DISTRIBUTION

Marketing channels and Value networks

• Dove uses the Pull strategy to persuade its customers (advertising, campaigns)
• The target market of the product involves individuals of the upper middle and upper class and according to the strategy of demand chain planning the products are made available for sales to the customers in over 1 million stores.
•  The distribution channel functions and flows however is as folows

• As shown in the figure the distribution process of Dove products starts with the manufacturer and moves down to the retail stores, CSD and modern trade through C&F(cost and freight) and stockists. 
  • The Assistant Sales Manager (ASM), Activation manager (AM) and Territory Sales incharge (TSI) co-ordinates the sales process. 
  • The stockists have who is known as a re stockist salesman (RSSM) to manage operations between the stockist and the retailers
  • As it can be observed HUL follows a four-level channel.
• It falls under the Vertical marketing systems (Administered VMS)
• The associated risk of conflicts are also minimized as the stockists are decided by the company and administered as per requirement and there is no space for the retailers to charge extra.

Service sector channels

               The brand has managed to grab the prospective customers with its

• Advertisements on the television 
• Interactive billboard campaigns allowing the audience to vote for their preference of choice
• The 'Real Beauty Campaign' that helped secure a sense of connectivity with its target customers.

Analyzing customer wants and needs: Service outputs

• Lot size: any amount
• Waiting and delivery time: NIL
• Spatial convenience: Availability at across 1 million stores proves the extreme spatial convinience
• Product variety: A wide range of variants available
• Service backup : NA

Managing, Retailing, Wholesaling and Logistics

Major types of store retailers

• Department stores
• Supermarkets
• Convenience stores
• Kiosks
• Chemists
• Superstore

Level of service offering: Self selection

Marketing decisions:

1. Target market:  Working women of the upper class and upper middle class form the target customers. Under this category they aim at women age in the range of 17 to 50, of all sizes shapes and colors. Since it is positioning itself as a premium brand, the target market would include all stores situated in urban areas.
2. Channels: Multiple channel marketing is followed where in the customers have a choice of picking up their products from the stores or order online.
3.  Product Assortment: Dove as a brand as a fairly large breadth and depth. Under the family of personal care the brand offers skin care, hair care, deodorants and such. The depth under the subcategory of soaps include its 3 variants.
4. Communications at retail stores are done by in store sales persons who puts across the values of the product into the minds of the customers. Also when a new product is launched they have initial introductory offers or free samples made available to the customer. In case of complementary products, they are packed together and made available at a price lower than the price it would cost a customer when bought separately.
5. Location: the product is available in central business districts, regional shopping centers, community shopping centers, shopping strips and stand alone stores.

Marketing logistics:

 HUL has now tried to provide complete back-end support to the distributors by tying up with a third party logistics. The executive director feels that the outsourcing is necessary as it provides them a chance to be more customer focused and work on the market growth. (Source: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-07-29/news/27698118_1_distributors-hul-retail-segment)

PROMOTIONS

INTEGRATED MARKETING CHANNELS

Marketing communication mix:

• Advertising: The brand had a campaign for real beauty and this was initiated by the brand manager Kerstin Dunleavy. They launched this campaign so as to acquire a better market position. In this campaign the brand portrayed images of women of all ages, sizes and shapes. This was embossed on a large number of billboards, hoarding, there were tvcs etc. They started this with a mission of creating a difference in the minds of all the women who feel that they were not beautiful. They started a poll for the people which questioned them about their perception of what they feel is the real beauty. This they did by putting up the questions on the billboards and hoardings and such. The people had to leave a reply on the questions. Besides this the brand has advertised itself on other platforms such as the television and the internet. One such advertisements came with the tagline of "is it love? No it's Dove"

• Sales promotion: Dove did a lot of sales promotion for its campaign. A few promotional strategies included giving out free Real Beauty T-shirts to all those customers who made a bill of more than INR499. They also gave out free samples before launching their products into the market. They provided the the customers to join "your love"  which allowed them to have access to view the special offers and innovations. They were also entitled to receiving expert advice and beauty care tips. They had a toll free number for the customer support.

• Events and experiences: The events and experiences of the brand contained the charateristics of being highly relevant and also engaging its customers. Along with the 'Real Beauty Campaign' they also conducted the 'ad makeover' campaign. It was basically started to displace all the ads that left a negative impact on the minds of the people. The ad aimed at making women feel good about themselves. This started the campaign on Facebook and followed the crowdsourcing policy by letting the women themselves decide the messages that would make most women feel good.

• Public relations and publicity: One of major aspects contributing to the success of the 'Real Beauty Campaign' was the effective use of PR. PR affected the customers cognitive thinking towards the whole concept of Beauty which in turn lead them to respond positively. Usually, the News section of Dove had in it the press releases and were published in many magazines and newspapers. The "Dove in the News" section contains a number of press releases that were published in various newspapers and magazines.

• Direct marketing: The brand provided a toll free number to enable the customer services. Besides the 'Your Dove' was conceptualized to make the customers feel a little special and this they managed to do by providing them information about the special offers, product innovations and providing expert advice and beauty care tips so that the customers can by themselves be aware of how to best take care of their skin.

• Interactive marketing: Both the 'Real Beauty'  and the 'Ad makeover' campaigns provided a platform for the customers to respond with their perception.

• Word of mouth marketing: When dove first entered the Indian markets it launched its beauty bar at a premium price which most consumers refused to accept. Thus the only customers were those who had traveled a lot and knew about the product benefits. These people could be the first sources for the word-of-mouth marketing. Later on the campaign activities conducted by the brand lead to more and more people talk about the campaigns and the brand.

THE DOVE CAMPAIGN FOR REAL BEAUTY

• Launched in 2004
• It was an initiation taken to stress on the wider definition of beauty
• Efforts were to taken to engrave in the thoughts of people that beauty is a measure of confidence and not that of anxiety
• Hoardings were put up and people could participate in the polls
• Many workshops were conducted 
• The Dove Self-esteem fund was a part of the campaign which helped women increase their self-esteem by making them realize that they are beautiful.

• There were several workshops conducted with the vision of making women realize that they are beautiful. One of this was the Dove real beauty sketches workshop. People came in and described themselves and an artist sketched their portrait with just the description. The sketch was redone with the description the friends of the same person gave. By doing so it was seen that most women do not realize how beautiful they are and this workshop helped build a sense of confidence about their beauty in their minds.

Main Channels of Communication:

The Website

You Tube

Commercials on the television

Social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter)

Billboards and hoardings

PRICING

PRICING

•  Dove has adopted the competitive based pricing.
• It has a large number of variants in the product type and all its variants are priced around a similar range.
• Considering the huge market share of HUL it can be identified that Dove has based its pricing with the objective of attaining Maximum Market Share, but not through Market penetration strategy.
  
  
  
              Source: http://www.digitalimpulse.in/insights/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/market-share-soap.jpg

Source: http://www.share-pdf.com/1cf820e387b64851afc90a013b3c117c/final%20mrp%20anuj%20for%2016-01-13_images/final%20mrp%20anuj%20for%2016-01-1317x1.jpg

• It also follows the high value strategy as it aims at position itself as a premium brand.
• It also exhibited the Maximum market skimming objective.

The competitive price comparison is as follows

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/Mitraeft/10-stepmarketingplandovemitraeftekhar-6960082

The demand curve:

• Initially the target customers which included the upper class and they still did not find it worthy to spend so much and buy a soap. They then lowered the price to attract the upper middle class sector as well and were successful in their mission

Analyzing competitors costs prices and offers.

• The soap was priced at a slightly higher price than most of its competitors 
• However they managed to pull off with the sales with the added value of providing the consumers the combined benefits of a soap and a moisturizer which most other soaps did not.

Pricing method

• The pricing of dove soap followed a perceived value pricing satisfying the consumers with image, performance and softer attributes such as trustworthiness and esteem.

Final pricing 

• Dove is a brand with average relative quality but because of their high expenditure on advertising and the 'Real Beauty campaign' campaign allowed them to charge a premium price.

PRODUCT

PRODUCT LEVELS

PRODUCT CLASSIFICATION

• The dove soap is a tangible and non durable product.
• It falls under the category of convenience goods and is often frequently purchased.
• It is also a shopping product competing with the other soap bars in terms of style, price and quality.

PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION

                                        FORM

• Logo signifies softness gentleness and sophistication
• It is a soap bar
• It is white in color
• Oval shaped
• Unscented

FEATURES

• Beauty bar (moisturizing bar)
• Hypo-allergenic
• Mild- low ph value
• One quarter moisturizing lotion

CUSTOMIZATION

• Market offerings: Wide variety of soap bars to choose from according to the requirement.
• Message: Beauty is a state of mind.
• Media: The real beauty campaigns help attain a farther reach among the target audience because of its focus on women of all shapes, ages, sizes and colors. 

PERFORMANCE QUALITY

• Highly positive satisfaction expressed by people with dry skin
•  Positive response from working women (with less time to afford) who get the combined benefits of a cleaning agent and a moisturizer in one beauty bar.

THE PRODUCT HIERARCHY OF HUL

• Requirement: Beauty care product to remove dirt 
• Product family: personal care
• Product class:  all soaps and body washes, face washes, shampoos.
• Product line: -> Soap, body wash, face wash.
• Product type: LUX, Lifebuoy, DOVE
• Item: Dove soaps of HUL act as a deep moisturizer with a very low ph value and calls itself as a moisturizing bar and not a soap which marks the point of differentiation.

PRODUCT SYSTEMS AND MIXES

THE MARKETING MIX

Product 

•       Dove offers a bathing soap bar which has the combined benefits of a moisturizer and skin softener which marks the point of differentiation.
•       It offers a soap with the lowest ph value.      
•      The product was launched to basically target working women not essentially models
•      The brand has also managed to achieve strong connects with its customers 

 Promotion

•      The product was introduced to the market in 1995, from then until 2007, the brand used to promote the product based on a theme where the 'perfect' women were portrayed as role models. 
•       The brand then started it 'Real Beauty' campaign where the focus switched from the youth to women of all ages, sizes and shapes. In this they used a tagline which said, 'beauty is a state of mind' so as to build confidence.
  

Place

•      The brand was owned by HUL
•       It was distributed through a network of around one million retail outlets across 2500 distributors.
•      The product was available in general stores, supermarkets, chemists and wholesale dealers.

Price

•       Initially the product was launched at a high price of INR 40 aiming at the upper middle and high class consumers
•      The target audience did not find it worthy.
•       However the brand did not want to drastically reduce the price as it wanted to be positioned as a premium brand.
•       To overcome the problem they invested more on live campaigns and advertising. This helped create a more strong customer base.

PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE AND INDUSTRY LIFE CYCLE

LIFE CYCLE OF DOVE SOAP

INTRODUCTION

             Dove is a personal care brand owned by HUL having a wide range of products (soaps, body wash, deodrants, lotions, hair care etc.) When the dove soap was introduced in the Indian market it was priced at a slightly higher range and this they did so as to maintain the 'premium' tag of the brand. However, initially the sales were not up to the mark considering the highly marked prices. Dove then came up with their ad campaign's to promote the products and attract customers.

GROWTH
       
             The Dove's 'Real Beauty' Campaign: This was launched after viewing the results of a survey which showed that only 2% of the women considered themselves to be beautiful. During this they put up billboards with portraits of regular women and allowed the viewers to vote on how they perceived the portrayed model as (see picture attached below), and with its report aimed at creating a whole new definition of the word 'beauty'. Their mission was primarily focused on spreading an awareness that beauty is a source of confidence.
           As a result they received a very positive response from the population and also a very significant media coverage. With this response they then decided to broaden the media exposure by releasing print advertisements, television ads and much more.

MATURITY
  
               The brand is now in the maturity stage and has been here for a very long time now. It is also considered among the top personal care brands. The continuing innovations, the campaigns and the large number of satisfied and loyal customers have helped the brand remain at this stage for so long and if Dove continues to maintain its relationships with existing customers and carry out events so as to gain new customers, it would not be wrong to say that the brand will continue to be safe in terms of its market share.

source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYDDN0yvuIMPbDU9WEIxgMN3K6NStc8Ogg6mAiSdRB5zLZaUGRNwD57rxgZN_4qnYIO8t15wYLMRDfOZE5r9bmjqfEV4ks0oGDHTxttjm_g3Br-uiVfPMRKvySit7BfBTYxc87PlDCqo/s1600/Dove+Product+Lifecycle.png

COMPETITORS AND INDUSTRY

COMPETITORS

INTERNAL COMPETITORS

• LUX
• LIFEBUOY
• REXONA

EXTERNAL COMPETITORS

• CAMAY
• NIVEA
• PEARS

THE INDIAN SOAP INDUSTRY

SOURCE: http://www.indianmirror.com/indian-industries/soap.html

CURRENT POSITIONING

• Premium- Lux, Dove
• Economy- Nirma Bath, Lifebuoy
• Popular- Nirma, Cinthol

SOURCE: http://www.naukrihub.com/india/fmcg/overview/soaps/#sthash.uNdPk1KF.dpuf

Consumer Decision Process

CONSUMER DECISION PROCESS