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Introduction

Unilever Limited is one of the biggest marketers of the globe. They are the giant organization into Fast

Moving Consumer Goods having presence in five continents, more than fifty plus countries around the

world, has the largest gigantic customer base. Multiple categories in Food, Health and Personal Care

products Unilever has created mass of differentiation in each of their own categories only and created

brands which competes with its own brands only. Therefore, the biggest differentiation factor that

makes Unilever and its products different from the market or gives them competitive advantage is

marketing.

Unilever Limited

Unilever Limited is one of the biggest Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies of the world having

varied range of food and personal care products. They divide their whole range of product offering into

various categories e.g. Health and Personal Care and Food. Under these broad categories, they even

divide sub-categories such as Personal Care has personal care and toiletries. Personal care would have

sub-categories like cosmetics as well as detergents etc. Now within each of these sub-categories

Unilever creates multiple brands. For example, their laundry and detergent category would have three

large brands in the Indian region like Surf, Rin and Wheel. Each of these products would have their own

brand visibility, target market audience and each of them would compete with each other in terms of

pricing, benefits, target market etc. We would evaluate the standard marketing concept of Unilever and

the typical marketing mix that they follow (Unilever, 2010).

Market segmentation, Targeting & Positioning

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For a Marketer it is of extreme important to segment the market first before they begin marketing any

products. Market segmentation is a basic concept of economics as well as marketing. Market

segmentation is a separate division of a market which is ideally consists of people as well as

associations. These groups demands products with or without similar natures and deliverables and

quality. They are even differentiated or categorized by pricing. A marketer categorizes market segments

based on specific needs, demands and choices and last but not the least price paying appetite.

Therefore, even Unilever first categorizes its market and then creates products. All consumer services

companies first do an extensive market research to be able to understand the consumer data and

demand. Then they categorize consumer demands on the basis of their monthly household incomes and

home appliances or luxuries available at home. They identify the pain area of each category of

consumers and try and address their needs accordingly. The objective remains a consumer whatever

they want. Market segmentation happens on the basis of few fundamental categories such as age of the

consumer, place where they live, what is the gender, earnings and interest. This helps a marketer to

target the right consumer for the right product and benefiting from them (Pine, 1993).

Target market or target audience is primarily a group of consumers whom the business aims at spending

their whole marketing effort on. It is a defined market with a mix of variable components within it,

which decides the fate of the product created by the marketer. Unilever is specialized and extremely

experienced in creating an appropriate target market for them. Now the product is made with all the

required consumer appealing ingredients and comes out to a promotional level to target the right

consumer. Each category of consumer would get appealed by different range of promotional activities.

For example, integrated marketing mixes like advertising, media, promotion etc. would be used.

Depending on what age group and social standard of consumers have been targeted by the marketer,

integrated marketing tool would be adopted for implementation. Choosing an appropriate marketing

tool also helps in approaching the right consumer targeted and churns sales. At times, aggressive tool

usage spoils the market for that product completely. For example, Surf, Washing Detergent was

targeted to middle class society women population and hence television was chosen as a medium of

conveying the message, the model chosen was given the same look which replicates a middle class

house wife and her demands. As a whole, the marketing mix was made appealing so that it reaches out

to the right target audience (Dickson & James, 1987).

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Now comes positioning, which in marketing means a process through which the marketer creates an

appropriate image for the product in the mind of the target audiences or consumers. Positioning in the

target market is equally important for a marketer as wrong positioning may spoil the product and

pushes to phase it out complete from the demand scale. Unilever always strives to position its products

correctly in the market. Three brands in one category means distinctive features of each of these

products. Quality of the product, usage guidance, pricing, packaging, and promotion is always done with

appropriate tool of segmentation. In a promotional campaign as well Unilever chooses the best

communicative and appealing medium. Television attracts the most, and hence Unilever always targets

the television first to talk to its consumers. It is definitely taken over by Word of Mouth. Any Fast

Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company would concentrate significantly on distribution model,

channels of distribution and similarly, Unilever also concentrates on distribution model. They make sure

their products are there everywhere. On the other hand, Unilever’s products or creations are always

high from an experimentation perspective. They always create a market for themselves. One of the key

methods they follow is Price Skimming. They usually fix the product price higher from the market

standard bar. For example, Surf, even if it is one of the leading washing detergents for the middle

income group households, still it is little expensive, at least in the period. The target audience got

attracted by the promotion and bought the product to experience it. The quality of the product then

plays a pivotal role and the consumer gets attracted for the second buy and that is how the market is

created for the brand, even if it was a little more in terms of a price from any earlier product existence.

Quality of production makes the major difference and Unilever always thrives on that (Trout & Rivkin,

1996).

Unilever also extensively use a concept like Just Noticeable Difference. JND or Just Noticeable Difference

meaning the most in-significant yet most significant difference between two products or brands under

one category. This tiny difference creates big difference and changes the complete dimension. Any Fast

Moving Consumer Goods company, as mentioned earlier, use extensive market research to develop

their products, markets, pricing, promotion, place to be affirmed. Each launch comes under regular scan

as they involve extensive investments. External companies are hired, who are experts in this job and an

extensive consumer brain mapping is done. Larger conglomerates like Unilever uses such research

reports, which comprises of primary as well as secondary research data, to build a product and market it

appropriately too, which could lead to a sale and sale turnover. While they do this, they also get to

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