Ivanoff Alexandre – ICN2 – Marketing DC
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Building on brand strength: Product portfolio management of an international bestseller
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What’s next for AXE?

Nowadays, we can say that the personal care brand AXE has achieved true worldwide notoriety as everyone hears and reads about it on the television and on the Internet. But what can we say about AXE’s true position on the personal care market? I will begin by setting-up a diagnostic for AXE in 2005 before giving some recommendations what concerns the future of the brand. Then we will analyze the real evolution of the brand within the last years.

External Diagnosis: A leadership position on the personal care market If we look at the personal care market in Europe and in the United States from 2004 to 2009, we realize that it is still growing fast today. In fact, it has increased from 86 billion dollars to 102 billion dollars, which represents a growth of 25, 7% in five years. There are many product categories in this market, but if we look at the kind of products that AXE is selling, we can see that products for bath and shower are well ranked in terms of global revenue and that men’s grooming and deodorants are among the fastest growing products. In fact, we can explain that by the attractiveness of this market for the firms, as P&G says: “Beauty is an attractive business with relatively high margins and low capital costs…”

But the peculiar growth in male grooming is not only the result of high margins and low costs. It goes along with a sociocultural trend which is that hygiene is getting more and more importance on everyday’s life. Today, it is not unusual for a man to use such products, and that can also be seen on the labour market, as grooming seems to get more importance in workplaces. In fact, men and more precisely young men are spending more and more money in personal