An Assignment on Lux Soap

Submitted By

ALOK KUMAR GUPTA

REG. No: 08SKCM6049

Submitted To

Prof. Ramesh

EMPOWERING MINDS

Acharya Institute of Management & Sciences

1st Cross, 1st Stage, Peenya Industrial Area

Bangalore – 560 058

2008- 2010

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INTRODUCTION to LUX SOAP

Lux stands for the promise of beauty and glamour as one of India's most trusted personal care

brands. Since its launch in India in the year 1929, Lux has offered a range of soaps in

different colors and world class fragrances. Lux is a beauty soap of film stars. Lux soap was

first launched in 1916 as laundry soap targeted specifically at 'delicates'. Lever Brothers

encouraged women to home launder their clothes without fear of satins and silks being turned

yellow by harsh lyes that were often used in soaps at the time. The flake-type soap allowed

the manufacturer some leeway from lye because it did not need to be shaped into traditional

cake-shaped loaves as other soaps were. The result was a gentler soap that dissolved more

readily and was advertised as suitable for home laundry use.

Lux toilet soap was introduced in 1925 as bathroom soap. The name 'Lux' was chosen as a

play on the word "luxury." Lux has been marketed in several forms, including bar and flake

and liquid (hand wash, shower gel and cream bath soap). Lux in step with the changing trends

and evolving beauty needs of the consumers, offers an exciting range of soaps and Body

Washes with unique elements to make bathing time more pleasurable. One can choose from a

range of skincare benefits like firming, fairness and moisturizing. From the 1930s right

through to the 1970s, Lux soap colors and packaging were altered several times to reflect

fashion trends. In 1958 five colors made up the range: pink, white, blue, green and yellow.

People enjoyed matching their soap with their bathroom colors.

In the early 1990s, Lux responded to the growing trend away from traditional soap bars by

launching its own range of shower gels, liquid soaps and moisturizing bars. Lux beauty facial

wash, Lux beauty bath and Lux beauty shower were launched in 1992.

In 2004, the entire Lux range was re-launched in the UK to include five shower gels, three

bath products and two new soap bars. 2005 saw the launch of three exciting new variants with

dreamy names such as “Wine & Roses” bath cream, “Glowing Touch” and “Sparkling

Morning” shower gels.

HISTORY

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Lux soap was first launched in the UK in 1899 as a flaked version of Sunlight soap.

Subsequently it was launched in the US in 1916, and marketed as laundry soap targeted

specifically at 'delicates'. Lever Brothers encouraged women to home launder their clothes

without fear of satins and silks being turned yellow by harsh lyes that were often used in

soaps at the time. The flake-type soap allowed the manufacturer some leeway from lye

because it did not need to be shaped into traditional cake-shaped loaves as other soaps were.

The result was a gentler soap that dissolved more readily and was advertised as suitable for

home laundry use Lux is currently a product of Unilever. The name "Lux" was chosen as the

Latin word for "light" and because it was suggestive of "luxury." Lux soap was introduced as

bathroom soap in the US in 1925 and in the UK in 1928 as a brand extension of Lux soap

flakes. Subsequently Lux soap has been marketed in several forms, including hand wash,

shower gel and cream bath soap.

Lux soap was launched in India in 1929. The very first advertisement in 1929 featured Leela

Chitnis as its brand ambassador. It was branded in India as "the beauty soap of film stars'. As

of June 2009 Lux is sold in over 100 countries.

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Hindustan Unilever Limited at a glance

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is India's largest fast moving consumer goods company,

touching the lives of two out of three Indians with over 20 distinct categories in home &

personal care products and food & beverages. They endow the company with a scale of

combined volumes of about 4 million tones and sales of over Rs. 13,000 crore. HUL is also

one of the country's largest exporters; it has been recognized as a Golden Super Star Trading

House by the Government of India.

HUL was formed in 1933 as Lever Brothers India Limited and came into being in 1956 as

Hindustan Lever Limited through a merger of Lever Brothers, Hindustan Vanaspati Mfg. Co.

Ltd. and United Traders Ltd. It is headquartered in Mumbai, India and has employee strength

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of over 15,000 employees and contributes for indirect employment of over 52,000 people.

The company was renamed in June 2007 to “Hindustan Unilever Limited”.

In 2007, Hindustan Unilever was rated as the most respected company in India for the past 25

years by Business World, one of India’s leading business magazines [1]. The rating was based

on a compilation of the magazine’s annual survey of India’s Most Reputed Companies over

the past 25 years. HUL is the market leader in Indian consumer products with presence in

over 20 consumer categories such as soaps, tea, detergents and shampoos amongst others with

over 700 million Indian consumers using its products. It has over 35 brands. Sixteen of HUL’s

brands featured in the ACNielsen Brand Equity list of 100 Most Trusted Brands Annual

Survey (2008) [2]. According to Brand Equity, HUL has the largest number of brands in the

Most Trusted Brands List. It’s a company that has consistently had the largest number of

brands in the Top 50 and in the Top 10 (with 4 brands).

Hindustan Unilever's distribution covers over 1 million retails outlets across India directly and

its products are available in over 6.3 million outlets in India, i.e., nearly 80% of the retail

outlets in India. It has 39 factories in the country. Two out of three Indians use the company’s

products and HUL products have the largest consumer reach being available in over 80 per

cent of consumer homes across India.

The Anglo-Dutch company Unilever owns a majority stake (52%) in Hindustan Unilever

Limited. HUL was one of the eight Indian companies to be featured on the Forbes list of

World’s Most Reputed companies in 2007.

Products of Hindustan Unilever Ltd

Personal wash:- Lux. Lifebuoy, Liril , Hamam, Breeze, Moti , Dove, Pears and Rexona

Laundry:- Surf Excel, sun light, Rin ,Wheel & Ala bleech

Dishwasher :- Vim

Disinfectants:- Domex, Cif

Foods:- Kissan(Jam,Ketchup,Squashes), Annapurna(Aata and salt), Knorr Soups, Modern

Bread

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Ice-cream:- Kwality Wall's

Bewerages:-

Tea:- Brooke Bond, Lipton, Taj Mahal Coffee:- Brooke Bond Bru

Beauty Products:- Fair & Lovely, Lakme, Ponds, Vaseline

Hair-Care:- Sunsilk Naturals, Clinic Plus , Dove

Oral-Care:- Pepsodent and Close-up

Deo spray:- Axe and Rexona

Water Purifier:- Pureit

Ayurvedic Personal & health care:- Ayush

PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES

Sale Promotion

Sales promotion, a key ingredient in marketing campaigns, consists of a collection of

incentive tools, mostly short term, designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchase of

particular products or services by consumers or the trade.

Whereas advertising offers a reason to buy, sales promotion offers an incentive to buy.

Prominent Sales Promotion Schemes Used by LUX

1. Lux presented 30 gm gold each to the first three winners of the Lux Gold Star offer from

Delhi. According to the promotional offer that Lux unveiled in October 2000, a consumer

finding a 22-carat gold coin in his or her soap bar got an opportunity to win an additional 30

gm gold. The first 10 callers every week got a 30 gm gold each. The offer could be availed

only on 100 gm and 150 gm packs of Lux soap.

2. Lux Star Bano, Aish Karo contest: All one needed to do was buy a special promotional

pack of Lux soap. The pack comes with a special scratch card. The 50 lucky winners and their

spouses were flown down to Mumbai to live a day like Aishwarya Rai would. They could also

be given gift vouchers worth Rs 50,000 from Shoppers' Stop along with an exclusively

designed Neeta Lulla sari and a beauty makeover by Michelle Tung, Aishwarya's preferred

designer and stylist. The pièce de résistance was a dinner date with Aishwarya Rai herself.

3. Lux celebrated 75 years of stardom with the Har Star Lucky Star activity.

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All wrappers of Lux had a star printed inside them. If the consumer found written inside the

star, any number from “1” to “5”, she would get an equivalent discount (in rupees) on her

purchase from her shopkeeper. If the consumer found “75 years” written inside the star, she

will get a year’s supply of Lux free.

Online Contests:

Play the supercharged version of the hit puzzle game, Bejeweled. Create rows of 3 or more

identical stones and you could win a trip for two to a five-star Resort in Goa.

Promotion:

Hindustan Unilever undertakes huge promotional activities to promote LUX which has topped

the beauty soap industry of India. Since the 1930s, over 400 of the world’s most stunning and

sensuous women have been proudly associated with LUX advertisements. They do not only

promote LUX in India for the beauty conscious females, it also promotes the brand for males

and the company proved that, by including world famous male celebrity Shahrukh Khan for

their advertising campaign. Hindustan Unilever Ltd spends a huge amount of money for

promoting LUX through TV commercials, newspaper advertisements and billboards. Till now

promotional activities of LUX has always been successful which has made it a household

common name and helped it reach almost one billion take a sale value in the year 2004.

Point of Purchases:

The LUX is not given a notable placement on the shelves of different retail shops &

departmental stores for its sales promotion. Usually the company goes for wide display in the

stores where it potential for its product. Different eye-catching decorations are made inside

the store and in the showcase for outside display. These arrangements are made with the

assistance of the sales people of the company.

Advertisements:

The message that the product reflects in its advertisements is the one that is usually narrated

by the corporate itself

Selection of Media:

There are number of Sources available for passing the product message. These are as follows;

Television

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Outdoor (Billboards)

Magazines

Newspapers

Brochures

Internet

Impact on Sales:

The company believes that ads do have adequate impact on sales. In order to meet the company

policy of maintaining and strengthening the corporate image, the ads are shown on television.

There is a long-term strategy in the books of Unilever to disturb the loose Soap market. They

usually show documentary from time to time regarding the flaws in loose Soap quality. It is

usually shown without any discrimination, i.e., without mentioning any Soap name or company

name in the documentary.

Analyzing the Market for LUX

In India, soaps are available in five million retail stores, out of which, 3.75 million retail stores

are in the rural areas. Therefore, availability of these products is not an issue. 70% of India's

population resides in the rural areas; hence around 50% of the soaps are sold in the rural markets.

Conclusion

The beauty soap industry of India consists of a few producers in the industry. The

Demand for this product is very much vulnerable in terms of pricing. Hindustan Unilever is

providing LUX at a price which is affordable to most of the people in the country. Beauty soap is

an uprising product in India as a greater portion of the population, both male and female, are now

getting more beauty conscious. As a multinational company Hindustan Unilever with heavy

promotional activities, has been able to penetrate the market. With six different fragrances, three

different sizes, international standard and high quality design, as a product, LUX has been highly

successful over the years. Its distribution process is highly efficient. Its promotional activities,

like the beauty contest has been a milestone in attracting a huge number of customers. Overall

with its marketing activities LUX has been a successful brand.

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