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HINDUSTAN UNILEVER
HINDUSTAN UNILEVER LI M
LIMITED
FAIR & LOVELY FAIRNESS CREAM
SUBMITTED BY - NITIN
GOEL
9818922272, 9729627852
R.I.M.T
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
With the largest market share at 53% in the Indian market for fairness
creams and wide spread penetration in the global market, Fair and Lovely
has made its brand’s presence felt within few years of its inception.
Fair and Lovely fairness cream is a product from the portfolio of HUL,
India’s largest FMCG company with leadership in Home & Personal care
products and Foods & Beverages.
To analyze the gap between the SWOT analysis and the consumer
behavior analysis
Methodology –
1. Collecting Primary data – This was done by conducting a market survey in
the form of a questionnaire.
2. Collecting Secondary data – This was done through various sources such
as online customer review and company’s website and marketing
management book by Philip Kotler.
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Then they carried forward there study by analysing the consumer
behavior by conducting a market survey. From the survey they found that
in case of Fair and Lovely, consumers display habitual buying behavior
and the purchase decision is influenced mostly by self or by the primary
reference group. We also found that the major source of information about
the product was TV advertisements though most of the people disliked
them. Also, Fair and Lovely enjoys a high share of mind among consumers
and is chosen by them primarily because of its quality and as such people
were satisfied with the product.
COMPANY OUTLINE
In the summer of 1888, visitors to the Kolkata harbour noticed crates full
of Sunlight soap bars, embossed with the words "Made in England by
Lever Brothers". With it began an era of marketing branded Fast Moving
Consumer Goods (FMCG).
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On June 25, 2007 Hindustan Lever Limited obtained approval from the
government for the change of the company name to Hindustan Unilever
Limited.
With this the company’s new corporate identity represented by a new logo
and the new name Hindustan Unilever Limited comes into effect.
The Company believes that the new name provides the optimum balance
between maintaining the heritage of the Company and the synergies of
global alignment with the corporate name of Unilever. Most importantly
the name retains “Hindustan” as the first word in its name to reflect the
Company’s continued commitment to local economy, consumers, partners
and employees. The new logo is symbolic of the company’s mission of
‘Adding Vitality to life’. It comprises of 25 different icons representing the
organization, its brands and the idea of Vitality.
Business
• Home and personal care (personal wash, fabric wash, home care,
oral care, skin care, hair care, deodorants and talc, colour
cosmetics)
• Foods (tea, coffee, branded staples, culinary products, ice creams,
Modern Foods ranges)
• New Ventures (Hindustan Lever Network, Ayush ayurvedic
products and services, Sangam, Pureit water purifiers)
• Exports (HPC, beverages, marine products, rice)
Brands
HUL s brands are household names across the country. They include
Lifebuoy, Lux, Surf Excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair & Lovely, Pond’s, Sunsilk, Clinic,
Pepsodent, Close-up, Lakme, Brooke Bond, Kissan, Knorr-Annapurna and
Kwality Walls.
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Distribution network
One of HUL’s super brands Fair & Lovely was launched in 1978, based on
a revolutionary breakthrough in skin lightening technology.
The Hindustan Unilever Research Centre (it is among the largest research
establishments in India's private sector, including pharmaceutical
companies, with facilities in Mumbai and Bangalore) deployed technology,
based on pioneering research in the science of skin lightening to develop
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Fair & Lovely. The formulation is patented. It is a patented and proprietary
formulation, which has been in the market for 25 years.
SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS
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associates. HUL s distribution network, comprising about 7,000
redistribution stockists, directly covers the entire urban
population, and about 250 million rural consumers.
Wide range of products –HUL has time and again come out with
numerous products to cater to large segment of the society such
as fair and lovely anti-marks cream, fair and lovely oil control
fairness gel, fair and lovely facial face wash, fair and lovely under
eye cream, fair and lovely body lotion, fair and lovely fairness
soap etc. Recently it has come out with – Perfect Radiance – it
has a complete range of 12 premium skincare solutions.
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differential packaging helped it become popular among the new
buyers.
Fair and Lovely Foundation – The Fair and Lovely foundation has
been started by HUL with the view to empower women in India to
change their destinies through Education, Career guidance and
skill training. It has undertaken various projects and initiatives
that bring to life its vision for the Indian woman.
WEAKNESSES
OPPORTUNITIES
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Fairness fad – In India where the majority of the people have
wheatish complexion, there is a constant desire in general to
enhance their complexion.
This paved the way for Fair and Lovely to dominate the market with
its pioneer fairness technology.
THREATS
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Reaction to advertisements- There was a year-long campaign led by
the All India Democratic Women's Association against fair and lovely
advertisements as they discriminated on the basis of the colour of
the skin which was an affront to a woman’s dignity. This ultimately
led to the discontinuance of two of its ads.
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STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
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INTRODUCTION
To study and analyse the behaviour of consumers with respect to the product
Fair and Lovely fairness creams for women, we adopted the methodology of
taking market survey in the form of printed questionnaire.
The key objective of our survey is to study and analyze the behaviour of
consumers of fairness creams with respect to:
Mind share
Market share
Buying roles/behaviour.
Purchase behaviour
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As we can see from the above diagram 52.6% of the women surveyed were
working, 31.6% were students and 15.8% of them were housewives.
As far as marital status of the sample is concerned, 63.2% were single and
36.8% were married.
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ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY CONDUCTED
The analysis of the survey shows that the demand for fairness creams is quite
reasonable. 36% of the people surveyed were already using fairness creams and
out of those who were not using any fairness creams 33.3% were willing to try
one.
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BUYING ROLES
There are five roles people play in a buying decision i.e. initiator, influencer,
decider, buyer and user. In the case of our product the initiator, decider,
buyer and user is the consumer itself .
The influencer is another factor which comprises of the reference groups of the
individual. In our case the only influencing group is the primary group
which comprises of family and friends. The secondary group has negligible
relevance in influencing the buying decision of the consumer.
BUYING BEHAVIOR
The highlighted region of the table below shows the buying behaviour of our
product consumers.
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High involvement products bear a high risk of a wrong decision because of high
prices and lack of knowledge about different brands. This leads to extended
search and careful evaluation of alternatives.
Low involvement products bear a low risk of a wrong decision because of low
prices and considerable knowledge about different brands.
Fairness creams are classified into 3 categories on the basis of their price:
Fair and Lovely belongs to the low-end product category as most of the people
find its pricing either cheap or affordable as per the survey. Also, people have
considerable awareness about various brands in this category (98% of the
people surveyed were able to recall more than 5 brands of fairness creams) so
they show low involvement in buying decision and as said earlier that there are
few differences between brands in the same category consumers display
habitual buying behaviour. Habitual buying decisions are based not only on
own experience but also on the experience of reference groups.
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BUYING DECISION PROCESS: THE FIVE-STAGE MODEL
Every consumer passes through three stages of buying process before actually
buying the product. The next stage consists of taking the purchase decision
based on the evaluation of the previous 3 stages and is followed by the last
stage of the buying process which is the post purchase behaviour as depicted in
the flowchart below.
This model implies that consumers pass through all five stages in buying a
product.
This may be the case in high-involving purchases. In low-involvement
purchases as in case of Fair and Lovely, consumers may skip or
reverse some of these stages.
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PROBLEM RECOGNITION
The buying process starts only after a consumer recognizes a problem or a need
which could be solved or satisfied through some available product in the market.
In the case of fair and lovely we analyse that the need for the product
develops from the society level as we can see from the figure below that
most of the people in our society consider fair complexion to be an important
part of one’s personality and one’s acceptance in the society.
5%
11% Very important
Important
39% Somewhat Important
Less important
44%
Not at all important
Our next question in the survey was what would people prefer to enhance their
complexion and we found out that around 18% of the people look for fairness
creams to satisfy the need of fair complexion which can be seen from the pie
chart below:
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Thus we see there is a need for fairness creams which emerged through the
need to get fair complexion.
INFORMATION SEARCH
Since the need has arose, now the consumer goes on looking for information
regarding fairness creams that can satisfy her needs. A consumer seeking for
information will go in 2 kinds of search namely; milder search state called
heightened attention and the other is active information search. Since fairness
creams do not come under the category of very expensive products, the
consumer goes in for the milder search state.
The survey shows that TV advertisements played the most important part in
spreading awareness and providing information about various Fair and Lovely.
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How do you know about Fair and Lovely?
EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES
The consumer ascertains equal but low importance to other attributes of the
product such as price, packaging and easy availability in case of fairness creams.
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Based on the above product attributes the five most preferred brands
in the market according to the survey are- Fair and Lovely, Garnier,
Revlon, Lakme and Fairever.
Out of the above mentioned brands Fair and Lovely enjoys the highest
market share at 60%.
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PURCHASE DECISION
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The graph shows a general negative attitude of the masses towards
the Fair and Lovely advertisements which adversely affects the
purchase decision of the consumers. The advertisements are failing to
create an impact on the people as half of them consider them to be just
ok and a whopping 39.5% find the advertisements poor.
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POST PURCHASE BEHAVIOR
From the survey we found that majority of the people using fairness
creams are satisfied with the brand which they are presently using. As the
brand satisfaction level is very high they also recommended it to others.
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GAP ANALYSIS
SWOT Analysis and Consumer Behavior Analysis, of the product Fair and
Lovely fairness creams, when studied together revealed points of
similarities as well as contradictions between the two.
Contradictions
• The threat posed by the negative word of mouth publicity of Fair and
Lovely according to the SWOT analysis has been completely negated by
the findings of the survey. A whopping 93% of the people using Fair and
Lovely said they were satisfied with the product’s quality and
effectiveness and thus would recommend it to others as well.
Similarities
• The most visible weakness of Fair and Lovely is its poor concept of
advertisements, the rationale behind which is based on the fact that still a
major social stigma is attached to darker girls in Indian society.
Consumers do identify with this point as almost 40% of them find the
advertisements to be poor and 50% find them just OK.
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• As identified from the SWOT analysis of Fair and Lovely, one of its major
opportunities lies in the social mindset of people in India wherein fair
complexion for girls is considered to be very important. This has been
aptly substantiated by the market survey conducted by us where almost
85 % of the respondents considered fair complexion in Indian society to be
quite important.
• One of the threats to Fair and Lovely is its inferior brand image as
perceived by the consumers. Due to its relatively lower price, as agreed to
by the consumers (36% of the respondents find the pricing cheap while
61% find it affordable), Fair and Lovely has been categorised as a low-end
product. This factor is indeed acting as a deterrent to the growth of the
product.
• The reviews aired by the dermatologists have been negative for the
fairness creams. Most of the dermatologists are sceptical about the
efficacy of these creams and find them harmful for the skin. This has been
supported by the consumers as 35% of the people from the survey
perceive fairness creams to be ineffective and harmful.
SUGGESTIONS
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that fairness creams are ineffective and harmful to the skin. In order to
change this perception and validate the effectiveness of its product, Fair
and Lovely should include the views of dermatologists and its existing
customers in its advertisements, as it is said that a best advertisement is
a satisfied customer and people instantly relate to it.
• Keep Beauty Assistants (BA) - Fair and Lovely should appoint BAs on
commission basis and keep them in various retail shops and Fair and
Lovely separate counters. This will give two advantages, firstly they will
have lot of passion to sell the product and secondly they will help remove
the perception of people about its ineffectiveness and harmfulness, on a
personal basis.
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CONCLUSION
Fair and Lovely has the largest market share in the Indian fairness
industry. One of the reasons for the above is its strong distribution
channel and the affordable pricing. However, the fact that the consumers
are becoming more and more health conscious and thus shifting to home -
made remedies and herbal products is posing a great threat to the
industry and all the more to Fair and lovely as the product lacks natural
ingredients.
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Since Fair and Lovely is a low end product, consumers display habitual
buying behavior. Also the major source of information about the product is
TV advertisements which is perceived to be poor indicating another threat
to it. Though there are many competitors, Fair and Lovely enjoys the
highest share of mind of people. Also people mainly buy fairness creams
on their perception of the quality of the product and those who do not buy
them are either satisfied with their complexion or find them ineffective
and harmful. The biggest asset for any company would be its satisfied
consumers and fair and Lovely is privileged to have them.
The comparative study of the SWOT and the consumer behavior analysis
showed that the company rightly realises the threat that the negative
reviews of dermatologists are posing a threat to it and at the same time
there was a misconception that there is a fairness fad as most of the
people are satisfied with their complexion.
Name:
Age: ____ /____ approx
Marital Status:
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Occupation:
Skin Complexion:
Questions:
1. Do You Use Any Fairness Cream:
Yes
No
2. Would You Like to Try any Fairness
Cream? :
Yes
No
3. How important is the Fair
Complexion in Our Society:
____ %
4. What would you prefer for a better
complexion? :
___________
5. How do you know about fair &
lovely? :
_____________
6. Which is the most preferred product
attribute? :
_____________
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7. Which brand do you use? :
_____________
8. Reason against the product:
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
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