Obviously not. The point is that they weren't strapped for cash. It may not be a hugely profitable market, but if it's so unprofitable that they couldn't afford to send one guy over to India to actually talk to some Indian men about shaving, then the market isn't worth investing in in the first place.
I mean seriously, they brought a product to market and didn't fly over to India until after the product flopped? And now that they have, they're talking about basic run-of-the-mill user testing like it's this brand new concept that they're just now discovering.
You underestimate just how much volume there is in consumer goods and what this does to the players in that space. Margins are small, but cash piles are utterly ginormous. I don't care to do any research, but I wouldn't be surprised if P&G alone could buy out Silicon Valley minus Apple. They're HUGE.
Also, once you break into a market, it become's a perpetual money machine. P&G could do six such flops and still come out on top, eventually, when they finally break in.
But the cost of a flop in that case is the time they could have been selling a successful product. No matter how you slice it, the cost of a trip to India is going to be insignificant compared to the benefits of getting the product right the first time.
I was more responding to your question "how are these people still in business" than questioning your logic. Obviously it would have been better for them to test their market. But the flop itself is pretty insignificant, pocket change to a company like P&G.
Oh, I see. Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that this in particular should drive them out of business. I was wondering how the kind of person who thought "flying to India to research a product for India" was trimmable fat would be able to successfully keep a company afloat.
I mean seriously, they brought a product to market and didn't fly over to India until after the product flopped? And now that they have, they're talking about basic run-of-the-mill user testing like it's this brand new concept that they're just now discovering.
How are these people still in business?