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Henderson, Rebecca M. and Ryan Johnson (2012), “L’Oréal: Global Brand, Local Knowledge,” Pages 1-14. Harvard Business School.  Product 9-311-118.
Electronic copies of the cases can be purchased for approximately at Harvard Business Publishing. Access: https://hbsp.harvard.edu/import/794326 (Links to an external site.)
Due:  Sun Sept 27 @10:00pm  NOTE: Original Post due @10:00pm; Reply Post due @11:30pm.
Answer ALL Discussion Forum Questions and Reply to at least 1 other student’s post.  Please give reasons WHY when giving your opinions.
L’Oreal is a large CPG company and has built, maintained and adjusted its marketing capabilities over time. Students are to examine the top capabilities of L’Oreal, probing why and how these strengths emerged. Think about potential tradeoffs that come with those choices. Think about comparison firms (i.e., Proctor & Gamble (P&G)) and executing different strategies or capabilities, as well as potential competitor reactions. Also think about the blend of efforts and investments needed to build capability, including time, metrics, and monetary investment.
 (1) What are the cornerstones of L’Oreal’s marketing?
(2)  How is L’Oreal executing the strategy?
(3)  What are the tradeoffs?
(4) What are the trends in Consume Packaged Goods (CPG) marketing?
(5) What type of marketing (performance driven or emotional) is more effective? 
(6)  How are CPG companies doing in experimenting with digital advertising?
(7) Compare L’Oreal to another CPG firm in terms of each firm’s marketing capabilities. How does the role of marketing and the firm’s marketing capabilities drive innovations, strategy and determine differentiating characteristics of a product?
(8) What happens if competitors imitate L’Oreal’s marketing? How should, they react?