Background of Unilever

Discuss about the Generic Strategy and Intensive Growth Strategies.

The research report will highlight the main strategies to improve the overall success of the brand. According to the Effie awards 2017, Unilever is one of the companies which show the best performance while improving their overall success. The company chosen for this report is Unilever. This research report will cover the main strategies and sustainable living plan of Unilever. Talking about the company background, Unilever is the well-known trademarked company which is ranked on 269^th number when compared with the top 2000 famous companies across Australia. The company is famous for generating the majority of its economic growth from the food product business in Australia. Unilever is a famed Australian organization which was founded in the year 1899 (Unilever, 2014). The headquarters of Unilever are situated in Sydney, Australia; this corporation has its functions centered on the retail business, various food products, personal use products as well as several home products. Unilever is the chief consumer brand in the sector of foods and beverages, cleaning agents, and also personal care products for daily use. Unilever employs nearly 163,000 people in 100 countries and their cleaning as well as daily products are sold in even more than 170 countries all over the world. Currently, the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan made a speedy intensification in their business due to which they are awarded under Effie awards in 2017. Unilever is on the first rank that had got various awards in year 2017. Unilever is the only company that owns more than 400 brands, with the turnover rate of about 50 billion Euros in the past year 2016 (Limited, 2012).

The literature review is playing a very important role in any of the research as it will help to focus on the earlier literature given by the various researchers. The review of literature basically helps to recognize the point of view of the scholars in context to the importance of the strategies to improve the success of business. The study mainly focusses on the improvement strategies which made Unilever to get a chance to be on the top most rank in Effie awards 2017. This report is assembled to carry out the detailed study of Unilever success by analyzing their business strategy to improve their brands. The strategic investigation of any organization is the study of the development as well as implementation of the short-term and long-term success which company has developed for carrying out their business operations.

Literature review

Every business put up their strategy to move forward and reach to the height of success and Unilever is one of those companies who have proved that correct plan and strategies will take any company to the path of success. The path followed by them comprises of sustainable living plan and some basic framework to attain success.

Sustainable as well as equitable growth is one and the only method to create a long-term value for the stakeholders. This is the reason that company has established Unilever Sustainable Living Plan which helps to company to create a business model which is unique and different from other companies. USLP comprises of meticulous blueprint for how the company will attain sustainable growth, while bringing out the purpose as well as vision. It basically covers all the facest of business, fit in all the brands and distribution, and cover up each and every country in which they are linked in (Unilever PLC, 2017).

The four basic frameworks that shows how the Unilever Sustainable Living Plane drives the value for the growth of business to achieve success:

• Additional growth: Sustainability generally creates an advance opportunity, helps to opens up many new markets and also permits the brands to hook up with the consumers in numerous ways. About 50% of the consumers’ desire to choose the brands which are additional sustainable and the brands must be well-placed to take advantage of development prospect. The company has made such strategy to cope up with the consumers world-wide.
• Less cost: By cutting out the waste as well as making use of resources very carefully the company creates efficiencies, cut the costs and perk up limitations though fetching uncovered part to the instability of store prices. This strategy helps the Unilever to increase their random sale (Mahajan, 2016).
• Less threat: Working with the concept of sustainably plans helps the company to get rid of associated risks such as changes in climate and long-term foundation of the raw materials. By the year 2017, about 56% of the agricultural raw materials used by Unilever were sustainably founded.
• More belief: Introduction to sustainability leads to strengthen the relationship among the consumers. It helps the company to maintain the value as well as importance to the consumers, while stimulating the Unilever’s present and future employees. The company always put their efforts to maintain the belief system within the organization and this framework will totally help them out to get succeed (Tode, 2018).

Achieving success is not an easy task, a business has to pass on from lot of things and have to create number of ways to achieve success. Some of the ways that help Unilever to win Effie awards 2017 are given below:

Long term thinking: It is completely feasible, nowadays, to become successful commercially in the market and think for the short-term success. There are number of businesses that are filled up by an attraction with the short-term profit. But this type of short-termism in actual depicts that businesses are somehow missing the opportunities to build up elasticity into their business, as well as protect its standard and long-standing success. Unilever think about the impact of these long-standing developments, and their long-term thinking make them successful in the market. They have worked throughout the longer term outcome of the worldwide trends for their business (Economist, 2014).

Create new networks to expand business: Unilever is very clear about many things which also include that a business is not able to deliver the sustainable future on its hold. There are several issues that the company is facing such as issues regarding food security, climatic change and these issues cannot be solved by the company at a level which they have been creating. A next step towards the change is required, therefore they started creating new networks to resolve the issues and expand their business. Unilever has long acknowledged the significance of joint venture. Unilever has enthusiastically engaged with the other companies to speed up the growth towards sustainability. Collaboration is quite necessary, to rise up in the market and create new links to bring out new solutions to the previous problems (Davies, 2016).

Key growth strategies of Unilever

Transformation in the working culture: To achieve success, Unilever started to translate as well as set in the USLP objectives into the core running application and actions. Unilever start providing their people with the specific tools, proficiency and information which made the company capable to deliver USLP. The transform the working style so that they can reach their goals faster. USLP provides a wonderful reason to what company is doing as a business that helps to create a massive energy within the working environment and employee the engagement which helps to explain half of the development that Unilever will be producing after the transformation (Uren, 2011).

Changes in present system: There are number of times when a company is not able to realize that they need a change in their current system. Unilever realized that before reaching the unsustainable systems in which they are operating, they must need a change. Unilever is trying hard to alter the outdoor system in such a way that, in the ending, they will be rewarded sustainability (Roderick, 2017).

Market dispersion: Unilever applies the approach of market dispersion as its chief concentrated development strategy. In this rigorous strategy, Unilever tries to increase the volume of their sale to perk up the revenues and equivalent industry growth. Let us make it more clear by taking an example, in the market of home care, Unilever uncompromisingly trade its products in the current markets, like the United States as well as Canada. Such antagonistic hard work increases the Unilever’s ability to confine the customers away from challenging the home care firm. The company successfully applies this rigorous strategy by making use of general strategy of isolation to make its goods more viable and striking than other companies (Young, 2017).

Development of product: Development of any product works as a secondary exhaustive strategy which Unilever generally uses for the growth of their business. Unilever applies this rigorous growth strategy by bringing in the new products which address the need of consumers. The new versions of the personal care products made by Unilever are released out over time to uphold or boost up the company’s market share. These types of rigorous strategy direct to the strategic aim of developing the company from side to side constant innovation of the products. Such type of innovation usually improves the merchandise mix in the Unilever’s marketing mix up. Their developing strategy has put the company on first position and makes them win various awards in Effie awards 2017.

Long-term thinking

Diversification: It is the supporting strategy and Unilever make use of diversification as their sustaining rigorous growth plan. These demanding strategies mainly focus on setting up new businesses to raise their company. To accomplish diversification, Unilever get hold of other businesses over with time, such as the achievement of the personal care product business of Sara Lee Corporation. The general viable strategy of segregation supports this rigorous growth strategy by making sure that the company must acquire the brands that offer unique features which can attract the target consumers. This growth strategy has played a major role in achieving the Effie award 2017 (Trefis Team, 2015).

Development in market: Basically the market development is called as a supporting growth strategy in business of Unilever’s. In this supporting strategy, Unilever grows by entering into the new markets areas or market sector. By marketing their present day products Unilever tries to acquire new solution to the unaddressed requirements in various market section, such as infant care requirements. On the other hand, Unilever already has a considerable existence in the consumer goods market section worldwide. Therefore, this rigorous development strategy takes only a sustaining role in the business of Unilever. The general strategy of separation supports this rigorous strategy by creating up competitive benefit, based on the product inimitability essential to productively enter into the new market section (Cescau & Rivers, 2007).

As it is also clear from the above part of the project report that to be in the list of Effie awards and achieve success one must think of some strategies. To carry out a flourishing change within the business, an important strategic plan is always required to display the accurate suggestion which provides the employees a proper direction; and keep them motivated while working in current environment. The changes in the system must allow the organization to defeat any kind of challenge which is rising in their path. Unilever is one of those companies that believe in transformation and changes which make them on number one position in Effie awards 2017 (Askew, 2017). It was recommended that Unilever keep on making new strategies to flourish in the market. Changes are required for the growth; Unilever must develop new strategies to stay on the position that they have attained. Moreover, these recommendations could also be adopted to improve the overall financial status of the company. Undoubtedly, Unilever has been a market leader in terms of their offered services, but at the same time the other competitors are really working hard to match the pace acquired by Unilever. Therefore, there are sure possibilities of development of immense competition in the markets. In such type of situation, it is required from the company that they should access their resources in a best possible manner. For improved results, equality could be established at the company so that all the employees work in a great collaboration to fight against the emerging competition in the market (Kissinger, 2017).

References

Askew, K., 2017. Unilever’s plan to grow in 2017 – 6 things to learn, Available at: https://www.just-food.com/analysis/unilevers-plan-to-grow-in-2017-6-things-to-learn_id135588.aspx [Accessed 14 May 2018].

Cescau, P. & Rivers, R., 2007. Unilever’s growth strategy, Available at: https://www.unilever.com/Images/2007-investor-seminar-unilevers-growth-strategy-presentation-patrick-cescau-ceo_tcm244-422223_en.pdf [Accessed 16 May 2018].

Davies, S., 2016. What 449 ‘Failures’ Can Teach Us About Success: Unilever, Available at: https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/unilever/ [Accessed 14 May 2018].

Economist, T., 2014. Unilever: In search of the good business, Available at: https://www.economist.com/business/2014/08/09/in-search-of-the-good-business [Accessed 17 May 2018].

Kissinger, D., 2017. Unilever’s SWOT Analysis & Recommendations, Available at: https://panmore.com/unilever-swot-analysis-recommendations [Accessed 18 May 2018].

Limited, U., 2012. Introduction to Unilever, Available at: https://www.unilever.ca/Images/ir-introduction-to-unilever-march2012_tcm1288-447463_en.pdf [Accessed 17 May 2018].

Mahajan, V., 2016. How Unilever Reaches Rural Consumers in Emerging Markets, Available at: https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-unilever-reaches-rural-consumers-in-emerging-markets [Accessed 18 May 2018].

Roderick, L., 2017. Unilever’s sustainable brands grow 50% faster than the rest of the business, Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/05/18/unilever-sustainable-brands-growth/ [Accessed 16 May 2018].

Tode, C., 2018. How Unilever leverages core consumer insights for mobile success: Mindshare exec, Available at: https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news/strategy/22108.html [Accessed 14 May 2018].

Trefis Team, 2015. Here’s How Unilever Plans to Revive Growth, Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/07/17/heres-how-unilever-plans-to-revive-growth/#30804f4d7e6c [Accessed 15 May 2018].

Unilever PLC, 2017. Unilever’s Sustainable Living brands continue to drive higher rates of growth, Available at: https://www.unilever.com/news/Press-releases/2017/unilevers-sustainable-living-brands-continue-to-drive-higher-rates-of-growth.html [Accessed 18 May 2018].

Unilever, 2014. Introduction to Unilever, Available at: https://www.unilever.com/Images/ir_introduction-to-unilever-nov-2014-update_tcm244-421552_en.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2018].

Uren, S., 2011. 6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability – and how your business can too, Available at: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/6-ways-unilever-has-achieved-success-through-sustainability-and-how-your-business-can-too [Accessed 17 May 2018].

Young, J., 2017. Unilever’s Generic Strategy & Intensive Growth Strategies, Available at: https://panmore.com/unilever-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-strategies [Accessed 16 May 2018].