You launch a new product and it takes off. What do you do next? You expand production, right? No, if you're marketing in Japan, you take your limited edition dollars to the bank and discontinue the product.
That's what Pepsi did with its Ice Cucumber soda as did Nestlé with its one-off Cantaloupe Melon and Koshian Maccha (green tea with red-bean filling) KitKat bars.
The Japanese, according to the Aug. 6 BusinessWeek, have a thing for limited editions (known there as gentei) and go to great lengths to snap up items they know will only be on the market for a short period of time.
Pepsi's Ice Cucumber beverage, for example, sold out of its 4.8 million bottle supply in just a few weeks. Keiko Ishihara, who oversees PepsiCo sales for Japanese distributor Suntory, told the magazine there was never any thought of expanding production of the drink.
"We didn't want it on the market past the summer," she said. "The value of Ice Cucumber is that it's gone already."
Consumers in Japan are so into limited editions that companies cannot avoid going this route. There is, however, a concern that brand equity can get lost in the process of introducing and then discontinuing products so quickly.
Ms. Ishihara said, even with its success, Pepsi looks to limit its limited editions to three or four a year to avoid consumers getting "tired of it."
David Teasdale, president of Mars Japan, told BusinessWeek, "If you do it too much, [consumers will] forget why they are purchasing the brand. Mars Japan has gone the gentei route with M&Ms tied to Hollywood movie releases.
Discussion Questions: Does the gentei experience in Japan have applications here in the U.S.? What about concerns that use of limited editions can lead to a deterioration of brand equity?