Unilever's Marketing Strategies in Global Markets: A Detailed Report

This report analyzes Unilever's marketing strategies, focusing on its application of consumer psychology, socio-cultural influences, and brand campaigns. The analysis examines how Unilever utilizes internal consumer processes, such as perception, motivation, and attitudes, to market its products, with specific attention to the 'Dove' campaign and its success through appealing to ethnicity and broader socio-cultural factors. The report also explores Unilever's decision to link its brands with environmental sustainability and healthy behavior initiatives, evaluating the impact of these strategies on brand image and customer loyalty. The conclusion highlights the effectiveness of Unilever's approach in connecting with consumers across cultural and demographic boundaries and building a strong global brand.

Customers in Global Markets

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
1. How is Unilever applying its understanding of internal consumer processes in the
psychological dimension to market its products?............................................................................2
2. Which of the socio-cultural influences do you think have been the most important to the
success of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty? Why?....................................................................3
3. Do you agree with Unilever’s decision to link its brands with efforts to encourage healthy and
environmentally sustainable behaviours? Explain your answer.........................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
Unilever is one of the most recognized brands in the consumer goods industry headquartered in
United Kingdom. The company had gained huge brand visibility and recognition with its
influencing advertisements and ad campaigns. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the case of
Unilever and understand its use of psychological dimension for marketing of its products
(Millard, 2009). The later part of the paper will present the benefit gained by the company
through socio-cultural influences of ethnicity for the success of its ad campaign for Dove. The
paper will also highlight the key reasons behind lining of Unilever brands with environment
sustainability behaviour and healthy behavioural aspects.
1. How is Unilever applying its understanding of internal consumer
processes in the psychological dimension to market its products?
(Source: Schiffman, et al., 2013)
According to the consumer decision making framework of Schiffman, Unilever is taking
use of a number of psychological dimensions (attitude, perception and motivation) in

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marketing of its products for achieving a reliable customer base. For its product, Dove,
the company is using exposure through internet as well as the use of advertisement
campaign, “campaign for real beauty”. There are a diverse set of customers which are
targeted through this campaign as well as it is achieving huge recognition too. For its
brand, Ragù, Unilever is taking use of internet and social media channels for having a
dialogue or communication with the potential customers for getting the viewpoint of the
parents in respect with their children consuming the product (Aggarwal and McGill,
2011). This is used to satisfy the needs of the customers as well as developing an
association with them. For the Latinos customers, Unilever has developed a website so
that they can be offered with branded products. This helps in developing an association
with the customers and Unilever offers a sound brand image and recognition of its brand
showing care for the customers. The company is striving hard to get increased number of
customers by demonstrating them the reason that why them customers should buy a
product of Unilever for improving their lives and sense a feeling of good regarding their
purchase action. This is considered as a factor of knowledge and memory in the
psychological dimension. The company also take use of the ways which makes easy for
the product to fit within the environment sustainability and also use brands like Facebook
for marketing of its product and building a strong association with the masses (Nguyen,
Barrett and Miller, 2011).
2. Which of the socio-cultural influences do you think have been the most
important to the success of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty? Why?
There are primarily four types of socio-cultural influences which have a direct impact on
the success and failure of any product or service.teh four socio-cultural influences
comprises of the social class of the consumers, reference groups, ethnicity and religion of
the customers. All these factors pose a direct impact on the businesses. But in case of
Dove, the key factor out of all four socio-cultural influences is the influence posed by
ethnicity (Dye, 2009). There is a vital role of ethnicity in the success of the campaign of
Dove for real beauty. All the individuals belong to one or the other social group which
has a common culture or tradition. The key aim or objective of the campaign of Dove
was to touch the lives of the customers by making them feel that there is no ethnic or

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cultural norm for beauty and every female or women is beautiful with their own
respective features (Millard, 2009). The campaign was established without setting any
category of women to be selected for the campaign so that each female member of the
society can connect with the campaign irrespective of the factors such as body shape,
size, races, ages or any other factor. The primary idea behind the campaign was to target
all the women i.e. the female members of the society and to have a larger customer base.
The campaigned gained huge success as all the customers developed a sense of
recognition for themselves in the advertisement campaign (Robinson, 2010).
3. Do you agree with Unilever’s decision to link its brands with efforts to
encourage healthy and environmentally sustainable behaviours? Explain
your answer.
Yes, I agree with the decision made by Unilever of linking the brands with the efforts of
encouraging environment sustainability behaviours and healthy behaviours as it is one of
the most recognized and significant way of fetching the attention of the customers and
develop a sound image of the company and its products (Sim, King and Price, 2016). The
link up of the brand with such a cause of environment sustainability, Unilever shows its
care for its customers as well as a sense of concern for their good health. Unilever not sell
its products with only an aim of earning profit or increasing market share but to get an
acutance that the customers and their needs are satisfied by taking use of the products of
the company (Kaur, 2013). And this is regarded as one of the best way to have reliable
customer base and strong brand recognition.
Conclusion
From this paper, it can be concluded that Unilever has taken use of effective advertising and
marketing strategies by touching the lives of the masses as well as by eradicating the lines of
cultural groups, ages or ethnicities. It can also be stated that there are number of benefits and
huge success of the campaign of Unilever for its brand ‘Dove’ as it had taken use of an effective
marketing strategy eliminating the differences. It is also concluded that, the use of aspects of

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environment sustainability had offered several advantages to Unilever to develop as a strong
brand globally and gained huge market share.

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References
Aggarwal, P. and McGill, A.L., 2011. When brands seem human, do humans act like brands?
Automatic behavioral priming effects of brand anthropomorphism. Journal of Consumer
Research, 39(2), pp.307-323.
Dye, L., 2009. Consuming constructions: A critique of Dove’s campaign for real
beauty. Canadian Journal of media studies, 5(1), pp.114-128.
Kaur, M., 2013. Rural marketing: A case study on Hindustan Unilever Limited. International
Journal of Applied Research and Studies, 2(6), pp.1-14.
Millard, J., 2009. Performing Beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” Campaign. Symbolic
Interaction, 32(2), pp.146-168.
Nguyen, T.D., Barrett, N.J. and Miller, K.E., 2011. Brand loyalty in emerging
markets. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 29(3), pp.222-232.
Robinson, E., 2010. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.
Schiffman, L., O'Cass, A., Paladino, A. and Carlson, J., 2013. Consumer behaviour. Pearson
Higher Education AU.
Sim, S., King, H. and Price, E., 2016. The role of science in shaping sustainable business:
Unilever case study. In Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology (pp. 291-302). Springer International
Publishing.