Auckland Kaplan Students: Strategy of TOTO's washlets

Home work (Mitsuo Sugawara) Aug 16, 2015

According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, marketing is defined as the following:

"the activity of deciding how to advertise a product, what price to charge for it etc, or the type of job in which you do this."

Advertising has various types of meaning. The essential one of them is how to create awareness for a new product, which have never existed till then and consumers don't know how fantastic it is.

TOTO's washlets, nowadays, have approximately 70% market share in Japan since then they released washlets for the first time in 1982.

Their successful depends on TOTO's excellent strategy.

It was the TV commercial, "Even your buttocks want to be washed", which was nationally televised at the prime time in which many Japanese were having dinner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tJlfj6C0sA

Unfortunately, above You tube is Japanese only, but the concept is that we can't clean these stain in wrinkles so we should use water to clean up. In addition our buttocks need to be washed. Actress rubbed blue cream in her hand and tried to wipe off the cream but she couldn't do it.

It was sensationally argued among Japanese, but many consumers gained awareness the concept.

Since then, the end users who bought and used it realized the value and can’t do without it. In addition, washlets spread via word-of-mouth. It had been slow to catch on in the new market, but it was steady.

TOTO has been adapting the unique marketing strategy according to the foreign country. Take China, for example, TOTO adapted the penetration marketing to the richest Chinese. They promoted it to the five-star hotel in China. The guest who stayed in such hotel could use and know its comfort. TOTO, now, has established its bland in Chine as a number one sanitaryware company.

TOTO's sales amount now has been increasing steadily and they has been developing new technology, for example, flushing innovation, by which only one gallon (3.785 litter) can flush the waste.