introduction unilever

Itsproducts include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal careproducts.Unilever owns over 400 brands, but focuses on 14 brands with sales ofover 1 billion euros.co-Unilever is mu

a Overview

Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and London, United Kingdom Itsproducts include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal careproducts.Unilever owns over 400 brands, but focuses on 14 brands with sales ofover 1 billion euros.

co-Unilever is multinational with operating companies and factories on everycontinent except Antarctica and research laboratories in: Colworth and PortSunlight, England; Vlaardingen, Netherlands; Connecticut and New Jersey, UnitedStates; Bangalore, India; and Shanghai, China It has subsidiaries in almost 100countries Notable Unilever subsidiaries include Hindustan Unilever, in whichUnilever holds a 67% controlling share.

Unilever has a simple but clear purpose – to make sustainable living commonplace.‘’We believe this is the best long-term way for our business to grow’’.

They have built a strategy to help us achieve their purpose of making sustainableliving commonplace.Vision: “Unilever’s vision is to work to create a better futureevery day We help people feel good, look and get more out of their life withbrands and services that are good for them and good for others We will inspirepeople to take small everyday actions that can add up to a big difference for theworld We will develop new ways of doing business that will allow us to doublethe size of our company while reducing our environmental impact.”

 Greenhouse gases Water use Waste & packaging Sustainable sourcing

Enhancing Livelihoods & Well-being Fairness in the workplace Opportunities for women Inclusive business

Their strategic focus

To realise vision they have invested in a long-term strategy of categories andbrands that deliver growth to the benefit of all stakeholders

b Products:

Unilever's products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal careproducts The company owns more than 400 brands, which are organised into fourmain categories - Foods, Refreshments, Home Care, and Personal Care

The 14 most focused brands are Axe/Lynx (Men's grooming products), Dove(Personal care), Omo (laundry detergent), Becel/Flora (Margarine), Heartbrand (icecreams), Hellmann's (mayonnaise), Knorr (food), Lipton (drinks) , Lux (soap),Magnum (ice cream), Rama (food), Rexona (Deodorant/antiperspirant) and Sunsilk(hair products) and Surf ( laundry products).

Unilever is organised into four main divisions: Personal Care (production and saleof skin care and hair care products, deodorants and oral care products); Foods(production and sale of soups, bouillons, sauces, snacks, mayonnaise, saladdressings, margarines and spreads); Refreshment (production and sale of ice cream,tea-based beverages, weight-management products and nutritionally enhancedstaples sold in developing markets); and Home Care (production and sale of homecare products including powders, liquids and capsules, soap bars and othercleaning products).

Production and Operation:

 Raw materials are processed to add more value End products are packaged Ready to be shippedOutbound logistics:

 Product are shipped to distributorsMarketing and Sale:

 The product is promoted though different media such as television, socialmedia, magazine, etc

Unilever owns more 400 brands around the world but most of them is firstpurchased from other nations and then popularized to the whole world

Unilever takes the brand strategy as its core competitiveness Unilever has a rich,mature, multi-brand management experience for a global perspective, it focuses onbrand strategy, decreases the number of brands from 2000 to 400, so as to ensure

the first-line brand growth As for localization, Unilever has meanwhile sought inthe development of global brands, as well as protection and development ofdomestic brands.

The key point for the success of UnileverMainly consists of two part:

 Promoting brand value Establishing Competency Model

Among Unilever's 400 global brands, most of them is purchased from originalcountries first and then popularized to the whole world Unilever's success greatlydepends on its deep root in local market and the first-hand data of regional culture.The company will change dynamically to adapt to the local conditions Global andnative brands develop together so that the company will gain maximum benefit.We source more than 200,000 different materials from 160,000 suppliers who workwith up to a million smallholder farmers

We run more than 250 factories which produce 130,000 tea bags every minute, 1 billion deodorants annually and 2 billion Magnums every year

Unilever requires all suppliers they do business with to register in the Global Unilever Supplier Qualification System (USQS)

As a multi-national company, Unilever’s Procurement team is purchasing from thousands of suppliers worldwide So they decided to introduce a USQS to managethe complexity of our supplier information USQS will enable us to standardise andstreamline the way we engage with suppliers no matter where they are located It isa single system that allows all suppliers to demonstrate to Unilever their

USQS will help the Global Unilever Procurement Team to:

- Identify approved suppliers for the products and services they want to buy- Better understand the potential risks of buying products or services in all geographies

- Encourage improvementns in supplier standards

SOME UNILEVER SUPPLIERS

1 Vietnam Chemical Corporation (Vinachem): supply to Unilever 100,000 tons / year (including 65,000 tons of washing powder, liquid detergent 35,000 tons).

2 Barry Callebaut is the world's leading supplier of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products

3 Symrise, one of the world’s largest vanilla suppliers

4 Cosmetic chemical factories Bicico is a leading outsourcing company Unilever VN International Ltd with well-known products such as Comfort, Sunlight, Vim

5 ALPLA and MuCell Extrusion - Unilever’s global packaging suppliers

3.Market intermediaries:

Unilever sales their products in over 100 countries all over the world They sell itin all kind of stores, for example in Supermarkets, drugstores and small specializedshops To introduce their brand name to the world they use all kinds oforganizations like World Food of the United Nations and the Olympic games Budif Unilever wants to promote their products, they don’t use the name Unilever budjust the specific brand name of the product So they can reach their customers moredirectly

Unilever's largest international competitors are Nestlé and Procter & Gamble(P&G) It also faces competition in local markets or specific product ranges from numerous companies,

including Beiersdorf ConAgra Danone Henkel Mars PepsiCo Reckitt , , , , , , Benckiser and SC Johnson & Son

For the competitors, P&G, undoubtedly, is Unilever's closest one There are fiercerivalries between two companies in many fields like hair product P&G hasintroduced Head-shoulders, REJOICE and PANTENE successively, known asprofessional anti-scurf, smooth hair and conditioning hair shampoos Thus,Unilever has launched a new brand "CLREAR" in order to cover its shortage inanti-handcuff market This has been not a small impact on P&G.

Since 1996, Unilever has suffered great decline in turnover, while P&G stillmaintains a stable increase on the contrary In 2004, both Unilever and P&Ggained a income of nearly $52 billion The later one's yearly profit reached asmuch as $6.4 billion, but Unilever only had $2.42 billion An indispensable reasonis just the purchasing strategy although it has pushed Unilever to success.Beside, international rivals like Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive are notthe greatest threat to Unilever, but instead the main competition comes from localbrands in emerging markets "Regional players" in emerging markets have becomethe company's toughest competition For example, emerging markets will account

for 80% of the world's population and new leaders in India and Indonesia havedemonstrated the need for structural reform, which he said would help to accelerategrowth

Though, it’s remained that Unilever has long-term opportunities in these markets.

On any given day, 2 billion people use our products to look good, feel good and getmore out of life Their portfolio ranges from nutritionally balanced foods toindulgent ice creams, affordable soaps, luxurious shampoos and everydayhousehold care products The main target group are families who has to care abouta house and themselves of course Because lifestyles, tastes, and expectations arechanging, also Unilever has to change, so they still can satisfy the customer needs.They are doing this by doing researching to develop their existing products, and tosearch and create for new products

From long-established names such as Lipton, Knorr, Lifebuoy, Sunlight, andPond's to new innovations such as the Pureit affordable water purifier, Unilever'srange of brands is as diverse as its worldwide consumer base.

Unilever used geographic method of market segmentation for the detergent OMOthis product was specially designed for the Northeaster Brazilians and also the low-income earners in the area

Everybody on the earth can give their opinion about Unilever’s products to others,and that will make sense for the new consumers Because if they heard that theproducts of Unilever are having a bad quality they probably won’t buy them SoUnilever had the idea to make a TV commercial to prevent that people won’t buytheir products In this TV commercials they showed that customers are reallysatisfied about their products and that they will advocate to buy their products.Also the media can tell the customers that the products are not trustable forexample The influence of the media is always strong It’s actually a bit stupid thateverybody believes what the media is saying, because the media just mastermind

something and tell is to the customers so they get attention and make money Andthe ones who they are talking about getting only worse of it.

Companies must put their primary energy into effectively managing theirrelationships with their customers, distributors and suppliers Their overall successwill be affected by how other publics in the society view their activity Companieswould be wise to spend time monitoring all their public understanding their needsand opinions and dealing with then constructively.

3 Micro factors affected the recent launch of Unilever’sproducts – Dove How has company dealt with these factors?

* Milestones:

1940’s: Fomula for Dove Bar

1950’s: Refined to original of Dove beauty Bar1960’s: Launched ino the market

1980’s: Leading brand recommended by Physicians1990’s: Dove beauty wash successfully launched1995-2001: Extension of Dove’s range of products

Sept 2004: Global campaign product launch – ‘’Campaign for real beauty” => intented to make more women feel beautiful

"We want to challenge the definition of beauty We believe that beauty has become too narrow in definition We want to defy the stereotype that only the young, blond and tall are beautiful."1

- Philippe Harousseau, Dove's marketing director

a Research and development

With the mission “ Make Vietnamese lives better’’, Unilever has given a wide range of high quality products with affordable prices ( example: ) It costs more than USD 300 million from Unilever to invest in VN market

(announced in 2013) And most products from Unilever including Dove shampoo are well known products to Vietnamese customers

b Manufacturing

Unilever has already had 5 factories in VN ( Hanoi, Cu Chi, Thu Duc in HCm city and Bien Hoa).

c Some challenging problem

Here's how greenhouse gas footprint across the value chain breaks down:25 percent from raw materials,

4 percent from manufacturing,2 percent from logistics,

68 percent from consumer use, and1 percent at disposal of our products

Those are the impacts of our products across the lifecycle, from the sourcing of theraw materials to the way consumer using their products.

They are also applying ‘circular value chain’ thinking to tackle some specific projects

Reuse: the use of refill pouches for dishwashing products, which we launched in South Africa in 2010, and have since been successfully rolled out in other countriestoo.

Recycle: collect waste while some materials cannot readily be recycled, as technologies do not exist.

However, they are working with Cempre in Brazil to help upskill and formalize community waste picker projects They also have successful projects

with RecycleBank in the U.S where they have been encouraging bathroom recycling and educating through our Dove and Suave brands They have achieved great success in encouraging aerosol recycling in Europe and in Brazil where they partner with customers to encourage collection In India, they have a partnership

on a technical solution to convert flexible waste into fuel, which has been successfully used to power boilers at one of their factories.

But the challenge remains and they are very keen to collaborate with other suppliers to bring large-scale solutions to local markets.

Vinachem ( Vietnam National Chemical Group) became a chemical providerfor U in September, 2010 Besides the main materials purchased from Vinachem, U had also import other materials to produce about $100.000.000per year The cooperation between U and Vinachem has brought significant benefits to U and help the company save a lot of funds for other

b Physical distribution firms

The active distribution strategy of Dove can be recognized clearly in ultilizing any transportation including motors, containers, trucks and so on The company wants to ensure that Dove can be delivered to many small shops in everywhere in VN.

c MKT service agencies

Although U has their own MKT department, they still cooperate with Ogilvy and Mather which is one of the largest agencies in the world in

advertising and MKT section The firm provides activities such as advertising, promotion, digital MKT and so on.

Dove has defined great insight for their taget customers ( women 25-40) through market research and focusing on real beauty of women, they finally have the right way to serve their customers.

Dove launched the “Campaign for Real Beauty” in 2004, in response to the findings of a major global study, The Real Truth About Beauty The main message of the Dove campaign was that women’s unique differences should be celebrated, rather than ignored, and that physical appearance should be transformed from a source of anxiety to a source of confidence This message was delivered through a variety of communication means, including TV commercials, magazine spreads, talk shows, and a worldwide conversation via the Internet.Despite the immense popularity and

commercial success of the campaign, it has also been subject to much criticism

a Main competitor

Pantene – a brand of Procter & Gamble, provides good looking for every women in all ages Panteen: It is another USA base shampoo industry which is verypopular in not only in Bangladesh but also the other countries It will become a market challenger of Dove but it has not enough market shares in comparison of Dove.

Sunsilk: Sunsilk is the main competitor of our Shampoo industrybecause it possess 43.33% market share Now it is the marketleader in local market Sunsilk entered VN market in 1995 and become the prevalent brand among Vnese consumers.

b Minor competitors

Clear – a branch of U, which is used by both men & women.