Innovation in Dove: Strategies for Product Updates and Brand Promotion

This report discusses the importance of innovation in products, services, and processes for enterprises. It focuses on the Dove brand and provides recommendations for product updates and brand promotion.

INNOVATION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Background of organisation and description of situation...........................................................3
Discussing relevant literature associated with the topic.............................................................4
Critical analysis of the product, service or process. ................................................................5
Putting forward recommendations with justification..................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
Books and journals......................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
An innovation can be defined as a thought or idea that can be turn into reality. It can be
done in the form of products or services, new and advanced business processes or some updates
and changes in the existing products or services or in technologies. It refers to a process of
creation of plan, development of plan and implementation of that plan to innovate something in a
unique way (Arundel, A., Bloch, C. and Ferguson, B., 2019). This report is based on British
multinational consumer goods company named as Unilever which headquartered in London and
founded on 2nd September 1929. The company manufactures products like food, energy drinks,
baby foods, beauty products, personal care, health care, cereals, frozen pizza, cleaning agents
and many more. This company very well known for the largest production of soap in the world
such as Lux, Rexona, Dove and more. The other companies which can give the tough
competition to Unilever is Procter & Gamble and Nestle. The company Unilever mainly focuses
on three divisions; beauty and personal care, home care products and foods and beverages.
Innovation helps the Unilever to increase the chances in change and finding new opportunities
that fosters competitive advantage and allows the company to discover new and innovative
goods and services for their consumers.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Background of organisation and description of situation.
Unilever, a British company owns over 400 brands with a huge turnover of 53.7 billion
euros. It covers around 190 countries. The company believes to remove the word 'Normal' from
their beauty products (Biemans, W., 2018). Unilever believes in ethics of the company and treats
their employees well, it understands and follows the concept of giving them back with benefits
with good surroundings and involves employees in their projects of services. Company was
established by the merger of Dutch Margerine Unie and British soapmaker Lever Brothers with a
resulting name 'Unilever'. As Unilever has three divisions and includes well known brands like
Magnum. Bovril, Pot noodles in food division, PG tips, Lipton in drink and Dove, Redox, Surf,
Tresemme in the households. The brand identity was developed with a thought that it would add
vitality of life. The current logo of the company that is “U-shaped” was designed in 2004 by a

consultancy agency named “Wolff Olins”. It represents the company's sub brands and values of
the corporate.
The company Unilever includes several beauty and personal care brands such as Dove, Axe,
Tresemme, Dermalogica, Sunsilk, Radox, Pepsodent, Persil and many more (Dziallas, M. and
Blind, K., 2019). As the company has various sub-brands, they have to focus on innovation,
make and develop strategies to change or update their products and services, find new
opportunities and adapt new techniques and more.
Discussing relevant literature associated with the topic.
According to the view point of Kylliäinen. J. (2018), Innovation Management can be
defined as multidisciplinary concept of a set numbers of theories, models and frameworks in
their study (Key Innovation Management Models and Theories, 2018). It involves different
layers and dimensions of innovations.
Types of Innovation:
Most of the people mistakenly think that there are only one single way of innovation in
the organisation. There are number of types of innovation for an organisation that can be turned
into practice. Hence, there is not a single correct way of innovation.
 Disruptive vs sustainable innovation: Disruption innovation involves the concept,
product or services that creates a new value to the process either to the existing product
or new product completely. In the beginning it can give lower performance and this
type of innovation is not good enough as well. On the other hand, sustainable
innovation refers to the types of innovation which mainly focus on the existing ones
that rather focus on improving or growing.
 Radical vs Incremental innovation: These innovations are rarely used for the
innovations as are difficult to execute. Radical innovation come into action when new
technologies disrupts the existing firm and makes a new business model. While, in
incremental innovation refers a small series and gradually built improvements to the
existing methods, products and services to maintain competitiveness over time.
 Architectural vs Modular innovation: The main purpose of architectural innovation
is that there is no change in the core components of products but the relationship
between those changes. Modular innovation is just opposite to the architectural

innovation in which overall design will be same but two or more components will be
changed.
Understanding of all these types of innovation is just a good start for innovating anything
that could be grateful for the business. When one can be certain regarding the next step and put
knowledge of these innovation into practice that makes a huge differences and build strengths in
the competitive industry. It can help in making sense of the complex subjects.
Critical analysis of the product, service or process.
The report is going to discuss on the innovation on the product Dove which is a personal
care product looking after hair, face and body. Beauty products are produced by the personal
care industry. The sub-brand Dove involve products like shampoo, facial cleanser, deodorants,
body wash, body lotion, soap, hair elixir, baby products and many more. Dove begins their first
real beauty campaign in 2004. The brand purpose is to be an agent to educate woman and
inspires them towards being confident and make them focused on their beauty. It describes the
dedication of women of creating positive relationship as the way they look and help them realize
their potentiality and raise their self-esteem (Frishammar, J. and Et.al., 2019). This real beauty
campaign consists mostly of advertisements shown on television, internet,websites and more.
The brand involves all age groups, sizes and sJulia Kylliäinenhapes in their advertisement or for
introducing their products. Dove committed and define the role of woman and believing in the
fact beauty does not affect age, size or shape, it shows with inner beauty of woman. The brand
organised a number of short films that includes daughters, moms, grandmothers, babies for the
brand execution and promotions. Dove attracts women to maintain healthy body image and
strengthen their self esteem to face the world. The brand has been awarded many times for their
moto towards women. They have targeted with a mission to cover 1/4 billion younger people by
2030.
Identifying strengths and shortcomings of Dove:
The history of Dove was quite interesting, it has been studied that during world war
second soldiers were used to take bath with sea water (Kahn, K. B., 2018). Thus, they needed the
soap which can be used in sea water and dove was good with it because of its smoothing and
creamy nature.
SWOT Analysis oJulia Kylliäinenf Dove:
Strengths in the SWOT analysis of Dove:

 Design of Product: Dove is very well known for its smooth and creamy properties in
their products. It has a combination of both soap and crème which helps in cleansing and
the same time its moisturising properties does not dry out the skin.
 Real Julia KylliäinenMarketing: One of the most advantageous point in dove is
involving all real life people instead of using celebrities. Dove connect real life people,
real life situation in their marketing, so that the people will loyal with brand in long term
process as well.
 Channel of Distribution: It has been found in local stores, online websites, apps and
more (Lee, S. M. and Trimi, S., 2018). They are more likely to find presence in premium
outlets and leading retail chains. Dove products are available through extensive supply
chain management of Unilever.
Weakness in the SWOT analysis of Dove:
 Focused towards Metros: Dove is targeting and positioning only in metros,
consumption is highly found in metros and pricing factors affect in high range. Thus,
penetration becomes difficult in non metros.
 High in price: In comparison to other competition such as lux, the price factor of product
is quite high.
Opportunities in the SWOT analysis of Dove:
 Focusing on men and women both: Dove has created a greater opportunities as it does
differentiate or not partial with gender preferences. Equal focusing on men and women
customers, everyone now a days pampering and look and feel themselves in a good way.
They know that taking care of skin is very important for good looks.
 Target Marketing: Initially people would not thought of taking of care of skin is very
essential. Thanks to their creative branding, involving local and real people make people
to buy the products of brand. Hence, the target market of Dove has been rising.
Threats in the SWOT analysis of Dove:
 Fear of copies in plan and strategies: When the competition of the brand uses the same
strategies then marketing strategies become ineffective for the Dove (Nambisan, S. and
Et.al., 2017). As per the research the, Olay has been copied the same marketing strategies
by using or involving local people rather than top celebrities to promote and advertise the
brand for the consumption.

 Market Saturation: There are many products and brands in the market by which market
has been saturated. Brands like Olay, Neutrogena, Nivea having almost same
characteristics of their product of soap plus crème which directly affect the market
positioning.
Putting forward recommendations with justification.
Dove believes that beauty is not having a single dominant aspect. It can not be defined as
age, size, shape or color of skin or hair. It must be find in one's inner beauty and feelings of best
version within oneself. The brand Dove has been experimenting over year and years. Sometimes
they change strategies in their packagings, change in pricing or offering discounts, introducing
schemes like by one get one, change in advertising the product or making plans with whom the
brand has been introduced like celebrities or general people. Recently, the dove has been taking a
great initiative to reduce the use of plastics in a virgin form instead start recycling the plastic
bottles. They are involving with a part of “Part of what we are made of” installations, visitors
come and deposit the plastic in a vending machine and then received a new recycled plastic
packagings of their products (Popp, D., 2019). The brand team up with research and
development and dermatologist professionals with a motive of producing advanced and adding
new ingredients can make them more effective.
 It must be focusing on very mild cleansing that locks the moisture and skin does not feel
dry and tight after using product whether it is for skin or hair. Of course, product should
be made in such a way that it can remove the dirt and cleanses skin as well as hair but
feels moisturised and soft after using.
 The brand can advanced the packaging by improving quality or change in design of
bottles of their product (Rajapathirana, R. J. and Hui, Y., 2018). New packaging of
product always gain and attract the customer's attention. It can be very useful in their
innovation strategies because older packagings can get bored by the customers and they
are not longer to use.
 Products of Dove can be innovated by increasing the moisturising properties or make
many other variants of moisturising products such as after shaving crème and deodorants
that moisturises well and does not need worry about dryness (Rauter, R. and Et.al.,
2019). Products can triple the moisturising and used advanced technologies that does not

feel heavy on skin, the brand can make water based products that feels light on skin and
does not irritate the skin.
 Keratin treatments for hairs are very trending in the current scenario. Women are likely
to take this kind of treatments for their hair whether short or longer but specially
coloured hair. Dove may use new innovative and advanced technologies that can be
grateful for women as it saves time and they can get this kind of treatment anywhere and
anytime and also within their budget otherwise it is quite costly at spas and salons.
 The brand may manufactures different sizes of their product which can be convenient for
the consumers when they are travelling (Serdyukov, P., 2017). It can be quite handy to
pack small sized bottles than the big ones. The brand must focus on this idea of
innovation that can be very effective.
 For the purpose of increase in profits and productivity, the brand can increase the bottle
size, enlarge the opening point of bottles or decrease the quantity of products but
produce and sell them at the same prices with same size packaging but with different
designs.
CONCLUSION
Innovation in products, services or process is very significant for the enterprise. Every
brand needs to innovate and updates for the effectiveness and to stand out in the competition
because every organisation needs a change in their regularity. It can be done by the change in
ideas, developing new strategies and implement them with innovations. The report is based on
the innovation strategies in the Dove brand that need some updates to promote their brand and
can be attracted towards customers. Every innovation in product and services may not be
succeed or worked but it has been done with a intention to serve best in the market.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Arundel, A., Bloch, C. and Ferguson, B., 2019. Advancing innovation in the public sector:
Aligning innovation measurement with policy goals. Research Policy, 48(3), pp.789-
798.
Biemans, W., 2018. Managing innovation within networks (Vol. 7). Routledge.
Dziallas, M. and Blind, K., 2019. Innovation indicators throughout the innovation process: An
extensive literature analysis. Technovation, 80, pp.3-29.
Frishammar, J. and Et.al., 2019. Opportunities and challenges in the new innovation landscape:
Implications for innovation auditing and innovation management. European
Management Journal, 37(2), pp.151-164.
Kahn, K. B., 2018. Understanding innovation. Business Horizons, 61(3), pp.453-460.
Lee, S. M. and Trimi, S., 2018. Innovation for creating a smart future. Journal of Innovation &
Knowledge, 3(1), pp.1-8.
Nambisan, S. and Et.al., 2017. Digital Innovation Management: Reinventing innovation
management research in a digital world. Mis Quarterly, 41(1).
Popp, D., 2019. Environmental policy and innovation: a decade of research. National Bureau of
Economic Research Working Paper Series, (w25631).
Rajapathirana, R. J. and Hui, Y., 2018. Relationship between innovation capability, innovation
type, and firm performance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 3(1), pp.44-55.
Rauter, R. and Et.al., 2019. Open innovation and its effects on economic and sustainability
innovation performance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(4), pp.226-233.
Serdyukov, P., 2017. Innovation in education: what works, what doesn’t, and what to do about
it?. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning.
Online:
Key Innovation Management Models and Theories, 2018. [Online] Available Through:
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