided that there was an unusually good opportunity to create a dynamic, profitable, and timely new business for the company in the growing food and drug portion of the women’s hosiery market. It also believed that there was an opportunity to establish a consumer brand franchise that would give this new business a [...]
The initial trade meetings were positive. The in-depth discussions with personnel from major supermarkets and drug chains indicated strong receptivity to the idea. They could see a need for a heavily advertised and promoted national brand of pantyhose that would be sold in supermarkets and drugstores. Retailers widely felt that a national brand would result [...]
During the focus groups, many women said that their experience with supermarket hosiery purchases had been that they’d had problems with fit or had not been able to get the color they wanted. Most said that they would like to have a supermarket hosiery brand that they could believe in, as they do with so [...]
The national profile study of the hosiery market showed that total retail hosiery sales in 1970 were expected to be $1.7 billion and 144 million dozen units. Food stores were expected to account for 18 percent of the units, and drugstores were expected to account for 10 percent of the units. Privatelabel and unbranded merchandise [...]
The L’eggs venture began in May 1969 with the implementation of a series of research projects designed to identify the supermarket and drugstore opportunity for hosiery products. Hanes had no experience with the food and drug distribution channels, and there were many questions that it had to answer before it proceeded with a venture of [...]
The main lesson to be learned from the success of Philips’s long-life lightbulbs is to pay attention to the needs of your customers. This applies to both the consumer and the retailer. It is easy to simply look inside your company for the answers. Philips succeeded because it did a lot of consumer and trade [...]