Marketing Strategy of Unilever

Unilever is a public limited company that is a British multinational; consumer goods firm. The company was founded on 2 September 1929. Following the merger of a British soap maker and a Dutch Margarine producer, the company was developed in the proper shape. The headquarter of the Unilever company exists in London. It is a public limited company that traded as Amsterdam, IDX, LSE, and other basic components.

The operations of Adidas company are related to the consumer goods industry and the processors of the company are the Lever Brothers as well as the Margarine Urine. The company’s founder aims to develop a strong global brand that has its one image and generates the most reliable practices of the business as the development of consumer goods. The headquarter of the company is in London so, the company served worldwide areas.

There are a lot of products offered by the Unilever firm to its customers in the global market. Foods, Condiments, Ice creams, energy drinks, Minerals, tea, and baby food with other personal care brands or the prosecutes are the major activities that take place by the Unilever firm. As of revenue 2022, The Unilever company earns sales of 60.073 billion in euros.

As of operating income 2022, there are 10.755 billion euros generated by the Unilever company. There are almost 148000 employees that work in the boundary of Unilever company and generate the most valuable and reliable success of the business. The net income of Unilever company, it generates 8.269 euro billion.

Dove soap is the basic product of the Unilever company that has a higher level of demand in the global market to resolve personal care issues and provide different benefits to customers. It is the personal care and beauty product that is the basic requirement of the customers.

The main purpose of this report is to create the digital marketing strategy for the Dove soap of Unilever company by doing its STP analysis as well as the communication matrix. The evaluation of the ethics and sustainability of Unilever is also done in this report.

Read more: Marketing Strategy of Adidas

Segmentation and targeting:

Segmentation:

Unilever’s Dove soap is a classic beauty care product of the brand that has been popular among customers. This product is launched in 1957 and sold in more than 150 countries. This soap is targeting both men as well women due to the effect of the personal care brand and the overall capabilities of its benefits. The original patent for the manufacturing of dove started in the year 1950 but it exists in the proper plan in the year 1957. The logo of the dove is a profile of the namesake bird of the brand.

1.     Demographic segmentation:

Unilever’s Dove product is targeting the ages above 18 years. It targets both males as well as females that want to protect their skin and focus on beauty care. People who are very conscious about their skin and belong to the upper-middle class are targeted by Unilever’s Dove Soap. Dove also targets these people who have a higher level of power of purchasing and want to use quality products on their skin.

2.     Psychographic segmentation:

Dove is the beauty care product of the Unilever company that uses psychographic segmentation to create the psychology in both men and women where beauty incorporates all ages, shapes, sizes, and the body. Dove soap has a unique approach to concerning the market and the building of greater success.

3.     Geographic segmentation:

Unilever’s Dove Soap is a product of the company that is spread all over the world. There are more than 150 countries in which the company offers its products and build a strong image of the brand. Protecting the skin and caring for it are the basic requirements of everyone.

That’s why Dove fulfills the entire requirements of the individuals. Dove is a personal care brand or protection of Unilever that direct support the average or middle-class income people.

Targeting:

The target group of Unilever’s Dove Soap is particularly men and women above the age of 18 years. The brand says that they target people of all shapes and sizes. People who are concerned about the care of their skin and belong to the middle-class income groups that can spend some extra for good quality products are greatly targeted by Dove Soap.

Working women and men, old ages people, and adults that are above 18 years old can directly use the entire product of Unilever’s Dove soap. So, it is the greater and more sustainable activity of the business to target individuals. Dove runs its operations all over the world by selling and manicuring its product in the above 150 countries where the target market exists.

The target group of Dove Soap exists everywhere in the world that depends on greater and more supportive decisions. So, people that are very conscious about their beauty and skincare routine are the main target market of Unilever Dove Soap in the global market.

Positioning and Branding:

Unilever’s Dove Soap has an innovative or unit approach to digital marketing by positioning itself as the brand of personal care and beauty. It celebrates the spirit of individuality and the creation of different beauty care campaigns that increase the tendency of using the entire product and its awareness in the mind of the target market.

Image of the brand:

The brand image of Unilever Dove Soap by this strategy is one of the classic style, personal care brand, and the beauty rising. The idea of developing this product is to provide the proper skin routine to working women and hardworking men in society. The poisoning of Unilever Dove Soap in the customer’s mind is that of looking beautiful, protecting the skin, and less consumption time.

• Looks: Unilever Dove soap directly focuses to improve the beauty of individuals by adding the core services and the key ingredients.
• Skin protection: Dove Soap by the Unilever brand directly helps individuals to protect their skin and motivates them to reuse it again and again as per the requirements of the body.

Less time taking: In less time, Dove Soap gives accurate results as you take the sessions of the beauty care and skin-protecting treatments from the clinics.

Dove relegalized that it is difficult to position the brand and make it for both men and women. Since the year 2003, Dove Soap positioned itself through gender-specific positioning. So, Dove develops the pure soap that has been positioned as the beauty care product in the market. In the year 2004, Dove launched the “Real Beauty Comparing” which analyzed that women want to feel beautiful about their skin without knowing the arguments or methods about how to protect their skin.

So, Real Beauty Skin celebrates all women with the sensuality of the skin and generates the most effective practices in the given areas of success. Dove also did its video marketing by positioning the brand in the minds of customers where Photoshop is used to seeing the difference of the soap as applying to the body of women.

The brand image of Unilever’s Dove Soap is created by positioning as it is one of the fashion, beauty, and skincare products. It directly emphasizes the commitment to the quality of the brand and the personal care industry. So, the position of Unilever’s Dove brand is the leader in the market in proving the best customer care product in which they can protect their skin.

Positioning map:

Unilever’s positioning statement for its Dove Soap is “we believe beauty should be a greater source of confidence and not the axiality”. This positioning statement explores that if individuals use Dove Soap products, then their beauty becomes increases and they develop a higher; level of confidence by rescuing the anility terms. So, Dove is here to help individuals in a positive relationship with the way that they look.

Competitive strategy:

Unilever differentiated itself from its competitors like Procter and Gamble and Nestle. The expansion of Unilever in over 190 counties through the products that they specialized in and dominate in is the major reason that has been successful in the standout. It hands significant decision-making to local managers to strengthen its positioning in diverse markets.

Differential strategy:

The differential strategy for the digital marketing of Unilever’s Dove Soap will be focused on the lifestyle outened approach to create awareness of the brand. The brand will focus on personal caring individuals that want to get more services as individuality.

The brand will collaborate with the customers to analyze their feedback about the personal area and beauty caring routine. Taking the sessions of YouTube and other social media platforms, Unilever’s Dove brand can easily analyze the target market’s requirements.

Value proposition:

Unilever’s Dove Soap believes that beauty should be a source of confidence and not anxiety. To build self-esteem and raise the full potential among individuals Dove Soap provides the best product to the customers. Its emphasis the sustainably, ethical practices, and social impacts. Unilever Dove Soap directly improves the satisfaction of the target market giving them the best recognition and the skin care product.

Push and Pull media for differentiating and positioning:

Push media:

• Social media: Unilever’s Dove soap, promote the images of the soap in different social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
• Advertisement: Launching the TV ads and the Video marketing technicians based on real-life experiments, Unilever’s Dove soap can be taking place as better practices.

Pull media:

• Blog: Creating and sharing blog posts about personal care and its benefits.
• Reviews: Ask the customers who already purchased the Dove Soap to share their reviews.

Communication strategy:

Digital platforms or platforms are being used:

Different digital platforms help companies or brands to improve awareness and getting touch with the target market. Unilever’s Dove Soap is a product that has been promoted itself through social media sites as a digital marketing platform.

It is the best platform for communication that is chosen by Dove to integrate with the target market. Posting ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media channels or sites, is the key digital marketing platform strategy organized by the businesses in the given areas of success.

Digital platform used by the target market:

This digital platform that uses by Unilever’s Dove to target the customers is also used by the target market. Customers can review the soap on social media sites and communicate with Unilever’s Dove brand as it is the most effective product for the personal care route and the beauty or looks of individuals. So, this platform is effective for the entire communication between the customers as well as the overall activities of the businesses.

Advantages and disadvantages of this platform:

Advantages:

• This digital platform is used to attract customers and get strong feedback from the customers.
• Doing the market reach and expanding the operations into the international markets, this strategic reporting becomes increase.

Disadvantages:

• There is a lot of time required to handle this communication strategy by Unilever’s Dove.
• There is a skilled and qualified staff who is reburied to handle the communication through social l media sites as digital marketing platforms.

The key message effectively communicated:

The main message about the communication of Unilever’s Dove campaign was that the unique differences of women should be celebrated rather than ignored and their physical appearance should be transformed from the source of anxiety into the conscience.

Dove Soap is a product authorized by Unilever which directly communicates a higher level of confidence as the key message to the individuals epically the women that are mainly target market of Unilever’s Dove Soap.

Purpose of communication:

The main purpose of the communication among the customers and Unilever’s Dove through the use of social media sites is to raise awareness as well as a strong brand image of the company. The brand image of Dive is greatly managed through the given tools and greater practices as it defines the internal practices of the business values.

Dove is committed to helping all women realize their personal beauty potential by creating products that deliver real care. Unilever’s Dove Soap that beauty should be for everyone because when you look and feel your best then feel about yourself.  To appeal to con summers, Unilever Dove Soap used the Psycho personality model.

They targeted those customers who want to improve their daily skin routine and improve the overall practices as required in the future. Protecting the skin, looking more beautiful, and caring for the skin as the daily routine by consuming less amount or price, Dove gives opportunities and facilities to people under an umbrella.

Type of appeal does the message have:

Unilever’s Dove soap has emotional types of messages for appealing to the customers and targets the markets. In the message or campaign of communication, the rising of confidence instead of Anxiety is the main component that improves the business reliabilities and overall success is defined.

So, the operations and the most valuable tasks of communication can be taking place to get the emotional message appealing to the businesses. Dove believes that beauty should be for everyone due to the looking and feeling as best.

Type of communication method:

There is an integrated marketing communication method supported by Unilever’s Dove Soap. The marketing strategy for the Dove campaigns emotional appeals as well as the social causes aimed at women.

Unilever’s Dove Soap often uses real women of diverse ages, sizes, and ethnicities in the advertising to promote the positivity of the brand. So, there is an integrated communication method used by Dove to promote its beauty and personal care brand.

Online value proposition:

Buying Unilever’s Dove Soap online and get free shipping on orders over 30 dollars. It is the strategy initiated by Unilever’s Dove brand to enjoy unbeatable quality, personal care, and beauty for individuals especially women.

So, the entire communication strategy for the business direct improves the business classification and generates the broad p-practices as it is required to integrate clear practices. Unilever’s Dove Products directly improves beauty by developing a campaign of brand awareness and strong online value propositions to put discounts on the given techniques. Dove Soap by Unilever is perfect for protecting personal skin care as a daily routine.

CSR and Ethical issues:

Sustainability and ethical practices of Unilever:

The corporate social responsibility of Unilever improves its ethics and sustainability practices. Unilever’s Corporate Social Responsibility strategy directly assigns higher priority to the customers. The interest of stakeholders is greatly focused on the quality, price, and nonmental impact of the product on the consumer goods business.

Consumers of the Unilever company are significant because they directly determine the overall profit. The company’s CSR strategy directly analyzes the demand of the stakeholders and continues to enhance the process of production as an environmental footprint.

Unilever company has an ethical responsibility toward all the key stakeholders. Fulfilling the ethical responsibility reared the company to operate fairly and the ethical practices to operate in the concerned stakeholder’s mind. By taking better ethical responsibility, Unilever company embraces certain activities and practices that are not necessary.

Unilever company sets higher minimum wages for employees and labor for making sure that all the workers get competitive pay according to the work they deserve. To boost the assigned tasks and accomplish the organized responsibilities, the business values can be taking place as the greater practices.

Unilever company also takes the step to initiate the welfare of the employees. In this strategic term, the company provides the proper training to the employees that are sustainable and effective for the management of the business values and update the environmental attitudes.

Unilever helps employees to improve their professional practices and develop a strong work environment by making the proper work-life balance which is easier for the employees to express the greater and most sustainable decisions.

The company guarantees that all the raw material is ethically sourced from the given supplier and takes care of the environment. The products of Unilever are ethically sourced from one era to another one which improves the business quality and builds the proper practices as required in the future. Suppliers, employees, and distributors are directly treated with respect and in a fair manner.

Unilever company adopts ethical practices of labor for the partners of the supply chain management that include the current products and fair-trade policies to get broad and valuable decisions for the businesses.

Unilever company realizes the overall responsibility and recognizes respect as evolving the moral and ethical standards that are adopted by society. The management directly prevents the fragment of ethical standards while pursuing the businesses and compliance with the laws and regulations.

Unilever company develop a proper training network in which the employees can get the facilities of training to spend specific hours every month doing volunteer work for society. The company dedicates a specific portion of earnings to the causes of society to improve corporate social responsibilities and its core activities.

Sometimes, the company offers free products to people that can’t afford them. It is also the initiative of the company to improve the business’s success and maintain the most valuable practices as required in the given area of success. So, the current possibilities and the better areas of success lead to change as it entitles the future network opportunities of the business as educating society.

Issues with the existing practices of Unilever:

Different ethical issues affect the business’s success and its operations of CSR. Unilever is a huge firm that makes everything from processed foods to detergents. Several ethical issues that facing by Unilever including environmental reporting and pollution or toast exist. With the higher level of population, the manducation of the Unilever company becomes affected.

It is ethically wrong for Unilever’s operations to manage the entire facility and generate the best clear plans as entitled to get strong policies. In 2017, Unilever achieved 78% traceability as well as made progress in mapping the suppliers as 3^rd party suppliers to mills in our extended process supply chain.

Harassment as well as discrimination is the ethical issue that also affect Unilever’s performance These components are arguably the large ethical issues that affect the business. It decreases the financial performance of the company and reduces the number of employees in the boundary of the firm. Unilever company’s ethical practices are being damaged through these types of issues taking place in the organization.

Unilever and its employees celebrate the overall diversity of the people and give respect to the people that they are bringing in the future. To achieve the full potential and boost the current practices, the business practices can be reliable or updated. By setting a clear pathway and taking zero emission the entire strategy of the business can be resolved.

3P’s of sustainability of Unilever:

The mode of 3P of sustainability depends on the activities of PEOPLE, PROFIT, AND PLANET. The Unilever company develops different strategies to protect the end tire brand and resolve ethical or societal issues. By protecting the people, focusing on profit, and encouraging environmental practices, Unilever’s ethical practices can be managed.

For managing the people, the company is trying to improve the health of people, their confidence, and the well-being awareness of the customers about washing their hands is the initiative of Unilever’s soap categories or brands.

To improve the health of the planet. Unilever is working with Climate Action as a wide value chain and an advocate for change beyond. Sustainability at Unilever’s profit contributed to a fairer as well as more socially inclusive world including the living wage journey, describing the equity and inclusion journey.

Recommendations for these CSR practices can be improved:

• Generate higher and consistent profit: Unilever company strives to build higher profitability on a consistent level by leveraging the opportunities that help the business in the targeting of new products as well as the customer markets. With the use of effective and efficient business management strategies, the Unilever company can reduce the entire profit margin.
• Minimizing the cost: To develop cost-minimization strategies and reduce waste, the environmental and ethical practices of Corporate Social Responsibility of the company can be carried out. It is the necessary part of the business that improves the overall values and generates better practices as it is the initiative and the particular areas of success. The minimization of waste is not only the particular tool that helps to protect the actions and generate the best reliable values as required in the future. Aiming to enhance the use of recycled products directly improve the material cost and the benefit analysis.
• Products or services complying with legal standards: Unilever company complying with the legal standards as to whether developing product safety are met or not. To boost the advertising products and claim about the business success top the defraud business con summers, the entire capability can be carried out. As the contract fulfillment, the company protects the right of stakeholders as per each agreement.
• Setting wage plan: The company should set higher minimum wages for the employees by making sure that all the workers get competitive pay as they justified the efforts which extort to accomplish the assigned tasks as well as the overall responsibilities.

Conclusion:

Unilever is a consumer goods company that develops its operations all over the world. To enhance the business values and generate greater practices, the firm’s overall strategy can be developed because it raises the internal and external policies networks. Different brands are associated with Unilever.

Dove Soap is a product of Unilever that reach more than 150 countries and targets both men and women. But the main target market of Dove soaps is women above 18 years old. People who are concise about their skin, beauty, and looks are the major target market that increases performance and builds the overall strategic plans. Unilever’s segmentation, targeting, and positioning allow the firm to develop the strong and most reliable tools for business success.

There is a stationary tool is allowing that motivates business success by increasing the greater or most effective ways of doing business. Social media sites are the major communication platform for the company that helps to raise the business values and improve the greater decisions as integrated in the future. To enhance the business resources and get the most preferred terms, the firm’s overall experiences become valid.

Unilever company is trying to express the views that can be sustainable and motivated can be transformed to get the change. The communication strategy of Unilever’s Dove soap gives an emotional message and has the purpose of raising the brand image as well as weakness. Dove Soap is differentiated from other competitors of Unilever in terms of price, quality, a date messaging of the skincare routines. Various ethical and sustainable practices are currently followed by the business to make the greater decisions and accurate activities of the firm.

By using advanced planning and motivating internal practices, the firm’s decisions can be valid or sustained. Setting higher wages and giving equal opportunities to employees is the basic activity of the Corporate Social Responsibility of the firm that increases the given area of success. Unilever’s Dove Soap is the most sustainable and beneficial product for consumers all over the world, which is why it generates higher revenue for the Unilever company in the current times.