In 2009, the director of the oral-care marketing for the India division of Cottle- Taylor, Brinda Patel, thought of the brilliant idea to expand the oral care system in India. At this time 50% of the Indian population was very uninterested in curing their dental problems and did not see the need to obtain dental hygiene like toothbrushes and toothpaste. However, this did not stop Patel. She still believed that her plan would have a 20% increase in toothbrush unit sales. Her plan was to reward regions that met or exceed sales objectives and to reorganize those that underperformed. Patel’s boss gave her two days to revise a marketing plan that came close to 30% unit sales growth. Patel was determined and confident in doing so. In 2009, India was not doing so great as a country. They has about 37% of their population living below the poverty line ($1.25 U.S dollars per day) and about 78% lived in rural towns and villages. Many Indians cleaned their teeth with Neem twigs and didn’t associate with dental healthcare at all. The Indians who live in rural towns were more likely to refrain to these oral care products. A lot of the problem was that there were not dental technicians readily available to the Indian population at all. The dental professionals would move out of India for a higher pay. This caused the problem of not even being aware about the importance of the modern health care.
Cottle-Taylor in 2009 needed to bring three different marketing strategies to India to become successful and increase sales in the oral care group: segmentation, targeting and positioning. These were three very important things to consider when making this expansion into India. Segmentation is the act of dividing the target market into subsets of consumers who have the common needs and priorities and then implementing the strategies to target them. This was very important to India’s dental care because 50% of the