About Unilever-The Multinational Company

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About Unilever-The Multinational Company

Introduction

The Unilever Company is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods firm with head office in London, England. Unilever handles products that range from food, wellbeing vitamins, ice cream, condiments, minerals, and supplements, cleaning agents, coffee, tea, breakfast cereal, pet food, water and air purifiers, personal care products, toothpaste, and beauty products. Unilever has been ranked the biggest soap producer in the world and the third-largest user goods business in the world. Further, Unilever is also the biggest producer of ice cream. Worth noting, Unilever is listed as a dual company which consists of Unilever PLC positioned in London, United Kingdom, and the Unilever N.V. situated in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Both companies operate as a single business and are headed by the same directors. The products produced by Unilever are available in approximately 190 countries across the world. The multinational company has over 400 brands with 2020 recording a turnover of 51 billion Euros. 13 of its brands had sales that surpassed 1 billion Euros in 2020. Unilever is divided into three divisions including Home Care Products, Foods and Refreshments, and Beauty and Personal Care products. Unilever has various research and expansion facilities that are found in the United Kingdom, the United States, China, the Netherlands, and India. This essay is a report of Unilever as a multinational firm including the historical background, business purpose, clientele, web page, and marketing strategies.

Background and History of the Unilever Company

Unilever began as a British soap-making company identified as Lever Brothers. They revolutionalized the action of business by introducing a soap called Sunlight Soap in the 1890s. The idea was William Hesketh Lever invention who founded the Level Brothers. The idea helped the company become the maiden company to make cleanliness popular in Victorian England. Additionally, the soap was emulated worldwide after it became successful in the UK. This made the Lever Brothers more renowned and they obtained more business globally. This success was associated with William’s strategy of both manufacturing and selling the products. In 1872, Van den Bergh and Jurgens formed their own company that produced margarine. At the time, there was a lot of competition in the Dutch margarine industry. In the 1920s, Van de Berth and Jurgen agreed to merge another margarine manufacturer from Bohemia so as to strengthen their company and beat competition (Backhaus, et al., 2001). In 1927, the two main producers of butter namely Van den Berghs and Jurgen were consolidated to form the Margarine Union. Two years later, in 1929, the Margarine Union and the Lever Brothers Company of the United Kingdom merged to form Unilever. In the 1930s, the management and structure of Unilever were termed as a professionally managed hierarchy that was primarily non-family (Cayla & Arnould, 2008). For the purpose of tax, they established two separate entities, one in Rotterdam and the other in London. Historically, Unilever grew to become a multilocal company but it used to work on regional brands with regional supply chains. It was not until the mid and early 1990s that the company began globalizing its brands.

Today, Unilever is ranked as the most consumed product brand in the world particularly in food, personal care, and home care. In 2002, Unilever had attained a global revenue of â €š ¬48,760 million (Matusitz, 2010). It continues to have two main parenting companies namely Unilever PLC and Unilever NV. Noteworthy, Unilever has two main competitors including Procter & Gamble and Nestle. Unilever has various products available worldwide particularly food products such as Blue Band, Lipton, Knorr, Broke bond, Walls, and Ben and Jerry. As regards personal care, products such as Vaseline, Ponds, Rexona, Dove, Lux, Pepsodent, Lifebouy, Lynx, Sunsilk are the most common ones.

Unilever’s Business Purpose

Unilever’s industry purpose is simply making sustainable living commonplace. The company’s corporate purpose talks of maintaining the highest principles of corporate performance to all the people they work with, the societies they touch, and the surroundings on which they impact. Unilever brands are actively involved in social change and they place sustainable development at the center of all their activities. For the firm, there are various ways of supporting social causes and contributing to sustainable development. The company, through the objectives of corporate social responsibility and collaborating with NGOs, is able to support social change, In an interview, Anna Palencia, the CSR and Communication Director of Unilever Spain revealed that since 2010, Unilever had come up with a Sustainable Living Plan for the company. The plan is a cross-cutting project that aims that making the quality of life better for millions of people, an objective that is consistent with recent global projects of the United Nations as well as agenda 2030. Alan Jope, Unilever’s CEO said that he hoped the giant global consumer would be remembered for three things namely being a symbol of diversity and inclusion, proving that running a business in a responsible manner can generate better financial outcomes, and is the home of many purpose-led brands. Without a doubt, Unilever is making strides in the right direction to achieve this purpose. Over the years, Unilever has made strides to make the Sustainable Living Plan a reality which is a 10-year strategy for the company’s growth. The strategy plans to reduce its ecological footprint while increasing its social impact. Nowadays, Unilever has many sustainable brands of living like Lifebuoy, Domestos, and Dove that have constantly outperformed the standard growth rate of any of Unilever’s portfolio. In 2019, Unilever made a pledge to reduce the use of plastic casing by over 100, 000 metric tons. It is also its goal to process and collect more packaging than the company sells by 2025. Additionally, Unilever has made notable strides as regards gender equilibrium. In 2019, the corporation attained long-standing goals where women held half of the managerial positions in the many outlets across the world. This represents an increase from 38% in 2010. The company has put up processes to help achieve advancement on gender balance within a short time and the strategy aims at doing this with a sense of urgency. This includes mandatory standards to attain balanced slates such as truly flexible work arrangements like job sharing, an equal combination of women and men candidates for promotions and new hires, nutrition and child-care programs for developing countries, and paternity and maternity leave packages. There is small ground that Unilever has not yet covered in its programs in a bid to attain its business purpose.

Unilever’s Clientele

Unilever Company produces products that target all single consumers in the market that range from the elderly population to the small children. In nearly all households, one of the five products that the people use is a product of Unilever Company. Unilever has managed to attain this success by investing in a variety of products ranging from cleaning products, personal products, and food and beverages. Unilever’s sole aim is to meet the day-to-day needs of people everywhere in the world and assisting them with good products so they can enjoy life (Suganthi, 2016). Because they produce healthy and quality products, it has been easy for them to tap into the needs of healthy consumerism. As a result, Unilever has managed to acquire a wide and loyal market that targets all individuals that have purchasing power. Additionally, because the company realizes that clients have different tastes, wants, and preferences, Unilever has segmented its market by having a wide variety of products and segmenting the market to ensure that all products go well with the end-users.

Unilever’s Web Page.

Unilever’s website employs various elements on its website that point specifically to the business it conducts including links, images, headings, paragraphs among others. To begin with, on the Unilever home page, the company has embedded links for various social media platforms. By clicking on the links, the users are redirected to Unilever’s Facebook page, Twitter, Linked in, Youtube channel (Singh, et al., 2012). Additionally, there are hyperlinks that guide users as to how to communicate with them. There is a link for contact information where users can easily locate the phone number, email address, and physical location of the company. Further, throughout the website, the company has employed the use of subheadings and paragraphs. Furthermore, there are also links that direct users to view published articles and other news and features that the company would want the general population to know about. The headings appear in relatively bigger fonts and bright colors that make it easy for the users to see the information they are searching for (Murphy & Murphy, 2018). Additionally, the website has employed the use of images which make the experience of using the interface even more exciting for users. The images make the experience enjoyable as they are not only interacting with texts but also images. For instance, on the web page, there is an image of a forest that is covered in greenery. The image is used to make reference to the action that their product, Dove, is taking against climate change. Additionally, the company has put u images of some of its leading brands on its homepage including Lifebuoy, Dove, Knorr, Lipton, Rexona among others. This makes it easy for users to know the exact brands that Unilever deals in because by just looking at the images, they can see the logo and identify the products. All these elements are designed to make the customer experience attractive and easy so that they appeal to potential clients.

Unilever’s Marketing Strategies

Unilever’s marketing mix analyses the company in terms of products, pricing, place, and promotion. Strategies such as customer experience, marketing investment, and product innovation have helped the company grow to the multinational firm it is today. As regards product strategy, Unilever products are divided into four categories namely food, personal care, refreshment, and Homecare and Water Purifier (Jurietti, et al., 2017). Unilever’s products have over 400 brands demonstrating its tremendous strength within the FMCG sector. Unilever mostly concentrates on 13 brands whose sales exceed over 1 billion Euros annually. Personal care items comprise the largest category of Unilever recording a turnover of 20 billion Euros. Unilever has a pricing strategy which is penetration. Penetration simply means low process and high quality. The company uses competitive pricing and carries out research about the current market. The prices of items are often changed in accordance to existing market conditions. Additionally, the company has a variety of products that cater to the cost segments that range from high prices to low prices. Noteworthy, the company has formed a prestige division that sells Talenti for the cost of premium ice cream, and premium personal care items.

As regards place and distribution strategy, Unilever has operations in over 190 countries. The company employs a distribution strategy to market the product. The strategy can be explained in terms of the thousands of distributors and millions of retailers it has across the world. The company capitalizes on global distribution and manufacturing to reduce costs. It also has a big distribution channel that includes direct outlets. The company has also set up warehouses in strategic locations. It is here that C &F agents take the goods to stockists before finally getting t the retailers. In India alone, Unilever’s distribution network comprises 45 forwarding agents, 4000 stockists, and about 6.3 million outlets for retailers (Sim et al., 2016). Unilever also employs a promotion strategy. It is among the biggest spender when it comes to marketing with 7 billion Euros going into marketing annually. Unilever integrates e-commerce with digital marketing to drive its sales. Unilever has employed digital campaigns such as the All Tings Hair campaign, an online video channel to market its business. Further, the company has used celebrities such as sportsmen and Film stars to promote their brands globally. Other promotional channels employed by the company include free sampling, discounts, hoardings, and print media to help build the Unilever brand on a global scale.

Conclusion

Unilever is a multinational firm with British roots that deals in products ranging from food, wellbeing vitamins, ice cream, condiments, minerals, and supplements, cleaning agents, coffee, tea, breakfast cereal, pet food, water and air purifiers, personal care products, toothpaste, and beauty products. The company has its headquarters in London, England. The text discusses the firm in terms of its historical background, business purpose, clientele, web page, and marketing strategies. The company started as a soap-making company called Lever Brothers before merging with Margarine Union to form current-day Unilever. Universe corporate purpose talks of maintaining the highest principles of corporate actions to all the people they work with, the societies they touch, and the surroundings on which they impact. The company’s clientele is all single consumers in the market that range from the elderly population to the small children. In short, the clients are people that have purchasing power. Unilever uses elements such as links, images, headings, and paragraphs on its website to appeal to users. Strategies such as customer experience, marketing investment, and product innovation have helped the company grow to the multinational firm it is today.

References

Backhaus, K., Mühlfeld, K., & Van Doorn, J. (2001). Consumer perspectives on standardization in international advertising: A student sample. Journal of Advertising Research, 41(5), 53-61.

Cayla, J., & Arnould, E. J. (2008). A cultural approach to branding in the global marketplace. Journal of International Marketing, 16(4), 86-112.

Matusitz, J. (2010). Disneyland Paris: a case analysis demonstrating how globalization works. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 18(3), 223-237.

Murphy, P. E., & Murphy, C. E. (2018). Sustainable living: Unilever. In Progressive Business Models (pp. 263-286). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Jurietti, E., Mandelli, A., & Fudurić, M. (2017). How do virtual corporate social responsibility dialogs generate value? A case study of The Unilever Sustainable Living Lab. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 24(5), 357-367.

Sim, S., King, H., & Price, E. (2016). The role of science in shaping sustainable business: Unilever case study. Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology; Clift, R., Druckman, A., Eds, 291-302.

Singh, J., Scriven, J., Clemente, M., Lomax, W., & Wright, M. (2012). New brand extensions: patterns of success and failure. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(2), 234-242.

Suganthi, V. (2016). Marketing strategy of FMCG product: A case study of Hindustan Unilever limited. Marketing, 1(9).