Good Example Of “Marketing Is The Process By Which An Organization Relates Creatively, Productively, And Profitably To The Marketplace” Research Paper

[Marketing Strategies of Unilever]

Executive Summary

In this competitive business world, marketing play a vital role in any organization. The key two principle of marketing are to attract customers in the business and manage them actively to retain them. Unilever is the leading company in UK, having head quarter in London which is serving the people around the world over eight decades. Unilever has many famous brands of food, home care and personal care to serve with. The personal care brands include AXE, Bryl cream, Dove, Fissan, Lifebuoy, Lux, Ponds, Radox, Rexona, Signal and Close up, Simple, ST IVES, Sunsilk, Tresemme, Vaseline and VO5. The brand selected to write the white paper is the signal (dental care).

Introduction to the brand

Philip Kotler (2011) explained marketing by following definition

Another definition of the marketing is by American marketing association (2007). This termed marketing as  
“Set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”
Unilever launched various products for dental and oral care. The leading product in this category is the Signal Tooth Paste. The product has been marketed keeping in view the main strategies involved for marketing. These are segmentation, targeting and positioning. The marketing point of view of this product is explained by the marketing definition of Kotler (2011), as it indicate the sense of productivity in the oral care market by meeting the specific needs of the people. These needs are related to whiteness, as well as mouth freshness. Signal is available now everywhere in UK, and it is also offered in other markets and this strategy is leading to the profitability to the market place.

Marketing Strategies

Marketing Strategies helps individuals to inform them about the benefits of the specific items and innovation. It is likewise a route for us to captivate with buyers on matters that are important to them. Unilever helped promoting using a modest 2% last year to $8.2 billion (Jack, 2012).

Segmentation Criteria

Segmentation can be defined as identification of subsets of buyers in a market with homogenous characteristics in terms of needs and preferences. It can be regarded a form of critical evaluation of two different market (Videira et al., 2013).
Segmentation variables are fundamentally figures which help the association to focus the target group. Segmentation is vital with the end goal of verifying that the needs of the clients are generally satisfied to a substantial degree. There are numerous courses in which the entire of the business sector can be sectioned (Kurukshetra, 2013). Sign have collaborated with the world's biggest dental organization, the FDI, which speaks to in excess of 750 000 dental practitioners around the globe.
Segmentation criteria are a process of knowing and evaluating, checklist questions to identify difference customers in the marketplace for a particular product.

This is a good practical approach to ask yourself question like:

WHERE:
Is the decision made to buy?
Do customers seek information about the product?
Do customers buy the product?
WHO:
Are the occupants of segments identified by the previous questions?
Buys our products, and why?
Buys our competitors’ products and why?
WHY:
Do customers buy?
Do customers choose one brand as opposed to another?
Demographic Segmentation
In demographic segmentation, variables mostly comprise of demographic elements. The association can undoubtedly sort the needs of the buyers on the premise of demographic variables, for example, age, sex and so on. Consequently Signal can be fragmented in customer market under demographic division under age, sex and family measure. Since Signal white now is uniquely made for men and signal children is additionally accessible. Demographic division factors are much simpler to acquire and measure contrasted with the variables of other division techniques. By utilizing sign tooth paste as an item, Unilever Company fragments their item in Industrial business sector. Industrial clients have a tendency to be less in number and buys expansive amounts. They assess offerings in more detail, and the choice process typically includes more than one individual. These trademarks apply to associations, for example, makers, administration suppliers, and also affiliates, governments and establishments. Under wellbeing, cleanliness and magnificence Unilever advertise their signal toothpaste as an industrial division (Kurukshetra, 2013).

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation has been done on the basis of people psyche like price consciousness, taste and environmental concerns (Han, 2014). For young customers Unilever launched mouthwash and toothpaste with different flavors like mint flavor

Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation includes segmentation done on the basis of people mind set and perceptions. Like people mostly needed healthy and freshening paste (Lee et al., 2012). Signal uses behavioral segmentation on the basis of health standards and people perceptions about oral and dental care.

Geographic Segmentation

Signal launched products internationally but some products are launched on local and regional levels. Like Herbal tea launched in the areas where there is shortage of tea. Similarly oral care products are launched where there is less perception about the oral care (Kurukshetra, 2013).

Targeting strategy

Targeting refers to choosing a segment or segments in order to communicate the product message to them. Targeting strategy is selection of potential customers for selling products or services. It involves both segmenting the market and targeting it for offering products or services. There are three main targeting strategies (Samu et al., 1999). These are

Undifferentiated targeting strategy

Concentrated Targeting Strategy
Differentiated Targeting Strategy
It is the choice of business to choose whether it wants to offer its product to multiple consumers or each segment should get one generic product. Unilever also utilizes all three types of strategies. A brief description of three targeting strategies utilized by Unilever has been given below;
Segmentation indicates to the methodology of isolating the business sector of customers into gatherings focused around one or more imparted inner or outer attributes. After the segmentation procedure is finished, the following step is targeting, which includes the Unilever Signal advertiser's picking a portion or fragments to which to convey the limited time message. There are two distinctive targeting strategies that a toothpaste advertiser can actualize. The Signal marketer must settle on the imperative choice in the matter of whether he or she wishes to utilize an undifferentiated or differentiated targeting strategy (Samu et al., 1999).
An undifferentiated targeting procedure is utilized when an organization chooses to convey the profits of its item by sending the same special message to everybody. For an undifferentiated procedure to be fruitful, the organization's item must be promptly accessible and reasonable and must give the same profits to all buyers. Not very many organizations with buyer items meet these criteria. While in the differentiated strategy includes outlining more than one special message, with each one imparting distinctive profits.
Selecting the target market is the most important thing and need to be done careful if the target markets are not selected, carefully everything will be ruin and all the efforts that are made will go in vain (Qi and Li, 2014).This is one of the strategies, which is used for the purpose of the identification of the product to the market. In this strategy, the way is seen, and the method that is adopted to introduce the product is observed by the business.
The strategy that has been used by the management of Unilever is more related to the geography. The countries of the world have been separated to each other. Somewhere Signal toothpaste is different while somewhere else it is different. In the whole of the strategy, the customers have been identified and have been categorized in terms of the ages and the gender that leads toward the inner segmentation of the whole of the market. Due to all that there occur the effective strategies that can make everything clear to everybody. Selecting the right target market is really necessary and ignoring it might lead toward the failure of the business, which is unacceptable for everybody (Schwarzkopf, 2009). The effective targeting strategy is product differentiation rather than market differentiation. Signal is using the strategy for differentiated products for diverse group of customers and targeting their demands (Nazmul et al., 2012)

Positioning

The point of each one organization is to involve a unique place in buyer's personalities in examination to the opposition, this is called positioning. Signal is humanitarian and morally involved (activities in creating nations) and is mostly intended for families (Time, 2006). The main process for positioning a brand is described below;
Before deciding on which product to developed and launch it is common for firms to analyse how the new brand will relate to other brand in the market. This is called positioning the products by using a technique such as market mapping. The first stage is to identify the key features or attributes of these types of product –as establish by market research. This key feature might be price, quality of material used, image to be generated, and level of comfort offer and so on. They will generate different for each product category. The practical example of the effective positioning strategy can be seen from below example;
There are many ways buy, which the brand is presented, and position in the markets. The supplier has to provide the Signal in different part of the world in stores. They also know that the best choice of the people is to obtain the Signal that is having the huge impact over the lives of the people. For instance, in the Wal-Mart, the consumers of the Toothpaste, especially the Signal has been kept so that they could be provided to the customers that visit to the store every day (Harris, 2013).
Another new concept in the positioning strategy is the Unique Selling Preposition (USP), which allows companies to focus towards single position (Narayanan, 2012). The USP of Signal toothpaste is:

“Signal is the No.1 toothpaste recommended by dentists in the world”

For this signal uses every positioning strategy which enables it to capture the market share almost thrice of its major competitors (Ettenson & Smith, 2012). Positioning the brand is really important in some of the situation and there are ways in which it can be positioned in the market. From the manufacturing plant to the suppliers, there is an obvious need to send the brand from one place to another, and this is done effectively and after having a strong positioning strategy. The management makes sure that this Signal toothpaste is available in the market and they will get it through the stores, whereby every sort of Signal toothpastes will be available. There will be no store that will deny keeping this Signal toothpaste with itself.

References

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