MG412 Principles of Marketing: Marketing Mix - Dove vs. Sure Deodorant

This report provides a comparative analysis of the marketing mix of Dove and Sure deodorants for women, focusing on their effectiveness and strategic approaches. It examines the STP (Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning) marketing planning process for both brands, detailing their target market profiles based on demographics and psychographics. The report further evaluates the product, price, place, and promotion strategies employed by each brand, referencing Levitt's model and Aaker's brand personality framework to assess their competitive positioning. Dove's emphasis on real women and self-esteem in its promotional campaigns is contrasted with Sure's focus on sports athletes and unconventional marketing. The conclusion highlights the importance of the marketing mix and STP analysis in achieving business goals, recommending that organizations focus on innovation and customer satisfaction to maintain a competitive edge.

Principles of Marketing

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The report highlights about the principles of marketing in which the effectiveness of
marketing mix for companies and knowledge of Segmentation, targeting and positioning
marketing planning process is determined. Furthermore, the target market profile of each profile
is determined including the product, price, place and promotion of the product and service is
evaluated. Marketing mix is important for company as it helps to understand what products and
services can be offered to customers. Through marketing mix, organisation can develop and
execute the effective marketing strategies in order to gain competitive advantage. The Chosen
organisation for comparing is Dove deodorant for women and Sure deodorant for women.

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................4
STP Marketing............................................................................................................................4
Products strategy.........................................................................................................................5
Price strategy...............................................................................................................................6
Place strategy..............................................................................................................................7
Promotion strategy......................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION and RECOMMEDATION....................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The project is based on principles of marketing in which the comparison of two
companies marketing mix is conducted in order to determine the effectiveness of company. It
also covers the knowledge of STP marketing planning process and marketing mix of both the
organisation including product, price, place and promotion strategy of organisation. Marketing
mix is a tool which is used to promote the product or brand in market (Abedi and Abedini, 2017).
It helps organisation to avoid unnecessary costs and make use of their own strength. The chosen
organisation for comparing the marketing mix and STP are Dove deodorant and Sure Deodorant.
Dove is an personal care brand which is owned by Unilever. The products in which Dove deals
are deodorants, hair care, moisturisers, facial care products, beauty bars, etc. Dove deodorants
are of varieties of price, size, quantity and fragrance such as Dove eventone, Dove
Antiperspirant, Dove original deodorant moisturising cream and so on. Sure deodorant is created
by Procter and Gambler for women and men in 1972.
Main Body
STP Marketing
STP analysis is known for segmentation, targeting and positioning that allows to develop
specific and actionable strategy in order to gain competitive advantage. It helps to analyse the
offerings and communicate the benefits to specific group.
Segmentation: It divides the market on the basis of interest, age, gender, lifestyle, etc. The few
examples of market segmentation includes geographic, psychographic, demographic and
behavioural. Dove deodorants segment the market on the basis of psychographic and
demographic. They target the women of all age and focuses on urban and semi-urban women
who use deodorant (Davari and Strutton, 2014). Dove deodorants generally targets women of 18-
35 age, they look for women who have high purchasing power and comes under upper middle
class. In psychographic segmentation they focus on women of all body shapes, sizes and age.
They also focus on changing the psychology of women by making them realize that they are
beautiful by launching ads and doing promotion. Sure deodorant for women generally targets
women of 14-40 age, the quality of product is high due to which it is also a premium brand. But
nowadays, the brand pays difficulty in increasing its market process and attracting more and
more customer towards the brand.

Targeting: Dove deodorant generally targets women of all shapes, age and colors. They focus
on targeting the working women through its moisturising and soap products which saves money
and time. They mainly focus on high income groups and targets women who have interest in
Dove deodorant. Dove deodorant targets young urban women with average purchasing power.
The target market of Sure Deodorant is women of all age, they generally target medium class
people who can afford the product (Gao, Melero and Sese, 2020).
Positioning: The products of Dove are known for softness and mildness. Deodorants of Dove
are promoted through real women campaign where they endorse real women in their ads and
focuses on moral aspect of beauty and self confidence. The brand positioned themselves as a
product which does not beautifies but bring beauty out of women. Dove deodorant is considered
as premium product which justifies through its quality. Sure deodorant generally positions
themselves as a competitor of Dove but it fails to attract large number of customer.
Products strategy
The products of Dove are made up of synthetic surfactants, moisturising creams,
vegetable oils and salts of animal fats. Product line of Dove manly includes shampoo, deodorant,
body washes, skincare and soap products (Chen and Liu, 2019). Dove deodorants attract women
by its attractive and long lasting fragrance whereas Sure deodorant mainly focus on women of 14
to 40 age. The products of Sure mainly include pumps, sticks, aerosols, roll-ons and creams. Sure
promotes good personal hygiene and sell their products at low income in order to attract more
and more customer globally.
Levitt's model:
The model is generally based on the idea of product that matches the value of customer
purchasing decision. It mainly includes five stages such as core, basic, expected, augmented and
potential products.
Core benefits:
The core benefits of Sure and Dove deodorants of women is to fulfil the needs of its
customer and make the satisfied with the quality and fragrance of deodorant due to which they
consumer and become loyal towards the brands (Rodgers, 2020).
Basic Products:

Dove is offering basic deodorant that satisfy the need and demand of customer at
premium price to upper middle class women whereas Sure offers deodorant that are of low price
with long lasting fragrance that fulfil the need and desire of consumers.
Expected Products:
The customer of Dove general expect high quality product with ever long lasting
fragrance that makes them satisfied, they generally want product at reasonable price where as
consumers of Sure generally prefer products that are of good quality and easily accessible in
market (Lim, 2018).
Augmented Products:
Augmented product generally includes extra variation in product that makes Dove
deodorant from its competitors whereas Sure deodorant generally focus on launching new
fragrance product with other flavours so that customers get more variety of deodorant.
Potentials Product:
It includes the transformation and augmentations of product which might undergo in
future. The potential product of the brand is deodorant as Dove may transform the product that
fulfils the need and demand of women whereas for Sure deodorant the potential product are
sprays that aims to surprise and delight the customer by upgrading new and useful features
(Viswanathan and Sreekumar, 2021).
Both the brand are equal to emotional level as they target women of different age and
also they respect the beauties of women without differentiating them on the basis of color, age
and features.
Aaker's brand personality framework:
Aaker's Brand personality frameworks generally describes the traits and profile of brand
in five core dimension such as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness.
By using this framework, both the brands can make distinctive appearance among the customers
and gain competitive advantage. It also helps to communicate with women and interact with
them in order to relate the traits that possess with the personality traits. Dove and Sure mainly
focus on creating effective strategy that attracts more and more customer towards the brand.
Price strategy
Dove deodorant mainly uses competitive pricing strategy as the products of brand come
under highly competitive segment. The product of Dove is considered as premium product but

due to the low demand they have reduced the price of its product which attracts more and more
customer. They maintain high quality of product that satisfy the women and make them loyal
towards the company. Sure deodorant generally sells their products at moderate price. In order to
attract the customer they offer discount and special price (Bang, Joshi and Singh, 2016).
Place strategy
Sure is a recognised company that sell their products across the world and also the brand
are well known for antiperspirant. Sure is also known with different name like Rexona in many
countries such as Canada, South Africa, Japan, UK and South korea. The brand also has its own
website through which customer can place their orders and purchase the products. Dove is one of
the reputed brands which is known which sell their products in different countries. They use
distribution channel of its parent company Unilever. Dove also has its own website in which they
sell their products and reaches to wide range of customer. They also have strong social media
presence on different social media platforms and e-commerce platforms.
Promotion strategy
Dove has unique and different promotional strategy which attracts women towards the
brand. They run marketing campaign by focusing on women self esteem and also they
communicate to all age women and treat them equally. Dove promotes their deodorant product
with videos, short films and ads so that it reaches to maximum number of people. They have also
launched the campaign in order to reduce the negative media campaigns which exploit women's
self esteem and insecurity (Kukanja, Gomezelj Omerzel and Kodrič, 2017). Sure deodorant
generally promotes their products by using unconventional and traditional ways. The brand
ambassadors of Sure deodorant are sports athletes.
CONCLUSION and RECOMMEDATION
From the above information it is being concluded that marketing mix plays a important
role in identifying the suitable product that satisfies the need and demand of customer. Through
STP analysis, company can position their product or service in order to target different groups of
customer in more effective and efficient manner. Marketing mix also offers a roadmap for
company’s goals and objective. The brand which is most successful in its application of 4P’s is
Dove deodorant.

It is being recommended from the above information that organisation must focus on
attracting its consumers by offering them more long lasting fragrance with zero gas.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abedi, G. and Abedini, E., 2017. Prioritizing of marketing mix elements effects on patients’
tendency to the hospital using analytic hierarchy process. International Journal of
Healthcare Management, 10(1), pp.34-41.
Bang, V. V., Joshi, S .L. and Singh, M. C., 2016. Marketing strategy in emerging markets: a
conceptual framework. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 24(2), pp.104-117.
Chen, C .M. and Liu, H. M., 2019. The moderating effect of competitive status on the
relationship between customer satisfaction and retention. Total Quality Management &
Business Excellence, 30(7-8), pp.721-744.
Davari, A. and Strutton, D., 2014. Marketing mix strategies for closing the gap between green
consumers' pro-environmental beliefs and behaviors. Journal of Strategic
Marketing. 22(7). pp.563-586.
Gao, L., Melero, I. and Sese, F. J., 2020. Multichannel integration along the customer journey: a
systematic review and research agenda. The Service Industries Journal, 40(15-16),
pp.1087-1118.
Kukanja, M., Gomezelj Omerzel, D. and Kodrič, B., 2017. Ensuring restaurant quality and
guests’ loyalty: an integrative model based on marketing (7P) approach. Total Quality
Management & Business Excellence. 28(13-14. pp.1509-1525.
Lim, W. M., 2018. What will business-to-business marketers learn from neuro-marketing?
Insights for business marketing practice. Journal of Business-to-Business
Marketing. 25(3). pp.251-259.
Rodgers, J., 2020. Integrated Marketing Campaign Case Study: Dove Real Beauty.
Viswanathan, M. and Sreekumar, A., 2021. How Global Marketing Can Be More Global and
More Marketing: A Bottom-Up Perspective from Subsistence Marketplaces. Journal of
Global Marketing, pp.1-10.