Introduction

1.1 Origin of the report:

This report is undertaken as a practical requirement for the Business Communication course of Business Administration program. Our course instructor Ms. Kohinur Biswas assigned us to make a standard report on our preferred topic. For that we selected a beauty soap brand of Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. named LUX as our base product. The report covers all-important factors of STP and Marketing mix strategy on the product and it has been prepared in compliance with the instructions of our course instructor Ms. Kohinur Biswas.

1.2 Objective of this report:

This report is an outcome of an analysis of marketing strategies used by Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. The main purpose of the report is to find what strategies the company uses to market its world famous beauty soap, LUX, in Bangladesh; the positive and negative aspects of those strategies. The report further analyzes the position of Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. in the toiletry industry in comparison to its competitors. The report discusses the process of using market segmentation, target marketing, the product, pricing, promotional and distribution strategies and a competitive analysis.

1.3 Methodology of this report:

For accessibility and availability of information we have chosen to work on the strategies of Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. As the company operates in the market with a huge number of products in different industries, we have decided to focus on one of their world wide successful brands, LUX. Most of the information used in this report is from secondary sources specially from website. The main source of information was the focus group discussion. In addition information was also collected from websites.

1.4 Limitation:
We are lucky enough to get a chance to prepare a report on Marketing Strategies and Consumer Perception on Surf Excel. We tried heart & soul to prepare a well-informed report. But unfortunately we faced some difficulties when preparing this report. We tried to overcome the difficulties. In spite of trying our level best, some difficulties that hamper our schedule report work: Shortage of time: Within a short time, we need to prepare some other courses reports for in this session. For this reason, we could not get a fluent time schedule for the report. Confidential data: We got some confidential data which is not possible to disclose publicly, so those data and information had to be ignored for this report. There are also some limitations given below Data insufficiency, fear of disclosure Shortage of written material Lack of proper information flow Unavailability of correct and valid information

Chapter 2 Segmentation, Target Marketing & Positioning

2.1 The Market division into smaller part as Segmentation:

Dividing a market into smaller groups of buyers with distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviours, who might require separate products or marketing mixes There are different types of segmentation:

2.1.1 Geographic: dividing a market into different geographical units, such as national, regional, local, city size, density of population, and climate 2.1.2 Demographic: dividing the market into groups based on demographic variables such as age, sex, family size/ life cycle, income, occupation, education, religion, and ethnic origin

2.1.3

Psychographic: dividing a market into different groups based on social class, lifestyle, or personality characteristics

2.1.4

Behavioural: dividing a market into groups based on purchase occasion, benefits sought, user status, usage rate, loyalty status, readiness state, and attitude towards the product

The company claims that LUX is the highest beauty soap in Bangladesh. Moreover some survey reports also reveal the same result. Though LUX is the highest selling beauty soap in Bangladesh, it does not go far traditional marketing. Moreover as beauty soap LUX does not even segments its market according to gender.

Figure 1: Market Segments

Figure 1 Shows that Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. Segments their market according to geographical areas. The population of the country is segmented into three parts which are urban, suburban and rural area consumers.

The company further differentiate the geographical segments according to Social Economic Cluster (SEC) i.e. education and Income (Table1) overleaf shows the socio Economic Clusters the company uses five segments from A to E, where A categorizes a highly educated and high income earners holders, and sequentially in descending order E categorizes the opposite who are the people who consume the product.

Socio Economic Clusters A Income High Income B Upper Middle Level Income C Mid Level Income D E

Lower Middle Low Income Income

Education

High Level of Educated Education Slightly Less than Cluster A

Educated Slightly Less than Cluster B

Educated Slightly Less than Cluster C

Very Level Literacy

Low of

Table 1: Socio Economic Cluster Segmentation

2.2 Target the customer in order to capture a significant place in the market:
The process of evaluating each market segments attractiveness, and selecting one or more segments to enter

A set of buyers sharing common needs or characteristics that the company decides to serve May not be the largest segment The segment (s) that the company can most profitably serve

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Evaluation: Porters Generation Market

Five Forces analysis helps the marketer to contrast a competitive environment. It has similarities with other tools for environmental audit, such as PEST analysis, but tends to focus on the single, stand alone, business or SBU (Strategic Business Unit) rather than a single product or range of products. For example, Dell would analyse the market for Business Computers i.e. one of its SBUs.

Suppliers power:
A producing industry requires raw materials - labor, components, and other supplies. This requirement leads to buyer-supplier relationships between the industry and the firms that provide it the raw materials used to create products. Suppliers, if powerful, can exert an influence on the producing industry, such as selling raw materials at a high price to capture some of the industry's profits.

Buyers power:
Buyer power refers to the circumstances in which the demand side of a market is sufficiently concentrated that buyers can exercise market power over sellers. A buyer has market power if the buyer can force sellers to reduce price below the level that would emerge in a competitive market. Thus buyer power arises from one buyer or a few buyers, and is the mirror image of monopoly or oligopoly. As we can see from the above definition, this approach essentially treats buyer power as the mirror image of monopoly power and as synonymous with monopsony power.

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Potential entrants:
the possibility that new firms may enter the industry also affects competition. In theory, any firm should be able to enter and exit a market, and if free entry and exit exists, then profits always should be nominal. In reality, however, industries possess characteristics that protect the high profit levels of firms in the market and inhibit additional rivals from entering the market. These are barriers to entry.

Substitute products:
Substitute products refer to products in other industries. To the economist, a threat of substitutes exists when a product's demand is affected by the price change of a substitute product. A product's price elasticity is affected by substitute products - as more substitutes become available, the demand becomes more elastic since customers have more alternatives. A close substitute product constrains the ability of firms in an industry to raise prices.

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Rivalry among Companies:

The degree of rivalry among competing companies within a particular industry will have an impact on how competitive you can become in that industry should you wish to compete in that area. According to Porter, the more intense the rivalry is in an industry or business sector, the more challenging it will be for firms to become competitive.

Figure 1 also shows that urban and suburban middle class, and rural poor people are the largest part of Bangladesh population. A search carried out by Unilever Bangladesh reveals that urban rich people are more likely to buy imported and expensive products. Moreover rural poor people tend to buy cheap products even without evaluating its quality. However urban and suburban upper middle and middle class tend to buy affordable and quality products. LUX is not a highly expensive but an affordable product. That is why the company targets urban and suburban upper middle and middle class people who are the second highest population of segment of the country. From the segmentation of customer according to SEC the target category A, B and C, because they are assumed to be financially well-off and can afford to buy LUX

2.3 The distinctive attribute of the Product which makes a clear distinctive position in the mind of the customer:
Positioning means arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products in the minds of target consumers Unilever Bangladesh Ltd obtained a good position in the buyers mind through better product attributes, price and quality, offering the product in a different way than the competitors do. The company offers improved quality of products in the industry at an affordable price with high branding, which ultimately helps to position in the buyers mind as the best quality beauty soap. The market share of the company in the beauty soap industry is somewhere around43%. Since in 13

the beauty soap industry all products are of same price Unilever can not provide its consumers with better price but it is in a great position in reference with packaging, fragrance and product designing. A position map of the company is shown Figure 2 which describes LUXs position in the consumers mind on two dimensions price and quality.

Figure 2: position Map

This figure 2 has been drawn with information gathered by conducting a consumer survey. It states that though in comparison to its competitors pricing of LUX is the same but consumers rare it as the product which gives them the highest quality. This information created a strong customer loyalty for LUX, for which it the market leader in the industry.

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Chapter 3 Marketing Mix Strategy

This chapter describes the way Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. use the tactical marketing tools for marketing LUX in Bangladesh. The chapter comprises of four sections. Section 3.1 discusses the product attributes of LUX. Section 3.2 visualizes the price of LUX according to different size. Section 3.3 conceptualizes the distribution channel of Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. This section includes a table that shows the location of the companys warehouses all around the country. Finally section 3.4 discusses the promotional activities that the company undertakes for LUX.

3.1 The solution of the problem:

LUX is an internationally renowned beauty soap brand of Unilever. Though manufactured in Bangladesh for the local market by Unilever Bangladesh Ltd, as an international brand, it maintains an international quality for the product. Formula given by Research and Development departments in foreign countries, LUX is produced in Bangladesh from imported raw materials like sodium soap, glycerol and different extracts according to flavors, coming from Unilever plants situated abroad.

LUX is offered in Bangladesh in six different flavors which are: LUX Energizing Honey, LUX Golden Glow, LUX Nature Pure, LUX Orchid Touch, LUX Almond Delight and LUX Aqua Sparkle. Taking into account the convenience of its customers, the company manufactures all flavors of LUX in three different sizes, 40gm, 80gm and 120gm.

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3.2 The value of the product:

Though Unilever Bangladesh gives its LUX customers a lot in terms of the product itself, it cannot provide a better pricing. This is due to some constraints in the beauty soap industry. Beauty soap is a product with a vulnerable demand in Bangladesh. A change in price has a high risk of creating price war among the rivals which will eventually cause a loss of profit. Its prices are almost equal to its competitor.

Brand Lux Aromatic Keya Tibet

Size 75 Gram 75 Gram 100 Gram 85 Gram

Amount 15 Taka 16 Taka 20 Taka 17 Taka

(Table 3.1): Comparative scenario of soaps pric Table 3.1 compares Luxs price with its major competitor. Company carries out research on competitors price and brand loyalty when it feels extreme necessaity of chaging price. The brand loyalty test is an exploratory research which is known as Brand Health Check-Up (BHCU).

3.3 The distribution process to make the product convenient for the customer:
Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. has a huge distribution channel for LUX all over the country as its sales reach more than 10 million pieces a year. The company has six huge warehouses, one in each division of Bangladesh, where the product goes after they are manufactured at Kalurghat factory. Table 3.2 shows the location of its six warehouses in Bangladesh.

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Division Dhaka Chittagong Sylhet Rajshahi Khulna

Location of Warehouse Dhaka City Kalurghat Heavy I/A Sylhet City Rajshahi City Khulna City

Barisal Barisal City (Table 3.2): Location of Unilever Bangladesh Ltds Divisional Warehouses 1.

The company does not use its own fleet of transport for distributing its product. However, it has outsourced its distribution process to various third party distributors, exclusively dedicated to Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. These distributors then supply the product all over Bangladesh to a huge number of retailers. Even though LUX targets the urban and sub urban middle and upper middle class people they are distributing their products all over Bangladesh because of a recent increase in demand of its product to all segments of the population.

3.4 Promoting the product to make a positive impression in the mind of the customer:
Unilever Bangladesh undertakes huge promotional activities to promote LUX which has topped the beauty soap industry of Bangladesh. It spends almost 20% to 25% of its Net Proceeds from Sales (NPC) of LUX for promotional activities for LUX 1 Its certain annual promotional campaigns like LUX Channel i Superstar and LUX Channel i Annual Cinema Awards has made the product a part of the glamour world. Since the 1930s, over 400 of the worlds most stunning and sensuous women have been proudly associated with Lux advertisements. They do not only promote LUX in Bangladesh for the beauty conscious females,

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it also promotes the brand for males and the company proved that, by including world famous male celebrity Shahrukh Khan for their advertising campaign.

Unilever Bangladesh Ltd spends a huge amount of money for promoting LUX through TV commercials, newspaper advertisements and billboards. Moreover it also undertakes small promotional campaigns at different schools, colleges, universities and recreational parks with winners of its Zonal Beauty Contests. Till now promotional activities of LUX has always been successful which has made it a household common name and helped it reach almost one billion taka sale value in the year 2004 2.

3.5 The targeted customer:

People are the most important element of any service or experience. Services tend to be produced and consumed at the same moment, and aspects of the customer experience are altered to meet the 'individual needs' of the person consuming it. Most of us can think of a situation where the personal service offered by individuals has made or tainted a tour, vacation or restaurant meal. Remember, people buy from people that they like, so the attitude, skills and appearance of all staff need to be first class. Here are some ways in which people add value to an experience, as part of the marketing mix - training, personal selling and customer service.

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Chapter 4 Control Measures

Market research:
Gathering and analyzing information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service. As per the information provided by websites, LUX soap carries out market research frequently to know about the present & future markets. i.e. if any competitor is offering something new or modifying their product. It also monitors the consumers of LUX soap in order to know what are the demands of consumers. The latest figures from market research company ACNielsen place LUX as the globes top-selling soap bar, with fellow Unilever brands Dove in second place and Lifebuoy coming fifth in the poll.

Consumer research:
Part of market research in which preferences and buying behavior of the targeted customer are identified through direct observation, mail surveys, telephone or face to face interviews and from published sources such as demographic data.

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Sales force:
The division of a business that's responsible for selling products or services Evaluating your current sales force is an important step in the process of deciding whether and how to grow your sales team. If your existing sales force is fine and will be more than adequate to fuel future growth, you can keep the number of people the same and simply add some additional training or perhaps a revamped compensation package. On the other hand, your sales force may need to grow by a few heads, or you may choose to stay the same size but have different people filling the sales positions. The evaluation and sales force control performance involves the development and enforcement of methods for monitoring and evaluating sales force performance is done by Unilever for LUX. Activities typically required for evaluation and control include behavioral analysis, cost analysis, and sales analysis.

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Conclusion
The beauty soap industry of Bangladesh consists of a few producers in the industry. The demand for this product is very much vulnerable in terms of pricing. Unilever Bangladesh is providing LUX. at a price which is affordable to most of the people in the country. Beauty soap is an uprising product in Bangladesh as a greater portion of the population, both male and female, are now getting more beauty conscious. As a multinational company Unilever Bangladesh with heavy promotional activities, has been able to penetrate the market.

With six different fragrances, three different sizes, international standard and high quality design, as a product, LUX has been highly successful over the years. Its distribution process is highly efficient. Its promotional activities, like the beauty contest has been a milestone in attracting a huge number of customers. Overall with its marketing activities LUX has been a successful brand. The only place where rival companies are progressing is in giving customers redemption offers. Research revealed that Bangladeshi customers are highly attracted to this sort of offers. These offers are not sustainable in the long run but still it takes away a considerable part of LUXs sale in the short run.

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Recommendation

In this chapter the team would suggest some recommendations to Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. to adopt more successful operation in Bangladesh. Since a huge portion of the rural poor people is demanding LUX in recent days, Unilever Bangladesh Ltd should expand their target market also towards the rural people. They should also conduct different promotional activities in rural fairs and socially responsible promotional activities to attract rural consumers and social awareness .Because Lux has different skin type soap so now if they provide different types of beauty soaps for male and female soapunder the same brand name i.e. LUX it might increase their sales. Lastly, as Bangladeshi culture children have a huge say in shopping so they should also promote the product to children like their another brand Dove. These are the recommendations suggested by teem members to Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. to adopt for a more successful operation in Bangladesh with large market share.

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Bibliography

1.

www.unilever.com

http://www.unileverea.com/ourbrands/personalcare/lux.asp http://www.unilever.co.uk/ourbrands/personalcare/lux.asp

2. 3.

www.unileverbd.com Report on Competition Scenario in Bangladesh, page 18, prepared by Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, July 2005.)

4.

http://www.gfk.be/ProductsAndServices/ConsumerDiagnosticTools/SpecialAnalyses/Bra ndHealthCheckUp

5. 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilever http://ladytobaby.com/show.php?item=155

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