3m Marketing Strategy

2191 Words9 Pages
INTRODUCTION 3M which is another name for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was, as the name suggests, originally established as a mining company by five businessmen in Minnesota. Mining proved to be of little value and hence the company shifted its focus to sandpaper products and were the first to create waterproof sandpaper. Once the company expanded, Richard Drew, who was one of their employees created masking tape in the 3M lab which enabled the company to greatly diversity their product line. Hence, this invention led to the development of hundreds of applications, which eventually led to the creation of products such as Scotch® Cellophane Tape used for box sealing, Scotchlite™ Reflective Sheeting used for highway markings and…show more content…
In 1980, they created their revolutionary product the Post-it® Notes which dramatically changed the way people communicated with one another. This was an innovative yet simple, cost-effective product, which did brilliantly in the market. 3M has been a pioneer in creating some of the world’s most innovative products which is why it has been able to expand its presence globally is numerous locations like Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, India, China, Russia, and many others, which constitute almost 60 percent of their annual sales. PRODUCT MIX Product mix, also known as the product assortment is the total numbers of product lines that a company offers to their customers. In simple words, product mix is the total variety of products that a firm sells. Some companies will have just one product, while other companies could have sell a large number of products, these can be fairly similar products or widely different. For example, Samsung has a wide product mix since they serve customers in the markets of Mobile phones, Televisions, Refrigerators, Microwaves, printers, etc. Below is the efficient product mix of…show more content…
3m has been a widely successful company mainly because of its varied and innovative product mix. From inventing simple product like masking tape which gave them opportunity to diversify their product line and now they have more than 55,000 products catering to every sector of the market. Their product consistency is quite low which implies that the width of the products or the industries to which they belong are not related to each other. They have a huge product length and depth especially for home care and automotive products. Since their product line has increased so much with time they managed to expand their branches globally and started thereby catering to a much larger audience and bringing about a huge boost in annual sales. Their marketing strategies have always been unique and attracted consumers throughout for example their ads of post-it notes. 3M invests more than 1 million in research and development every year and their 15 percent program gives opportunity to their employees to dream, brain storm and test their own ideas, they believe in taking ideas from every individual mind and implementing them in
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