Marketing Management: Unilever's Strategies and Financial Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Unilever's marketing management practices. It begins with an executive summary and introduction, highlighting Unilever's position as a leading consumer goods company with a global presence. The report then delves into a literature review of marketing management principles, followed by an examination of Unilever's financial performance, leadership styles (including Alan Jope's transformational and democratic approaches), and growth strategies centered on product development and market penetration. A key focus is on the application of the theoretical framework of marketing management within Unilever's business environment, encompassing both macro and micro environmental factors. The report further analyzes change management practices, corporate governance, and competitor analysis. Finally, it concludes with recommendations for Unilever, based on the management of its marketing activities, and growth strategies.

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Executive summary
Marketing management is a process of managing the marketing activities. It involves getting
things done from others. The report focuses on understanding the marketing concepts. It
emphasizes on an organization named ‘Unilever’. The report includes the marketing
management strategies used by Unilever. Due to its global presence, the company requires more
focus on its marketing management strategies. Unilever focuses on sustainable business and its
goal is to offer services and products to satisfy the needs of customers by considering
sustainability.
Further, the financial performance of Unilever is good as the earnings per share are it is
increasing company’s huge presence and turnover in the market. With that corporate governance
aspect of Unilever, it is clear that the company constantly reviews Corporate Governance
Arrangements and its requirements in detail. Unilever is operating under the leadership of Alan
Jope, he uses Transformational leadership. Sometimes he also relies on Democratic style of
leadership. Unilever uses aggressive growth strategies based on product development and market
penetration. Further, from the business environment of Unilever, it is analyzed that all the macro
and micro environment factors develops opportunities and threats for Unilever. At last, Change
Management and competitors of the company are analyzed followed by recommendation and
conclusion.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Literature Review............................................................................................................................3
Financial performance.....................................................................................................................5
Leadership and Growth strategies...................................................................................................6
Theoretical framework & Application.............................................................................................7
Benchmarking................................................................................................................................10
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
Appendix........................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Marketing management refers to management of marketing policies, programs, and strategies to
satisfy customer’s demands and needs by offering products and services. Marketing management
performs all the managerial functions in the field of marketing. In order to understand the
concept of marketing management, Unilever organization is chosen (Baker,2014).
Unilever is a leading consumer goods company. It offers food, beverages, beauty and personal
care products. Unilever is the seventh most valuable company in Europe. It has headquarters in
London, United Kingdom. The company has a presence in more than 190 countries with 400
brands named Lux, Dove, Knorr, and many more. In 2018, its revenue was €50.982 billion and
operating income was €12.535 billion. The scope of marketing management in Unilever is huge
as the company puts high effort in identifying the needs and demands of its customers. It lays
high attention to engage them by offering their desired products. At present, the company has
400 brands spread globally covering home, food, beauty, and personal care segment (Unilever,
2018).
The report includes Unilever’s marketing aspects, growth strategies leadership style, and
financial performance. It also includes the application of theoretical framework of marketing
management (Unilever's business environment), change management practices, and corporate
governance in the company. Further, recommendations are given for Unilever based on
management of its marketing activities and growth strategies.
Literature Review
According to Baker (2014), marketing management is considered as the art and science of
getting, choosing and identifying the right target market. It involves delivering, creating and
communicating better value to customers. Marketing management totally depends on the
industry and size of the business. Marketing management proves to be effective when it involves
managing resources of the company to increases customer base. It allows improving customer’s
opinion by offering them the right product, at the right time. It increases the perceived value of
the company. Marketing mnagmenet of the company can be effective with proper markting mix
strategies (product, price place and promotion).

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The marketing management in Unilever is unique as the company has experience with a proud
history. Unilever has ambitious and long-lasting plans for growth and success in the consumer
goods industry. The company vision is “to make the sustainable living common place and
reducing environmental footprints by increasing positive impact on the society”. Its mission is to
meet people’s demands for hygiene, nutrition, and personal care by offering the products that
allows them to look and feel good. Unilever is a unique brand that focuses on sustainable living.
The company uses three tools named marketing investment and innovation, cost leverage or
efficiency and profitable volume growth as seen in figure 1.
According to Evans et.al, (2017), sustainable business is a new model of business that focuses on
new ways of doing business. In this model, the success of the business is measured on factors
such as ethics, economic and environmental sustainability. This is also called the Tripple bottom
line approach. Sustainable business identifies new ways of doing work with environmental
consideration. Some of the principles of sustainability are efficient utilization of natural
resources, production using biological processes and offering more services than products
(McKay,2017). Unilever is highly focused on innovation and change. Therefore, the company
invests a huge amount in research & development to offer more products and services and to
create a deeper root in the market. Hayes (2018) defined that change is necessary for the business
to keep it running. There are various types of changes named as Transformational change,
Incremental change, Radical change and many more. In order to initiate change, Lewin's change
process is implemented to attain maximum benefits from a change by considering three steps of
unfreezing, changing and refreezing.
Unilever has a strong culture and brand equity with so many well established products in
different markets. The marketing strategies of Unilever is not target driven rather it is purpose
driven. The company has long term and short term purpose. It allows the company to change its
structure and processes according to external forces and changing business environment (Hidayat
et.al,2013).
Financial performance
The goal of multinational operations is to enhance shareholder’s wealth and corporate wealth
maximization. It is necessary to analyze the company’s financial performance to know that

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whether the company is able to achieve its goals or not. Further, the companies engaged in global
platform focuses more on financial performance indicator to manage risk related to foreign
exchange risk and credit risk management.
Unilever showed a net profit of €9,808 million in 2018 with a turnover of €50,982 million. The
basic earnings per share were 3.50 euros; EPS was increased by 5.2%. The turnover of the
company was affected by adverse currency impact of 6.7% but still the company had high
quality margin and good volume growth. Under the leadership strategies of Alan Jope the
company is growing and various products are experiencing leadership position in the market.
However, in 2018, the company turnover decreased by 5.1% in comparison to 2017. This is
because of the adverse effect of currency fluctuation. Unilever mainly raise funds from two
sources named equity and debts. The capital structure of the company is risky as most of the
portion of the company is of debt. The total equity of the company in 2018 was €12,292 million
and portion of debt was €27,392 million. From the analysis of financial performance of Unilever,
it is identified that the company is suitable for investing purpose and asset management. This is
because the earnings per share are increasing and the company has a huge presence and turnover
in the market (Unilever, 2018).
With that corporate governance aspect of Unilever is clear and strong as the company constantly
reviews corporate governance arrangements and requirements in detail. The company conduct
annual general meeting with its investors, board of directors to provide transparency and constant
decision making. The company has code of business principles which all employees of Unilever
expects to meet while delivering their services to the company. The board members of the
company are responsible for the overall activities and conduct of Unilever. The company
conducts five meetings in a year to discuss performance and issues prevailing in the company.
Unilever has general and permanent committees that include corporate governance committee,
compensation committee, audit committee and corporate responsibility committee company
(UnileverCG,2019).
In the governance of Unilever, chairman and independent director is responsible for conducting
meetings, leading the boards and ensuring that all the duties and roles are performed well. It is
the responsibility of chairman to make sure that the board members receive information at the

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right time. One of his duties is to gain their participation. On the other side, the role of
independent director in Unilever corporate governance is to deal with conflict of interest between
top level executive and the company, and to solve shareholder’s queries and issues. In a nutshell,
the company is growing and has strong financial performance. It helps the company to increase
its market share and invest more in product development. Unilever has a strong asset portfolio as
the company offers a wide product line and has presence in more than 190 countries. Further, the
company has less amount of equity in its capital structure and more debt this indicates that the
capital expenses of the company is more interest will be paid by the (UnileverGovernance,2019).
Leadership and Growth strategies
Unilever is operating under the leadership of Alan Jope. The success of any organization mainly
depends on the ability of a leader to lead and take the organization to higher level. Leaders have
different traits and behavior. It allows them to lead the group or people (Masadeh et.al,2016).
On the basis of these traits, they adopt different leadership style like Transformational leadership
style, Autocratic, or Situation leadership style. According to Marshall et.al (2017), Leaders
mainly uses Situational leadership approach. This approach states that no specific style can be
adopted or used at every situation. It depend on the readiness of followers and relationship that
leader want to build with its followers (Rankin,2019).
Unilever is operating under the leadership of Alan Jope, and he follows situational leadership
approach as he sometime use transformational leadership style and sometime democratic style of
leadership. As when he was appointed as CEO, he shaken up senior management level of
Unilever and promoted one of top rivals for the top level position to a newly created role.
Further, he took decision to dispose of brands that are not generating revenues for the company
and are in declining stage of product life cycle. Alan Jope has an ambitious plan for Unilever that
is to transform the company as the biggest digital consumer goods provider (Rankin,2019).
The growth strategies of Unilever are based on the product development and market penetration.
The company spend huge amount on research & development to offer new products to its
customers. It focuses on gaining more market share by targeting more customer base with its
new and existing products. Unilever uses aggressive growth strategies as the company
aggressively offers products in current markets such as Canada and US. This aggressive

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approach helps the company to tap the customers and attract global consumer market. On other
side, product development strategy is also used by the company for business growth. The
company introduces new products in Unilever’s personal care segment. This helps the company
to attract more customers and increasing market share (Murphy and Murphy,2018).
Unilever is growing tremendously with the help of these two growth strategies named product
development and market penetration. Under the leadership of Alan Jope the company is able to
attract more customers. It is planning to make its presence on digital platform. The growth
through digital transformation is a strategic move taken by Jope to achieve the mission (attract
and reach to more and more customers and fulfilling the demands on the right time) of the
company (Murphy and Murphy,2018).
Theoretical framework & Application
Marketing environment is a situation in which business operates. It considers the forces that
affect the ability of the business to maintain and build successful relations with its target market
and customers. Marketing environment consists of macro and micro environment. Macro
environment includes external forces that have greater impact on the business operations. Macro
environmental forces are economic, demographic, natural, technological, political and cultural
forces. Micro environment factors that are close to the company and can affect the business
operations and get affected by business operations such as suppliers, market intermediaries,
customers, competitors and public (Craig and Campbell, 2012).
In order to understand this concept, the business environment in which Unilever operates is
analyzed. In the below section, all the macro and micro environment factors of the company are
analyzed.
Political factors: The political stability is high in most of the countries where Unilever operates.
The political stability of US helps the company to gain advantage in these markets and
implement its strategies. On other side, Unilever face problem in the market because of condition
of European Union. Therefore, this can be a threat for the company in near future (Craig and
Campbell, 2012).

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Economic factors: Economic conditions in different countries affect the performance and
strategies of Unilever. The threats that the company might face can be increase in wage rate in
developing countries like India. It will leads to higher cost of production and increasing prices of
products. Further, improving growth rate in developing countries help the company to expand
and tap the untapped market (Craig and Campbell, 2012).
Technological factors: Unilever currently focusing on digital transformation and implementing
automation process to bring efficiency in the operations. With the help of automation the
company can monitor its inventory and production. This will lead to efficiency in the supply
chain and distribution network of the company (Craig and Campbell, 2012).
Natural factors: The natural factor or environmental factor includes sustainability activities and
corporate social responsibility activities that affect the image of the business in the society and
any change in environmental protection laws or sustainability reporting by the government might
affect the operation of Unilever as the company has presence at global platform, each country
has their different environment and sustainability requirements (Craig and Campbell, 2012).
Cultural or social factors: The influence of social and cultural factor on consumer goods
segment is more on Unilever. Factors such as change in customer’s consumption pattern, shift of
people towards health conscious products, and rising environmentalist behaviors can affect the
business strategies of Unilever.
Change is part of business. The marketing management also includes change management. In
order to gain competitive advantage and to sustain in the market from last 90 years, Unilever is
changing its structure, processes and strategies according to changing business environment. The
company needs to change its internal structure as per the change in external forces (Bartlett,
2016).
According to Tidd and Bessant (2018) organizational change is a process of changing the
strategies, technologies, procedures and culture. The change in an organization takes place
because of external factors or forces. Changes in an organization can be for continuous basis or
for a specific time period.

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Unilever was facing problem related to distribution channel and players in consumer goods
industry. It resulted in the reduction of its market share. It was hampered by its competitors and
the company managed all its locations and operations from a single headquarter. This enables the
company to reduce cost of production. Further, the company had decentralized organizational
structure. Due to this, most of the staff was paid double for doing the same task. Unilever was
lacking the technology advancement in its processes as other key players in the market were
using effective technologies to attract more customers and bring efficiency in the organization. In
order to solve these issues, Unilever changed its process and adopted more technologies to bring
efficiency in its production. The company adopted ecofriendly packaging to compete in the
market and to meet the requirements of changing environment (Blader et.al,2015).
Unilever implemented these changes using Lewin’s change model. It includes three steps named
unfreeze, change and refreeze.
Unfreeze: As this first stage, Unilever tried to communicate change or need of change to its
employees. It also includes changing the status quo and breaking down of current positions. This
is because the need of change can be communicated in a well-structured way. It allows the
employees to accept and understand the message or benefits of changing the process,
technologies and procedures. At this stage communication by a leader is important. Unilever
mainly focus on the channels to communicate with its employees. The company communicates
with its employees through conducting regular meetings and via different online platform such as
emails, video conferencing and presentations. Leader in the company initiate change and
challenge the status quo, belief, attitude and behavior of individuals (Hussain et.al,2018).
Change: The second stage after unfreeze stage is change stage. At this time the company is
preparing the people and try to implement change in a positive manner (Hasan,2015). In this
stage the company implements change such as change in its processes, structure, and procedures
and employees have to adopt it. Firstly, Unilever implemented change by changing its structure,
as the company reduced delegation of authority to its employees to bring efficiency and to avoid
duplicity of work or tasks. However, the company took a long time as actual transition from
unfreeze to change never happened in one night. It took a year for Unilever to change its process
and structure and to manage resistance of change from employees (Hussain et.al,2018).

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Refreeze: The last stage is refreezing after the changes are communicated and implemented.
After this there are no chances of any alternation. This stage helps the company to maintain
again the status quo in the organization. The company measure that whether the changes are
adopted by employees in their day to day activities or not. Unilever also focuses on the
challenges they are facing to maintain and accept the changes. If any deviation is find out by the
company, this will be considered and again changes can be made (Ionescu and Brassey,2019).
The need for change happens in any organization because of external forces, amount of
dissatisfaction with the current condition, availability of substitute, and competition. In a
nutshell, if any organization exceed benefits of change than change prove to be effective for the
organization. On other side cost of making change is more than its benefits, the change
management is considered as ineffective and there is no such benefit that the organization get
from changes (Hussain et.al,2018).
Benchmarking
The benchmarking is a process of comparing or measuring the product, services and performance
of the company with the best in the industry to identify the opportunities to attain growth in the
industry. In context to Unilever, the company is facing stiff competition from local players as
well as international players in the UK. Unilever competitors are Procter & Gamble, Johnson &
Johnson and Nestle. Each company in consumer goods industry has some benchmarks such as
Nestle has strong product portfolio and divided its business in five segments and it has dozen of
brands (Saunders,2019).
The company excels and set benchmark in the area of brands and product development. On other
side P&G is one of the closest competitors of Unilever as P&G also have huge product line and
presence across the world. The company has presence in more than 200 countries because of its
growth strategies. Johnson & Johnson is also giving tough competition to these companies in
consumer goods industry as the company has strong financial performance. The company
showed 81.6 billion of revenue in 2018 as seen in figure. From this it is analyzed that in the
consumer goods industry, it is quite difficult to set the benchmark. Unilever can set benchmark
for different processes from different companies. Unilever excels in social and human capital as

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the company won many awards and set a benchmark in area of sustainable business and best
manufacturing infrastructure (Saunders,2019).
Recommendations
From the above analysis of Unilever based on marketing management, leadership, growth
strategies and business environment, it is recommended that the company should focus more on
reducing its cost of production and maintaining its profit margin and prices. In order to do this,
the company needs to change its processes and shift towards technological advancement. It must
cut of its employees as in the same industry because its competitors are operating with less
number of workforces. This indicates that Unilever lacks efficiency in its operations and need to
improve it. Further, Unilever has strong presence across the world in order to maintain it the
company should spend more on advertisements and focus on innovation and change.
Conclusion
It is assessed that marketing management is a process of managing all the marketing activities.
Unilever is a well-established European brand that has presence across the world. It offers wide
variety of products to the customers. It is analyzed that the company is following all the
marketing practices and undertaking steps towards sustainability. It has a strong financial
performance. There are many factors that affected the growth and progress of the company such
as fluctuation in the currency rate, increasing competition, and technological advancement. The
company is operating under the leadership of Alan Jope that follows transformational and
democratic leadership style. The company is going for a huge transformation under his
leadership. Further, it is concluded that the growth strategies of Unilever are good. It is
acknowledged that the company has strong change management process. It will help the
company to cope and implement change in the organization in the timely manner.
It is assessed that Unilever is operating in consumer goods industry. It is facing stiff competition
from Nestle, P&G and Johnson and Johnson. This is because of their global presence,
competitive pricing and less workforce strength. At last, considering all these it is recommended
that the company should more focus on improving efficiency in its operations in order to sustain