GROUP ASSIGNMENTTECHNOLOGY PARK MALAYSIABM007-3-1-ITMUC1F1404

Student Name : TP NumberMIN NAING SOE : TP035323ZAW MIN AUNG : TP035206DATE OF SUBMISSION: 4th, July, 2014Number of Words : 1474 words

Analysis on Unilever

Introduction Unilever is one of the oldest multinational consumer goods company, one of the worlds leading fast-moving consumer goods company with products sold in over 190 countries, established in 1930 by merging the British, Lever Brother and the Dutch Margarine Unie. Unilever PLC is in London, UK and Unilever N.V in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Unilever N.V and Unilever PLC operate together as Unilever group. Both of the companies are under the same board of directors. Unilever produces Food and Beverage, and Home and Personal Care. Some of their products are Knorr, Breyer and Magnum, Lipton, Omo (detergent), and etc .With more than 400 brands, by focusing on health and wellbeing, Unilevers portfolio ranges from nutritious foods to indulgent ice creams, soaps, luxurious shampoos and everyday household care products. Every day, 2 billions of people are using their products to look better, feel better and get better more out of life. This report is going to take a look at the Unilevers business environments.Technology Environment In the 1930, Unilever continue to expand business to be more successful in the 1950 with new technology being invented to be more productive and enhance quality products for consumer, and boom competitors by improving their products using new inventions. Unilever did not delay at their effort in research and development (R&D).Unilever is spending on IT to improve their business especially in e-business, since 2000. So as to improve communication of brands and market online, and to ease transaction along the chain. Today, Unilever is minimizing the cost by using efficiencies of IT at global level. Additionally, Unilever Technology Venture collaborates with Unilever R&D group to assist Unilever meet the desires of the consumers. Their area of concerns are advanced bioscience, materials science, genomics, and nanotechnology. Unilever installed pallet live storage system with Bito Storage System Ltd, in 2003. It was to store their frozen products. Carton live storage system, pallet racking and live storage system, boltless shelving, plastic bins and containers, wide span and heavy load shelving, cantilever racking, and multi-tier shelving systems are of the facilities.

Legal- Political Environment For Legal-Political Environment, Unilever set a standard to tackle political issues as a matter of their policy. Unilever has its tactics of handling political issues. In 1960, many countries nationalized foreign companies, and Unilever was also affected. That was for the participation of local equity in foreign firms. So, many companies were subject to local control on prices, imports, employment of expertise and etc. Many US companies left India in 1970 because of the nationalization policy. The nationalization policy frightened the foreign companies on certain issues such as leakage of knowledge, and loss of trademark. That also affected to Unilever because their control over the operation in market was lesser. For instance, UAC, the subsidiary of Unilever that operated in many African countries, and its profit margin and rate of profit remittance to its parent company was enormous. As UAC was nationalized, the control of Unilever over the market where UAC operates was reduced. However, Unilever used their experience to bargain with government so as to modify the regulations. In south and Central America, Unilever only lobbied rather than involving in active politicking. Unilever never sponsored any political parties. By using their tactical strategy and experience, Unilever has gained political ground today. Unilever has become the member of many organizations all over the world. Their aim is to make a fortunate business environment, and to facilitate reputation of corporate management.Customers and Clients Unilever never sells their products under their own name and uses brand name to illustrate diversity. For instance in UK, there are different brands of margarine for consumers to choose. These are Stork, Blue Band, Flora, Summer County, and etc. However, these are the products of Unilever. Unilever uses this strategy to get satisfaction of the consumers from different groups of people. Consumers can make their choice from brands available. And Unilever makes sure each country retain the local brand whenever their products are modified because the company wants to keep their standard. Some of these brands are Algid in Italy, Bresler in Chile, HB in Ireland, Miko in France, and GB Glace in Finland. The fact Unilever is successful locally is strengthened by allowing every country to choose its own logo. Eg, the former logo used in UK it was a yellow logo. On the other hand, there is a strong relationship between Unilever and the customers based on local market and culture. For example, there are various ethnic groups in Nigeria, at where Unilever built a strong relationship with customers by maintaining their high standard of corporate behavior towards local customers and employees.Competitors Especially in the Western Europe, the market environment of Unilever is very competitive at where Procter & Gamble (P&G) is the main competitor in the EU market. Moreover, due to the EU free trade policy, there has been so many discounters in EU market. That affected on profit potentials of Unilever. Unilever has been encountering competitive problem in Europe since 1990. Unilever has been spending more on R&D to provide the products with reasonable price and that meets the customer satisfaction, too. Unilever is also connecting their business partners for promoting cross-border collaborations. The Heart Brand, a logo launched in 1991, it is designed strategically to gain brand awareness internationally and promote synergies in marketing and manufacturing internationally. That strategy is for recognition of Ice-cream brands and also to recognize that other units are integral part of Unilever. With different product standard, global brand can carry the same logo and brand name. Since 2004, Unilever set a 5 years plan to cut 1200 brands that are underperforming due to the lack of brand recognition in the market, to yield sales growth of six percent. In 2002, Unilever opened a procurement center in Shanghai, China to serve as a source of raw material for Chinese companies as to compete favorably and internationally. Since 1989, Shanghai Van Den Bergh has become a joint venture between Unilever and Shanghai Sugar, Cigarette and Wine .FMCG producers has been pressuring by the retailers to reduce the prices of the products. On the other hand, customers would not favor to buy expensive products or brands due to current economic flow. As the competition in Europe is growing strong, Unilever is having difficulties in places like Netherlands and France. Unilever adopted their strategy to sustain their profitability drive at where with political instability like the developing countries, Asia and Africa.Conclusion Unilever is operating in about 100 countries around the world with 206000 employees. Unilever is penetrating into the big emerging economies like Africa and Asia where their business is better than in EU market. In 2005, more than one third of their turnover came from the emerging economies and developing countries. Even though, these economies have a very unsteady environment, and it is challenging for Unilever to monitor and respond quickly to changes in market performance to safeguard their business. Since Unilever has initiated the Path to Growth strategy, which is the headway toward actualizing the dream of the organization. This system is a key control strategy through IT. This strategy is because of the underperformance of some of Unilevers products especially the frozen food. The strategy is to increase effectiveness, reduce cost structure and improve market competitiveness. To reach where they are today, Unilever maximized their available resources and went as far as creating a dedicated division that focuses on aligning strategy to sustainability. This division not only includes experts of engineering and business, and also agronomists that can provide a different perspective and add the necessary skillset to the team.Unilever assigned a Chief Sustainability Officer and made the effort to learn more about the business practices of their suppliers. The latter helped them to weed out the suppliers that are not aligned with the vision of being sustainable and could hurt the reputation of Unilever. In sum, there were two main factors that Unilever adopted to become a Sustainability-Driven grown company. First is Identifying, accepting, and committing to the need for change. And second is aligning every party involved in the chain to their strategy to make sure they all move toward the same goals. So that, they continue to grow stronger today.

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