Marketing Opportunity of Lifebuoy in the UAE - Essay Example

PROF Lifebuoy Anti-Dandruff Shampoo: Identifying Marketing Opportunity in UAE Lifebuoy is a brand of a multinational company that is known worldwide for its products. Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational company founded in 1930. It has wide array of products consisting of famous brands in foods, beverages, personal care and cleaning agents. The parent company can be found in the Netherlands and in United Kingdom. Together with its group of companies they are known as Unilever group. Its top 12 brands including home and personal care and food and beverage brands have sales of more than EUR 1 billion (Unilever-Netherlands/Kingdom, 2011). The Unilever started in Saudi Arabia by appointing Binzagar family as official representative. In 1992, the company decided to open its first office in Dubai followed by a joint venture in Egypt. It was operated in three clusters. In 2007 all the three were combined and became Unilever North Africa and Middle East to consolidate its operations, leverage synergies of scale and cost arbitrage. It is considered as the market leader in the region with a market turnover of US$ 1.3 billion (Unilever North Africa and Middle East Bucks the Global Trend, 2009). The brand Lifebuoy has come a long way through the years. It is one of the country’s oldest brands launched in 1894 as Lifebuoy Royal disinfectant soap. Considered as an affordable soap to support people seeking better personal hygiene, it was launched across the world and continued to be a leading brand in India (Lifebuoy Shampoo). Lifebuoy brand has also a shampoo line which includes variants such as hair fall, herbal and anti dandruff. It was launched in 1997 in Pakistan and a leading brand ever since. It provides affordable shampoo for the Pakistanis regardless of lifestyle and class. Every variant should have a detailed description of the product for consumers’ information. Lifebuoy anti-dandruff shampoo has a product description of having a fast action of ZPTO that fights the microbes which causes dandruff. Milk protein is also added to guard against germs and contains a conditioning formula that nourishes the hair from the inside which makes your hair soft and supple (Lifebuoy Shampoo). Middle East is a good potential market for Lifebuoy anti-dandruff shampoo due to following reasons. Since Middle East is a hot region and majority of the people including in the UAE suffers from dandruff due to heat, diet and other external factors, the market for anti-dandruff shampoo has been lucrative. Most citizens suffer from an age range of 15 years to above 40 years old but the majority of them are between 25 to 29 years old according to research. Different brands of shampoo can be found on the market but has different side effects have been noted on the consumers such as makes the hair hard, bad smell and others. UAE’s development of free zones and other industries such as industrial and commercial sites, growing sectors in healthcare, hotel and restaurant, automotive logistics and construction, it provides large number or workers that are prospective consumers of anti-dandruff shampoo and other products and can be considered as lucrative market Different marketing strategies have been adapted by Unilever Company to market their Lifebuoy products. Vikram (2010) stated that Brand Management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product to a product line that may be a brand too. Using this kind of strategy, brand management will generate more profit because the brand has been established in the consumers’ mind that they will continue to patronize the new product under that brand. They continue to use brand management through the years because it is a more effective way of introducing new products to market. It is also a cheaper mode of advertisement since the brand is already known by consumers and they do not have a hard time remembering the new product because they can always associated the new products with the famous brand. Another strategy that had been using by the company is the Branding strategy where they are building the name of the brand toward the consumers. They have designed their products to be effective and provide a brand that can be trusted and can be easily obtained by different classes of people. They built their brand trough the years by series of activities and commercials that contained relevant information that is needed by the public. They provide products that are necessary and important in the consumers’ everyday life. The company has been providing products that cater to peoples’ need and constantly improving their product based on consumers’ changing needs and wants. They have been established the brand through the years that when you hear proper hygiene and effective soap and shampoo that makes the hair beautiful, Lifebuoy comes to mind. Print ad is another form of advertisement to help sell the products. One of their campaigns was launching a mosaic picture of a man holding a lifebuoy. This mosaic picture contained a thousand of handprints and is 66 feet high and 600 feet long. Launching mosaic pictures like this makes peoples’ awareness of the brand high and more popular among the consumers. Another one is joining a campaign for Global Hand washing Day which aimed was to educate students of proper hand washing in different parts of the glove including the United Arab Emirates. Around 100,000 students took part in educational activities with emphasis of hand washing with soap and provided information of the goodness of hand washing. This type of marketing strategy also increases the awareness of the students of the brand and the importance of hand washing. It educates young minds to a proper personal hand washing and to also to introduce the brands to them. Another activities of Lifebuoy is by sponsoring a team in sports division Market research plays an important factor in determining whether the new product would be sellable or not. Based on the market research different factors have been identified to be able to know the marketing opportunity of Lifebuoy shampoo in United Arab Emirates. Fifty persons has been the respondent of the said research, twenty of them are males and thirty of them are females. Forty four out of fifty or eighty eight percent (88%) of the respondents suffer from dandruff, and majority of the respondents fall under the age bracket of 20-29 years old, meaning they belong to the working force and can be able to buy or afford the product and are willing to spend a certain amount of money to treat their dandruff. The research also covered how long do the respondent suffers from dandruff and all of them has been using dandruff shampoo. All of the respondents had a comment about the anti-dandruff shampoo they are using which included as bad smell, makes their hair dry and others. Lifebuoy has a competitive advantage over other brands of anti-dandruff shampoo because it contains a conditioning formula that retains scalp’s natural oil which makes the hair soft and supple. It also contains milk protein that guard against bacteria that causes dandruff and active ZPTO. While it prevents from having dandruff it also makes your hair beautiful which is not present in other brands. The research also covers where the consumer likes to buy their anti-dandruff shampoo and majority of them favoured supermarkets which garnered eighty percent (80 %), followed by pharmacy and beauty shop which both have ten percent each (10%). Providing information where the consumers procure their shampoos is a great help with the company because it gave them the idea where they will sell their products. The proposed pricing of Lifebuoy shampoo should be inside the range of AED 50 to AED 150 since the majority of the respondents are willingly to shell out for an anti-dandruff shampoo. This proposed price range is affordable to the masses and can be procure by consumers without worrying the price. This goes to show that majority of consumers buy their shampoos in supermarkets and seventy percent and seventy percent (70%) of the respondents have expressed their willingness to try out a new brand of anti-dandruff shampoo. Since Unilever Binzagr factory produces 52 variants including Lifebuoy, located in Saudi Arabia a few hours away from Dubai, distribution of the products would not be a problem. Lifebuoy anti-dandruff shampoos can be made in one of the factories of Unilever Binzagr in Saudi and distribution schemes made by personnel will be followed thoroughly. The proposed promotional mix can be done in different ways. One example of these ways are giving away free samples of Lifebuoy anti-dandruff shampoo in supermarkets, work areas or factories, offices and even in restaurants or canteens. Making commercials both in print and ad and others that will make a great impact of the product on the consumers. Lifebuoy shampoo caters the need of consumers because of different properties consumers are looking for in a single product that cannot be found in other brands. Bibliography Evaluating Opportunities in the Changing Market. [Internet] Available from [Accessed 24 May 2012] India Brand Equity Foundation. (2010) Fast Moving Consumer Goods. [Internet]. Available from [Accessed 24 May 2012] IUF Dairy Division (2011) Unilever-Netherlands / United Kingdom. [Internet] Available from [Accessed 24 May 2012] Lifebuoy of MacroEconomics. Kazakhstan International Business Magazine [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 24 May 2012] Lifebuoy Shampoo [Internet] Unilever Pakistan. Available from [Accessed 24 May 2012] Tsevis C .Lifebuoy campaign in Dubai, UAE: One of the biggest mosaic pictures in the world. [Internet] Available from [Accessed 24 May 2012] Pupils Put Their Hand For Hand Washing Day (2010). Emirates 24/7. 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