Big Data and Decision Making: A Case Study of Unilever

This report discusses the use of big data in decision making for Unilever, a global consumer goods company. It includes an overview of Unilever and its competitor, market spend analysis, and how big data helps Unilever make better decisions. The report concludes with insights on the importance of FMCG and big data for the economy.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................3
Overview of the selected organisations....................................................................................3
Market spend for the Unilever and its competitor by using past 5 years of data.....................4
...........................................................................................................................................................4
How Unilever uses big data and hot it is helpful for the respective organisation in decision
making?.....................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
In business organisation, development of the big data technologies unlocked a treasure
trove of an information for companies. Big data environment are utilized to manage, process and
analyse various different kind of the data at workplace (Awotunde and et.al., 2022). Organisations
increasingly are practices to take benefit of big data in order to drive better strategies and decision
for business. In this report two organisations are selected which are Unilever and Procter and
Gamble. Both of these organisation deal in FMCG sectors. This report will be based on the
comparison between two organisation, figures of the organisational profits, uses of the big data in
Unilever to make decision making within organisation.
Overview of the selected organisations
Unilever
It is a public limited firm that deal in consumer goods. This organisation was founded by
the William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme and James Darcy Lever during 1929. headquarter of
Unilever is located within London, England. This company offer its service at global level. It is
organised into mainly three division including personal & beauty care, home care and food and
refreshment. Unilever's goals is to help around one billion people in improving their well-being
and health; to improve people's livelihood in supply chain, and to divide the environmental
footprint of group's product.
Procter and Gamble
It is a public company which deal in the consumer goods. This firm was founded by
William Procter and James Gamble during 1837. headquarters of respecter company is situated
within Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. Procter and Gamble provide its services within world wide. This
company is specialized in wide range of the consumer health/personal health and hygiene product
and personal care. These product of respective firm are organised into various segments such as
health care, family care, beauty and grooming,fabric and home care. P&G create its phenomenal
growth through innovating from in- hiring best talent and building a global research facilities.
People are their assets. The P&G is a culture which is different from mostly business
organisations.

Market spend for the Unilever and its competitor by using past 5 years of data

Interpretation: The marketing spend of Unilever has seen a decline in the last five years of the
operations of the business. In the first year of consideration, the marketing spend of the business
was at its peak in the year 2016, this means that the business was expanding and more marketing
was being undertaken to help the business to increase the consumer base of the business. In the
year 2018, the business of Unilever went down to 7100. The spending fluctuated for the business
in the last three years and in the last year of assessment, the business saw the marketing spend of
7010. While comparing these market spending of the business with the profits of the business in
these years, the marketing spend of the business can be seen to have a positive impact on the
profits of the business and their customer base can be said to have increased in the market. The
maximum profit for the business. In comparison to Unilever, the profits of the business of P&G

can be said to have impacted by the marketing spend that has been done by the business. The
spending of P&G and Unilever is almost similar but it can be seen that the impact on profit for the
year 2018 of Unilever was at max.
How Unilever uses big data and hot it is helpful for the respective organisation in decision
making?
Unilever uses data in various form to inform its business that influence its business
success, but for most part company uses the data in three ways including inform and improve
decision making, create new streams of the revenue and refine operations.
Big data help the organisation to understand problems faced by company and effectively uses the
data to solve all issues (Hutchinson, 2022). The data consists of figure and facts and interprets
structure or presented that data into a useful information. In relation to Unilever, this context ca
then be further used by the decision makes in order enhance the productivity and also increase
business profit. It help in company's decision making in various ways which are mentioned below:
 Make more confident decision- When, once Unilever begin gathering and examining the
data, it become easy for the respective company to reach at a confident decision regarding
virtually a business challenge. Big data serves to a benchmark what presently exists, that
allow company to clearly understand the effect that decision they make will have on their
business (Türkmendağ, 2022).
 Identifying pattern- Big data help Unilever in improving decision making by identifying
patterns. By determining the issues and proving data to back up a solution is very
beneficial as respective company can track whether their solution is resolving the issues,
improving a situation and has and insignificant impact.
 More proactive- When company first implement the data driven decision making, then
these data tell a story, that Unilever must then react to. The proactive decision making
process can revolutionize the method Unilever operate. When company have data then the
decision makers cam take better decision which lead to a business growth(Manivannan,
Prabha and Balasubramanian, 2022).
Form the above discussion, it is analysed that big data help the company such as Unilever to lead
an improved accountability or transparency in respective organisation. It promote the employee's

morale as big data help management to see objectives of the data backs ups. Big data also lead to
make right decision related to daily organisational activities (Pérez-Juárez and et.al., 2022).

CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that FMCG are important for the economy as they
are inelastic product that include every aspect of the consumer's life. Companies that provide the
FMCG can create job for the rural communities d minimum cost. Form the above discussion, it is
find out that Big Data improve Unilever's decision making in various ways. The company uses
data to inform its business as data has potential to improve the internal efficiency and operation
though the robotic process automation. Big data help the company to identify the objectives and
prior ties so that company make a decision based on their business goals efficiently.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Awotunde, J.B. and et.al., 2022. Application of big data in COVID-19 epidemic. In Data Science
for COVID-19 (pp. 141-165). Academic Press.
Hutchinson, C.S., 2022. Potential abuses of dominance by big tech through their use of Big Data
and AI. Journal of Antitrust Enforcement.
Manivannan, P., Prabha, D. and Balasubramanian, K., 2022. Artificial intelligence databases: turn-
on big data of the SMBs. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 39(1),
pp.1-16.
Pérez-Juárez, M.A. and et.al., 2022. Can Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Improve Gamified
Healthcare Services and Devices?. In Next-Generation Applications and
Implementations of Gamification Systems (pp. 205-220). IGI Global.
Türkmendağ, Z., 2022. Understanding Big Data and Techniques in Cultural Tourism. In
Handbook of Research on Digital Communications, Internet of Things, and the Future of
Cultural Tourism (pp. 121-137). IGI Global.