MKT304 Marketing Management

Introduction

Unilever is one of the leading companies in the global market of the consumer goods and businesses. The company has recently launched a new ‘Natural’ line of shampoo under their brand Love Beauty and Planet. According to the R&D team of the company, the primary aim of the brand is to attract women between the age group of 18 to 35 ("shampoo", 2018). Moreover, the brand boasts of their new range of shampoos that have natural ingredients and are completely vegan. Hence, in order to capture the market and have a successful marketing communication strategy, certain factors are to be analyzed. This report will analyze new directions for the product, with the help of SWOT analysis and Porter’s Five forces model. Moreover, a new strategic brand position is to be identified by employing the Ansoff matrix for marketing.

Key Theories to Influence Marketing communication

SWOT Analysis of Unilever’s ‘Natural’ line shampoo:

As the product is already catching attention of the millennials, a SWOT analysis of the brand will be helpful in order to understand the strengths, weaknesses, possible opportunities and threats of the brand.

Strengths:

Unilever, as an organization enjoys global recognition. Over the years, the company has launched multiple brands under their patronage. The Love Beauty and Planet range of products is also becoming successful in grabbing the attention of the consumers (Machmud and Sidharta 2014). The following strengths can be seen in the brand’s convenience goods business:

• The global recognition and acceptance of Unilever products are helping the brand to be benefitted. This brand value ensures the products strong market penetration.
• The broad range of product mix of the brand will help the brand to gain significant growth in the global market.
• The economy of scale, due to the large and cost effective production of the brand plays a significant role in the gaining a competitive edge over the market rivalry (Dirisu, Iyiola and Ibidunni 2013).
• The brand is also showing a significant market presence in the global market. The cost effectiveness of the product is helping the brand largely.
• The product boasts of having natural ingredients, hence is eco-friendly. Moreover, all the ingredients and the containers are biodegradable. This strategy is being helpful for the Love beauty and Planet brand.

Weakness:

In spite of having a strong market presence, the brand has some weaknesses that can limit its potential growth. The following are some of the weaknesses that the brand should address for a better prospect:

• The products under the Love Beauty and Planet brand are highly imitable in nature. The company though has invested heavily in the production and marketing strategies, the imitability of these products cannot be overlooked.
• The biggest weakness of the brand is that it lacks direct approach to its consumers. The brand, as well as Unilever as a company depends on the retailers (Amaral 2017). Hence, the retailers always have the capability to influence the consumers.

Opportunities:

Along with the growing market and brand recognition, the brand has several opportunities to witness a significant growth. The future opportunities of the brand are as following:

• The Love Beauty and Planet brand already prides of using all natural ingredients as in their new range of shampoos. It claims of the shampoos are infused with the natural ingredients that are ethically sourced ("shampoo", 2018). An addition to this, the brand can develop avariety of shampoos that are vegan and free of any chemical ingredients.
• The brand has the opportunity to step outside the personal care and hygiene products and come up with a range of home and wellness products as well. As the target group of the brand is the women between the age group of 18 to 35, introducing homecare products that have natural resources as their key ingredients, will also be very helpful in their business ("shampoo", 2018).
• Taking up new market development strategies can also be helpful for the brand.

Threats:

There are number of external factors that can be limiting the business of the product as well as the brand. Following are some of the threats and risk factors that can hamper the growth of the brand:

• The primary threat to the brand is the presence of strong product rivalry (Hasan 2015). As the products of the brand are cost effective, the competitors can threaten the brand of reducing the market share and consequent financial performance of the brand.
• As per the current trend, consumers are in favor of the products that have natural ingredients (Amaral 2017). As a result of this, multiple companies are coming up with products that have natural ingredients. Hence, product imitation can be a threat for the brand.
• Moreover, some of the giant retailers re coming up with their own range of products, this can be a serious problem to the brand.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis for Love Beauty and Planet

Considering the vast range of operation of Unilever in the global market, Love Beauty and Planet has to deal with a wide diversity of external factors. As shown by Porter’s five forces model, these external factors can affect the business of a particular brand (Dobbs 2014). The following are the forces that can create impacts on the Love beauty and Planet:

Competitive Rivalry (Strong)

Competitive rivalry is the biggest factor that can affect the business of the brand. As the ‘Natural’ range of shampoos is cost effective and user friendly, there is a high chance that the product will face rivalry from other brands. Moreover, Unilever faces high competition from the existing market. The factors that play influential role in increasing the competition are presence of higher number of firms, aggressiveness of these firms and lower switching cost. The presence of large number of firms and their aggressiveness can threaten the market of Unilever. In addition to this, the products have very low switching costs.

Bargaining Power of the Consumers(Strong)

The bargaining power of the consumers is another major issue that can affect the brand. It is commonly seen that the consumer base of the convenience goods are highly volatile and tend to shift their preferences frequently. However, the specialty consumer base does not tend to change unless the quality of a given product reduces. Hence, customer retention is a major issue that should be addressed by the company. The low switching costs of Unilever products make enable the consumers to switch easily to other products. Hence, customer loyalty is a big threat to Unilever. Hence, the buyers are capable of bargaining for these products. Moreover, the consumers have vast information regarding these retail goods. This is enabling them to decide whether to opt for another brand.

Bargaining Power of the Suppliers (Moderate)

The suppliers influence the market of Unilever moderately. The availability of the raw materials affects the overall production of the organization. In addition to that, multiple factors influence the bargaining power of these suppliers. Unilever has a large number of suppliers. Hence, there are fewer chances of depending on any particular supplier. As a result of this, the bargaining power of the suppliers pose moderate threats to Unilever.

Threats of Substitution (Weak)

The brand enjoys the wide recognition of the Unilever Company. Hence, it has very little to no chances of being replaced by any other brand. Although Unilever faces higher risks due to low switching costs of the products, threats of being substituted are low. The reason behind this is the lesser availability of products that can substitute Unilever products. Unilever products have higher rate of availability in the market; this makes them easier to be obtained. In addition to this, it is seen that the substitutes have lesser impact on the consumers along with insignificant difference in costs. Hence, threats of substitution is less for Unilever products.

Threats of New Entrants (Weak)

Threats of new entrants in the market can almost be nullified for the brand. The vast global market and the huge brand recognition elements any risk from new entrants in the market.

Summary

Strategic Brand Position Using Ansoff’s Matrix:

Ansoff’s Matrix

In consideration of the growth of a particular organization or brand, the Ansoff matrix is considered as highly effective of suggesting accurate and swift outcomes (Rawal 2013). Hence, in the context of Love Beauty and Planet, the model can certainly be helpful in finding new strategy for marketing communication.

Market Penetration:

As it is widely known, market penetration is the safest option to influence in marketing strategy of a newly launched product (Saaty 2013). The primary strategy taken by Unilever, regarding the natural range of shampoo is the inclusion of eco-friendly and ethically retrieved natural ingredients, the company should focus more on this factor. Hence, an expansion of sales of this product is possible by employing vigorous advertising campaigns. By applying proper marketing strategies, Unilever can gain significant consumer base for their natural line of products.

Product Development:

The natural range of shampoo boasts of user-friendly ingredients. Moreover, it comes with a variety of essence, hence at present there not much need of product development (Zeriti et al., 2014). However, the company can work towards minimizing the chemical ingredients.

Product Diversification:

As the brand has launched a new range of products, it can also come up with a variety of homecare products under this brand name.

Market Development:

The unveiling of the natural line of products is the companies endeavor to address the fragmented marketplace (Huang and Sarigöllü 2014). Moreover, the company aims at shifting towards high growth sectors in the market. As a response to this endeavor, the company is aiming the millennial customer base.

Strategic Marketing

By analyzing all these factors, that might influence the marketing strategy of the Love Beauty and Planet brand, it can be said that the brand needs to focus on the marketing strategy of attracting a consumer base that has a comparatively higher buying capabilities. The ‘Mobile Defensive’ strategy will be more helpful in this regard (Mintz and Currim 2013). To keep the loyal consumer base, the first and foremost strategy that the brand needs to follow is the process of constant up gradation of their natural shampoo and soap. Moreover, in order to grasp a new market, flexible adaption is highly important.  

Recommendation

In lieu with the analysis, it can be suggested that the brand must look forward to attracting a new consumer base of its own. Unilever has launched the Love Beauty and Planet brand so that it can fill the void that of their premier consumer base. Hence, the brand must work towards reducing the competition in their market, with utmost importance.

Conclusion

To conclude the report, it can be said that the natural range of shampoo is likely to be enjoying the brand awareness of the Unilever. This will definitely be helpful in their advertising and marketing strategies. However, the brand must focus more on their strategy of aiming at the targeted market base. As the company is opting for the market of specialty goods, it should be more careful about the preferences of the consumers.  Moreover, the products are claiming to be free of Parabens, a product that a huge number of customers are unwilling to use. Hence, the brand should focus more on these aspects and build a marketing campaign so that the new changes in their products grab the attention of the consumers.  

References:

Amaral, A.C. 2017. Dove Real Beauty Campaign: A Local Perspective (Doctoral dissertation).

Dirisu, J.I., Iyiola, O. and Ibidunni, O.S. 2013. Product differentiation: A tool of competitive advantage and optimal organizational performance (A study of Unilever Nigeria PLC). European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 9(34).

Hasan, M.M. 2015. Marketing Analysis of Unilever. Total Quality Management, 11, p.13.

Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E. 2014. How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132). Springer, New York, NY.

Machmud, S. and Sidharta, I. 2014. Business models for SMEs in Bandung: Swot analysis. Jurnal Ekonomi, Bisnis & Entrepreneurship, 8(1), pp.51-61.

Mintz, O. and Currim, I.S. 2013. What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities?. Journal of Marketing, 77(2), pp.17-40.

Nacchia, F. and Massaro, V. 2017. A joint linguistic-marketing analysis of brand and product names: the case of Unilever. Lingue e Linguaggi, 22, pp.169-186.

Rawal, P. 2013. AIDA Marketing Communication Model: Stimulating a purchase decision in the minds of the consumers through a linear progression of steps. International Journal of Multidisciplinary research in social & management sciences, 1(1), pp.37-44.

Saaty, T.L. 2013. Analytic hierarchy process. In Encyclopedia of operations research and management science (pp. 52-64). Springer, Boston, MA.

shampoo. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.lovebeautyandplanet.com/us/en/hair/products/shampoo.html

Zeriti, A., Robson, M.J., Spyropoulou, S. and Leonidou, C.N. 2014. Sustainable export marketing strategy fit and performance. Journal of International Marketing, 22(4), pp.44-66.