Shift the weight of marketing and advertising resources to the faucet-mounted filter systems to establish a new customer install base that will benefit the company in the long term by establishing future faucet filter sales revenue and allow you to direct competition with PUR in this growing market segment that charges a premium for systems and filters. Use the Brita Brand on the faucet-mounted filter to leverage the already established consumer perception for great tasting water. This will shift sales from pitcher systems to faucet systems but overall will increase profits. Although Brita should introduce the faucet system, they should still focus efforts on the pitcher efforts as their remaining budget allows.
Support The Brita strategy has been to put a system in the customer hands, even at a loss with the expectation that future revenue will be made with filter replacements on the system with over the lifetime use of the pitcher. The fact that PUR is currently losing money in the faucet mounting filter system is not a great indicator for future performance since it is highly likely that they will make profits of future filter sales in the upcoming years as was the case with Brita in the early 1990’s.
At 74% market share, PUR is the leader in the faucet mount market and with their direct campaign which explicitly calls out Brita and differentiates PUR as a superior product based on its faucet systems ability to filter against known bacteria’s which Brita pitcher system does not support. This 40 million dollar marketing campaign and the possible acquisition from Procter and Gamble make PUR a real threat. PUR is also bringing awareness for water filters to function and filter against bacterial containments. Currently, 67% of 18-24 year olds expressed concerns about health contaminants in household water. If PUR wins over this customer segment, they will gain lifelong customers who will continue to buy the faucet filters because Brita does