Back in the late 1950s, a P&G chemist named Vic Mills had a profound dislike for cleaning his grandson’s cloth diapers; he was convinced there had to be a better way and began studying the nascent disposable-diaper product segment, which then represented less than 1 percent of the billions of diaper changes in the United States every year.
在研究了来自世界各地的第一代一次性婴儿尿布之后，在预售消费测试中进行了几次设计后，宝洁测试了三层矩形垫设计（塑料背面，吸收性涉水材料和水上材料的顶层）1961年12月在伊利诺伊州的皮奥里亚（Peoria）。它也失败了。母亲喜欢一次性尿布产品，但每少点的价格太高。经过另外六个市场测试，设计和工程的进一步改进以及全新的制造过程的开发，宝洁终于取得了成功 - 这次是每尿布0.06美元。
The company launched the new diaper as Pampers. Throughout the rest of the 1960s and the 1970s, Pampers built significant unit volume and dollar sales by converting cloth-diaper users to disposables users. P&G effectively created a new category and easily won a leading share in it. Looking back, the Pampers story is a great example of strategic insight and vision. A better product fulfilled an unmet consumer need, delivered a better user experience, and created better total consumer value. In Peter Drucker’s terms, Pampers disposable baby diapers “created customers” and served them better than competitors did.
到1970年代中期，在美国，资助商已达到75％的份额，并已扩大到全球约75个国家。
想象一下，如果P＆G在1976年选择了另一种策略，那么这是什么样子。那时它引入了第二个尿布品牌Luvs，该品牌带有带有弹性收集器的沙漏形垫。Luvs以大约30％的价格溢价提供了卓越的贴合性，吸收性和舒适性。推出具有更好产品的LUV的决定可能是宝洁历史上最不幸的战略错误估计。那么，为什么P＆G推出了一个新品牌而不是改善或扩展现有品牌呢？首先，当时的公司实践决定了多种策略，这是每个类别中每个新产品的新品牌 - 这种方法似乎在洗衣粉和其他几个类别中都可以很好地运作。其次，新设计将促进更高的运营成本，并需要大量投资制造资本；预测表明，要保持利润率需要20％的零售价溢价，并且该公司担心当前的用户会拒绝高价的喷气机队。因此，空间保持不变，高级设计以高级价格与Luvs一起引入。
Unfortunately, the company had miscalculated. While consumers virtually always say they won’t buy (or even try) an improved product if it is sold at a higher price, those same consumers often change their minds when the product and usage experience are clearly better and the price premium still represents value. This turned out to be the case with shaped diapers, and Pampers suffered.
然后，出现了新的威胁。1978年，金伯利·克拉克（Kimberly-Clark）推出了Huggies，一个具有LUVS状沙漏形状的新品牌，更合身的贴合和改进的胶带固定系统。根据其新产品的实力，Huggies飙升至30％的市场份额。同时，LUVS的引入并没有使新消费者带入P＆G。取而代之的是，它将支持者市场份额分配在两个品牌之间。宝洁总体上仍然出售了更多的尿布，但是在市场份额的Huggies之后，小型和LUV的排名单独排名。
Future CEO John Pepper, who had assumed control of the U.S. operation around this time, recalls a series of focus groups that left him “in a cold sweat.” Every single mom using Huggies, Luvs, or Pampers preferred the shaped diaper. Mothers had decided.
So, finally, did P&G.
1984年，首席执行官约翰·史密尔（John Smale）批准了将抽空器移至形状尿布设计的决定。宝洁推出了Ultra Pampers，带有沙漏形的设计，新的，专有的吸收凝胶，防漏腰挡，弹性的腿部聚集和透气的腿部袖口。该公司投资了5亿美元的资本来建设和运行新的尿布线，再加上2.5亿美元的营销和促销。Ultra Pampers取得了成功，从某种意义上说，它将大多数私人用户转换为新一代产品设计，并将小型助手带回到了市场份额之前。但是，它没有为美国的拥抱者提供明确的胜利。它也没有解决空间和LUVS之间的张力 - 两种实际上相同的产品，这些产品在又有十年的广告努力（但未成功）与广告区分开。
最后，在1990年代，LUVS被重新定位为更简单，更基本的价值产品。
-A.G. Lafleyis the former chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble.Roger L. Martinis the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
–Excerpted with permission fromPlaying to Win, available this week from Harvard Business Review Press.
[[图片：Flickr用户Sergiu Bacioiu这是给予的