The market for fragrances exemplifies why companies should understand their market characteristics carefully rather than assume a certain market structure can or should exist. This recent report from Circana – the company formed by the merger of consumer insights firms IRI and NPD – describes the fragrance market as having a growing luxury end and a growing “budget-friendly” end, but no middle ground. When luxury consumers want to pay less, they trade down in terms of pack size, not quality. As my co-author Arnab Sinha and I point out in our book Game Changer, market characteristics are an essential input to choosing a pricing game and setting a pricing strategy. How much value a company can share depends on the characteristics of its market and how it chooses to play in that market with its competitive advantages.
Fragrance market
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