What Is Unilever's Market Development Strategy?

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While the world’s developed economies are still addressing the troubles deriving from the banking crisis of 2008, several emerging markets have achieved a significant rise in incomes, which brings FMCG companies with appealing growth opportunity to enter the new markets and expand market share. According to a report made by The Economist Intelligence Unit (the world’s leading resource for economic and business research, forecasting and analysis) and Mintel (a leading global supplier of consumer, product and media intelligence) published in January 2013, consumption expenditure in the emerging markets, namely China, India, Mexico, Turkey and South Africa is expected to rise between 7.7% and 15.2% per annum between 2013 and 2016. Meanwhile, …show more content…

This strategy relates to the introduction of current products into new markets to capture the growth as well as compensate for sales reduction in developed economies. A remarkable instance is that Unilever gained success in launching its Magnum ice creams in the Philippines and Malaysia in 2012 while the brand continued to operate well in the US and Indonesia. Besides, in 2013, laundry brands like Surf and Omo were successfully launched in Morocco and the Philippines respectively. Moreover, the expansion of the soap brand of Unilever, Lifebuoy also proves the success of its market development strategy. Initially, this brand was launched in India by Unilever during epidemics as a powerful germicidal and a disinfectant. Until now, the brand has presented in many emerging markets like China, Vietnam and Indonesia and become one of the important products in the daily life there. In practice, Unilever has undertaken three ways for developing market for its categories: (1) increase market penetration; (2) increase consumption and (3) encourage the consumers to buy higher value products. Putting market development into practice requires a rigorous consistent approach in all Unilever categories. Therefore, during 2009, its global category development teams made every effort to create market development model for every category. These …show more content…

These strategies are actually efficient tools for the company to capture the growth in these dynamic markets. With market development strategy, Unilever has strived to widen market for its existing products. As a result, several famous brands have had wide presence in a number of developing markets. Additionally, by implementing market penetration strategies, the FMCG giant are making the most of purchasing power of consumers in these markets, which leads to the sales growth in its categories over time. Furthermore, due to product development strategy, the company has provided its customers with the highest quality products and smart innovations, which contribute significantly to improve the consumer’s health as well as reduce negative impacts of its products on environment. Unilever’s great efforts to improve people’s life quality have actually increased the consumers’ loyalty in its brand names. Therefore, despite facing with many troubles coming from the economic downturn and high competition, Unilever still generates good results in sales, profits as well as returns for its shareholder. In my opinion, this is a reward that Unilever deserves to achieve since it has always tried to gain balance between

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