Always, P&G Brazil’s feminine hygiene pad brand, generated the smallest revenues among P&G
Brazil’s three major categories and was the third player in the market behind Kimberly-Clark and
Johnson & Johnson. In Brazil, P&G had only one feminine care product which had moved up market
through successive innovation/sales cycles. Each upgrade brought a price increase supported by an
intense marketing and sales push. The capital intensiveness of paper manufacturing required scale to
drive profitability. Sales of Always had suffered since the purchase of Ela and Livre & Atual because
economic difficulties spurred consumers to seek a lower-priced product. Successive innovations
priced P&G out of the market to a point that it lost scale. Although Always possessed a 30% share in
the premium tier, it had less than a 10% share of the total market.