About the Company

Discuss about the Marketing Plan For Fast Moving Consumer Good.

The report helps in analysing the marketing plan of a fast-moving consumer good wherein the review is required to be done on one such product line of the company. Furthermore, the situation analysis along with marketing objectives is required to be adopted as this will help in analysing the different marketing programmes and strategies. The external and internal analysis is required to be done which will help in improving the different kinds of strategies and to perform the tasks appropriately.

Unilever is British Dutch transnational consumer goods organization which is headquartered in London, United Kingdom and Netherlands. It was founded in the year 1930 and the areas that is served by the company is the entire worldwide. Furthermore, Unilever owns more than 400 brands in which the turnover rate of the company in the year 2016 was more than 50 billion euros and there are different product lines under Unilever that is sold by them are Hellmann’s, Knorr, Sunsilk and Surf (Unilever global company website, 2018).

Unilever is one of the largest FMCG companies that has segmented their market based on different geographic, demographic and behavioural segmentation. Furthermore, the growth of the sales is 3.7% and this has helped them in being in the top position. Furthermore, the constant earnings of the company have risen to 7% and this has helped Unilever in succeeding in the entire competitive market. The entire segmentation is done on the basis of soaps, detergents along with other beauty products that are sold to the customers in an appropriate manner (Adams, Gabler and Landers 2017).

Knorr is German food and beverage brand and this is owned by the Dutch-English organization Unilever since the year 2000. Knorr brand produces dehydrated kind of soups along with meal mixes and condiments. The respective brand was founded in the year 1833 and previously it sold different food items under Lipton brand effectively.

The product that will be analysed is Knorr Soup and there are different other products which are required to be marketed in an effective manner. The situation analysis is required to be done to establish distribution channels which will help in achieving the marketing share in an effective manner. Proper external and internal analysis is required to be done which will help in analysing the different strategies in an effective manner (Refreshment 2018).

Proper situation analysis is required to be conducted for Knorr Cup Soup as this will help in analysis of the collection of the methods that will be used by the managers in order to analyze the internal and external environment of the product or the entire brand in an appropriate manner. Furthermore, the SWOT analysis is required to be performed in order to analyze the internal environment of Knorr brand and gain more insight on the different strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in an appropriate manner (Bromiley et al. 2015).

Market Segment and Position of Unilever

Strengths

• Level of the brand awareness is high in nature (Welford 2016)
• The brand heritage is strong in nature (Carroll, Primo and Richter 2016)
• Proper expansion of the distribution network (Hsu 2016)
• Offers the customers with wide variety of tastes to the different customers in the market
• It offers the health consciousness products to the customers who maintains proper diet and this helps them in gaining competitive advantage (Chang 2016)

Weaknesses

• Low salience levels as there are different customers in the market who are not aware about the benefits of the brand (Gomes, Barnes and Mahmood 2016)
• Limited distribution of the products and services (Armstrong et al. 2014)
• It helps in offering suitable for the different urban markets in an effective manner

Opportunities

• The net disposable income of the different individuals has been raised over the last few years and this has helped in increasing the purchasing power of the different individuals
• The different customers are becoming healthy and they are becoming more health conscious in nature (Sheth and Sisodia 2015)
• The consumers exposure has been increased to the different foreign brand products and this is one of the biggest opportunity for Knorr brand (Grant 2016)

Threats

• There in influx of the different foreign brands in the same kind of category of Knorr such as they are offering soups or instant noodles and this has provided Knorr with sterner competition (Strauss and Frost 2016)
• The frozen food can affect and curtail the sales which will affect the brand image of Knorr Company in the entire competitive market (McDONALD 2016)

On the other hand, the external analysis of Knorr is required to be done which will provide a proper insight on the different kinds of insights on the political, social, economic, environmental, social and technological factors. The PESTEL tool is adopted by Knorr which is the brand under Unilever to identify the impact created by them on macro environment of this international brand.

Political Factor is the first and foremost factor that is required to be analyzed by products that are sold by them. The political stability of the most countries relating to the Knorr soup is one of the opportunity for them and this will help them in growing free trade relations. On the other hand, there are different issues related to the political issues in the European Union which is the threat for the company in a negative manner (Moutinho and Vargas-Sanchez 2018). The political stability of the countries helps in providing opportunity for Knorr brand to grow in these markets. The political stability in the United States will help the company in minimizing the different kinds of challenges in the strategic implementations of the country in an effective manner.

Economic Factors is the other factor which is essential in the organization and the business performance of Knorr brand helps in outlining the influence of the economic conditions on the different firms and their impact on the macro environment effectively (Mastropieri and Scruggs 2017). There are different threats along with opportunity for the Knorr brand that includes the different kinds of increasing wages in the developing countries which has affected their brand image of the company in a negative manner. Furthermore, the increasing wages in the economy in developing countries that has increased the sales and this will increase the potentiality of the brand in a positive manner (Pride and Ferrell 2016).

Social Factors is the other essential factor which is required to be considered by Knorr, brand of Unilever that creates affect on the business performance of Unilever and Knorr brand as well. The social factors create a huge impact on the FMCG of Unilever that includes the different opportunities that include rising health consciousness among the different customers in which it has been noticed that Knorr brand needs to analyze the behavior of the customers in which this will help and provide insight to Knorr brand in including different products which will help them in becoming more popular in the economy (Gronroosn 2016). Knorr brand or Unilever needs to address the different demands of the customers which will include the health consciousness factors as this is trending in the society and this will help them in managing the preferences in an effective manner.

About the Product Line

Technological factors are the other important factor that is required to be analyzed in an effective manner. Unilever depends on the different kinds of available technologies which helps them in supporting the consumer goods business. The rising automation of the business is the opportunity and threat for them wherein it has been noticed that Unilever needs to analyze the brands impact on the purchases done by the different customers effectively. Furthermore, decreasing cost of the transportation based on efficiencies of technologies help them in increasing the operational efficiency (Helfat and Martin 2015).

Environmental Factors are the factors wherein it has been noticed that this will influence the macro environment in a proper manner. The rise in the interest in environmentalism of the business is the opportunity in which it helps in increasing the business efforts on sustainability and this helps them in increasing and enhancing the sustainability programs of the company and maintain business efforts on sustainability which will increase the overall impact on the business in a positive manner (Krishnan and Malick 2015).

Legal Factors play a significant role which plays a major role in the Unilever Company. It has been seen that Unilever needs to satisfy the regulations and this helps in minimizing the barriers to the consumers good business effectively. The increasing complexity of the different environmental regulations is the opportunity which will provide the company in following the various patent laws that is needed in order to maintain their position in the entire economy. Proper strengthening the consumer rights law is the other essential component which is essential and is required to be followed by Unilever for matching the corporate social responsibility strategy with environmental regulations (Krishnan and Malick 2015).

From the PESTEL analysis along with SWOT analysis, this can be analyzed that the situation analysis is essential which has been performed for Unilever as this assisted in gaining more competitive advantage and gaining more insight on the different performances of the company and brand effectively. With the internal and external analysis, it has been analyzed that there are different weaknesses which is required to be made their strengths and gain more strategic competitive advantage in the entire economy effectively.

There are different marketing objectives of Knorr brand which falls under Unilever and the main objectives include the following:

• To mark up more than 10% profit each year in a sustainable manner by valuing the different stakeholders along with the different employees along with maintaining loyalty among the different customers (Baker 2014)
• To increase the percentage of the sales by increasing manufacturing rate of the core brands such as Knorr (Jarzabkowski and Kaplan 2015)
• To spend the part of the budget on the different advertisements and introduction of the adoptive products in the local markets with proper innovation in the research and development which is required to be done in an effective manner (Kotler 2015)

The main and overall objective of the company or the Knorr brand is to expand their services in the entire world with the product penetrating technology into the different local markets. This will help in attaining the loyalty among the different customers and this will help in advancing the expectations of the customers in an effective manner as well.

Situation Analysis

As the main strategy of the company Unilever is to maintain customer relationships in an effective manner by establishing additional product range in their menu as this will help them in retaining their position in the market and this will help them in meeting the expectations of the customers in an appropriate manner. Knorr, the product line of Unilever needs to:

• To maintain their position with gradual growth to lead the entire world (Koseoglu 2016)
• To maintain proper relationships with the different stakeholders which are enhanced in nature along with proper and strong international management which is essential in nature to be conducted by Unilever (Holliman and Rowley 2014).

From the different marketing objectives, this can be analyzed that there are different objectives which is required to be adopted by Knorr brand in order to maintain competitive advantage. This has been seen that there are different kinds of decline in the sales of the brand Knorr and this is essential in nature for Unilever to take steps such as increasing their sales by analyzing the position of the other competitors in the economy and understand their position effectively and work upon the weaknesses effectively (McDonald and Wilson 2016).

There are different marketing strategies and programmes which is required to be adopted by Unilever and Knorr, the product line of Unilever. Proper marketing mix is essential to be conducted in order to analyze the different market development strategies which will help Knorr brand in managing and driving margins and efficiency. Furthermore, Unilever helps in believing profitable growth and it is responsible for growth as well.

Product- Knorr is the leading packages food and beverage brand that is based in Germany and this offers huge variety of the products in the marketing mix in ready to cook and frozen food segment. The Knorr soups are made of 100% vegetables and there are no such added preservatives in it as well. The classic flavors include different hot and sour vegetable, sweet corn soups and chicken delight soups as well. The company has furthermore launched eight kinds of masalas that includes Biryani masala and this has helped them in becoming more popular in the approaches that are adopted by them in an effective manner which will help them in managing the differences.

Price-  The different products of Knorr brand are bit lower in pricing in comparison to the other competitors in the market. Furthermore, the brand needs to follow the product penetration strategy as the company has major competition in the market from the other companies that are already existing in the market (Serra and Kunc 2015). In the Asian markets, it has been noticed that there are other brands such as Nestle owned Maggi which has helped them that holds more than 50% of the market share. In comparison to the other competitors in the market, it has been noticed that the prices are lesser in nature in comparison to the other competitors in the market and they are even lesser in fewer categories (McDonald and Wilson 2016).

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

Place- Knorr products are being sold in more than 75 countries around the world and this utilizes the existing channel of Unilever in each of the countries for the purpose of the distribution along with delivery as this is the sub brand under the FMCG giant’s umbrella. Knorr is the subsidiary of Unilever and it has more than 4000 redistribution network channels and the products of Knorr are being sold by them in different organized and unorganized retail stores in an effective manner. On the other day, this can be analyzed that Indian example of Big Basket is the other brand in which the different products as well (Lasserre 2017).

Promotion- Knorr follows the aggressive kinds of promotion and marketing strategies in the marketing mix for the different products. Most of the different advertisements that are undertaken by the Knorr brand are still via television along with different other commercial channels (Mastropieri and Scruggs 2017). Each of the new launch of the product is followed by heavy advertisements and there are different endorsements for the products in a positive manner. In the recent era, it has been noticed that Knorr has been active on the social media websites which includes launching of the different products in which this helped them in launching new products with the help of Facebook and other social media channels and this helped them in gaining more popularity in the entire competitive market in an effective manner.

Geographic Segmentation

• High End Product
• Targeting Lower income group

• Family Size: More than 3 (nuclear family)
• Occupation-Working and Housewives
• Age- 28-40years (buyers) and 8-10 years (consumers)
• Gender- Female along with teenagers

• Occasion- Pre-Dinner Meal
• Lifestyle- Modern Lifestyle
• Benefits- Indian Mothers, ready to cook pre-dinner snack

The main target markets of Knorr products in the entire market includes working women, housewives, customers who do not have cooking skills. Furthermore, the targeting is required to be done in an effective manner which will help the company in analyzing their tastes and preferences and try to increase their brand image in an effective manner as well.

• Customers who lead busy kind of life such as working population and students
• Customers who want taste buds with nutritional value
• Customers who do not have much cooking skills
• Customers who need healthy evening snacks especially the healthy evening snacks for the kids

Positioning is done in the organization in the following manner:

The positioning of Knorr Soup and other products of Unilever are positioned in such a manner wherein the delicious food will be available to the customers in few minutes. Furthermore, the high-quality food is provided to the customers at a very low price which helps them in maintaining their brand image in an effective manner.

 Furthermore, the ready to make and eat soups and food will be provided to the different customers in an effective manner. Furthermore, Knorr tried to position themselves which is quick to prepare and these foods are being prepared by them as this takes less tome to cook and this helps in increasing the demands of the nutritional food in an effective manner.

Marketing Objectives

There are different marketing monitors and evaluation which is required to be done by Knorr brand which is falling under Unilever brand. As a part of the developing marketing plan of Knorr, it has been noticed that measurement controls are required to be identified which is required prior to implementation.

In order to market the Knorr Soups or other products in the market in an appropriate manner, this is essential for Knorr and Unilever to analyse and understand and estimate the realistic cost which will help in ensuring marketing objective to achieve more than 70% awareness among the customers about the positive impacts of the same on the health of the individuals.

There are different key performance indicators of Knorr brand under Unilever brand wherein these will help and assist them in analysing the different strategies in an effective manner. It can be analysed that by applying proper marketing strategies like the other competitors such as Nestle, this will help Knorr brand in gaining more competitive advantage in the entire economy and competitive market. Furthermore, it can be seen that sales and profit will be changed to a certain level and this can be both profit or loss in the market as well.

Furthermore, there are different areas which is required to be ascertained in an effective manner that is required to be monitored in a close manner to make the different changes in an effective manner such as:

• Annual and monthly review of the revenue is required to be done by the company in order to improve their business in an effective manner in the future
• Proper feedback of the client is essential which will help in improve the different products and services
• Expenses needs to be managed annually and monthly that will provide proper increase in the sales in an effective manner in the near future

Objectives	Time frame	Resources	Person responsible	KPI
To ensure that the amount of sales of above $10000 per month	3 months	Good and appropriate sales team	Sales manager	Increasing the entire  sales and purchase of the company in an effective manner which will assist them in managing the entire productivity of the company eventually
To encourage the different kinds of customers to make regular purchases from Knorr and help them to analyze that the products served by them are up to the standard and this will help them in increasing the sales of the product in the market as well	3.5 months	Good along with appropriateness in the members of the sales team	Employees	Repetitive kinds of purchases among the different customers in an effective manner which will help in increasing their entire productivity and sales of the company effectually
To improve the servings which is provided by Knorr to their target customers and this will help them in managing the sales of the company in an effectual manner	6 months	Use of proper and high-end technology which will help them in managing the different kinds of the tasks in an effective manner	Head chef	Produce Quality products
To ensure operational efficiency is being maintained properly in the organization and this will help in increasing the entire costs properly with the utilization of the appropriateness in the services provided by the company in the organization	6 months	Introducing automated technology	employees	Minimize the entire costs and other kinds of expenses of the company which will improve the overall sales and profitability of the company in a positive manner
To improve the brand awareness along with improving the brand exposure among the different individuals in the organization which is helpful in managing the different kinds of awareness and this will help in impacting their presence in an effectual manner	5 months	social media tools along with various kinds of advertisements	Sales manager along with the entire sales team of the company which will help them in improving the sales of the company within a short span of time	Brand lift and this will improve the awareness of the brand among the different individuals effectively that will improve the entire productivity of the firm in a positive manner and aspect that has helped them in managing the sales of the company

Recommendations and Conclusions 

Therefore, it can be recommended that proper marketing plan is essential in nature which is required to be performed by the Unilever brand and Knorr company which is the product line under the respective brand. It has been seen that proper efficiency is required to be maintained in an effectual manner as this will help them in managing the sales along with increasing the productivity of the organization as well. Therefore, it can be recommended that:

It is essential to properly monitor the progress of the Knorr Soup product in an effective manner as this will increase the sales of the company effectually, Furthermore, the marketing objective of achieving more than 70% of the awareness among the customers is essential to be monitored by Knorr brand as this will assist them in determining their position and solve the discrepancies effectively as well.

Furthermore, Knorr needs to reduce the pricing of the product along with the quality of the product in comparison to the other competitors in the market. It has been seen that the prices of the Knorr products are not affordable by all the customers in the entire competitive market and this will create huge impact on the company as well. The brand needs to make awareness and create proper awareness among the individuals in the market which will increase the entire awareness by increasing their advertising techniques such as sales promotional techniques and increasing their advertising techniques as well in the economy.  

Unilever should have tried to segment their customers by producing different kinds of flavoured gels along with other products which will help them in managing them in providing them with different flavours and this will increase their sales in an effective manner as well which will increase their sales and productivity of the company in the near future.

Conclusion 

Therefore, it can be concluded that marketing plan is essential in nature which is required to be performed by the company in order to analyze the internal and external environment effectively. Furthermore, there are different situational analysis which has been conducted in an effective manner in which the company needs to improve the budgeting the products appropriately.

It has been seen that the marketing objectives has been adopted and this has helped them in managing the entire productivity of the company in an appropriate manner. It has been noticed that the marketing programmes had included the various implementation of the marketing plan which will assist them in analyzing the procedures in an appropriate manner. The position of the company has been analyzed with the implementation of the marketing mix that has helped them in understanding the position and segmentation that is done by the company and this helped them in managing the strategies appropriately.

Lastly, the company needs to gain competitive advantage in the entire market which will help them in analyzing the position of the company in the entire market. This has been analyzed that the Unilever brand has tried to be competitive in nature in against the other competitors. It has been seen that there were different other competitors in the market that has helped the company in analyzing their weaknesses and solved the issues in an appropriate manner which allowed the company to be more competitive in nature as to be more competitive in nature. Unilever has tried to be more relevant in managing the weaknesses by making them their strengths and this helped them in managing their position in the competitive market.

References 

Adams, F.G., Gabler, C.B. and Landers, V.M., 2017, June. Green Logistics Competency: A Resource Hierarchy View of Supply Chain Sustainability. In Academy of Marketing Science World Marketing Congress (pp. 31-40). Springer, Cham.

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Baker, M.J., 2016. What is marketing?. In The Marketing Book(pp. 25-42). Routledge.

Bromiley, P., McShane, M., Nair, A. and Rustambekov, E., 2015. Enterprise risk management: Review, critique, and research directions. Long range planning, 48(4), pp.265-276.

Carroll, R.J., Primo, D.M. and Richter, B.K., 2016. Using item response theory to improve measurement in strategic management research: An application to corporate social responsibility. Strategic Management Journal, 37(1), pp.66-85.

Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press.

Foodworks.com.au. (2018). FoodWorks Supermarkets | Grocery Specials This Week. [online] Available at: https://www.foodworks.com.au/ [Accessed 31 May 2018].

Gomes, E., Barnes, B.R. and Mahmood, T., 2016. A 22-year review of strategic alliance research in the leading management journals. International business review, 25(1), pp.15-27.

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Gronroos, C., 2016. Service Management and Marketing: Managing the Service Profit Logic. John Wiley & Sons.

Helfat, C.E. and Martin, J.A., 2015. Dynamic managerial capabilities: Review and assessment of managerial impact on strategic change. Journal of Management, 41(5), pp.1281-1312.

Holliman, G. and Rowley, J., 2014. Business to business digital content marketing: marketers’ perceptions of best practice. Journal of research in interactive marketing, 8(4), pp.269-293.

Hsu, P.H., 2016. The Study of Multi-level Marketing Industry’s Channel Conflict and Management–A case of Company M.

Jarzabkowski, P. and Kaplan, S., 2015. Strategy tools?in?use: A framework for understanding “technologies of rationality” in practice. Strategic Management Journal, 36(4), pp.537-558.

Koseoglu, M. A. 2016. Growth and structure of authorship and co-authorship network in the strategic management realm: Evidence from the Strategic Management Journal. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, 19(3), 153-170.

Kotler, P., 2015. Framework for marketing management. Pearson Education India.

Krishnan, J.J. and Malick, T.V., 2015. A Study on Marketing Services. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research (IJEMR), 5(6), pp.421-423.

Lasserre, P., 2017. Global strategic management. Palgrave.

Mastropieri, M.A. and Scruggs, T.E., 2017. The inclusive classroom: Strategies for effective differentiated instruction. Pearson.

Mastropieri, M.A. and Scruggs, T.E., 2017. The inclusive classroom: Strategies for effective differentiated instruction. Pearson.

McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from them. John Wiley & Sons.

McDONALD, M.A.L.C.O.L.M., 2016. Strategic marketing planning: theory and practice. In The marketing book (pp. 108-142). Routledge.

Moutinho, L. and Vargas-Sanchez, A. eds., 2018. Strategic Management in Tourism, CABI Tourism Texts. Cabi.

Pride, W.M. and Ferrell, O.C., 2016. Foundations of marketing. Cengage Learning.

Refreshment, F. (2018). Knorr. [online] Unilever global company website. Available at: https://www.unilever.com/brands/food-and-drink/knorr.html [Accessed 3 Jul. 2018].

Serra, C.E.M. and Kunc, M., 2015. Benefits realisation management and its influence on project success and on the execution of business strategies. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), pp.53-66.

Sheth, J.N. and Sisodia, R.S., 2015. Does marketing need reform? Fresh perspectives on the future. Routledge.

Strauss, J. and Frost, R.D., 2016. E-marketing: Instructor’s Review Copy. Routledge.

Unilever global company website. (2018). Unilever global company website | Unilever Global. [online] Available at: https://www.unilever.com/ [Accessed 3 Jul. 2018].

Welford, R., 2016. Corporate environmental management 1: Systems and strategies. Routledge.