About Hindustan Unilever Limited

A massive Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company having over 35+ brands across 20 categories and with over 85 years of heritage. The company’s foremost motive is to bring sustainable development. It is regarded as India’s largest exporter that has become an imperishable company that reduces plastic and promotes sustainable projects.

HUL is an Indian public limited company controlled by Unilever, which owns 67 per cent of the business’s shares. The company was based in 1932 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India.

Beyond a large portfolio of products, it also aspires to pioneer innovative business models that promote growth while also benefiting society and the environment.

The company needs to create a triumphant mix of the right product, sold at the right price, using the most creative promotion in the correct place. To focus on multiple areas of the marketing plan, the company needs to set the target market accurately. Let’s now understand the marketing mix of HUL in the coming section.

Marketing Mix of Hindustan Unilever Limited

A marketing mix is a strategy for getting a company’s products and services in front of consumers at the right time. The 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) are the foundations of this concept. It serves as the conceptual backbone of a marketing strategy.

HUL is having powerful brand equity, it possesses over 15000 employees with a direct reach to 1.5 million retail outlets. The products and services which are necessary for middle-class Indian households are produced and distributed consequently.

So, let’s have a look at the HUL marketing mix model by looking at the parameters of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion in the following paragraphs.

1. Product Strategy of Hindustan Unilever Limited

Food and beverages, home care, personal care, and water purifiers account for the majority of the company’s product portfolio. In the HUL marketing mix, the complete product range across categories is discussed as follows.

• Food Products – In the ice cream sector, HUL has Kwality Wall’s, Cornetto, and Magnum. The company owns Lipton in the tea category, as well as Taaza, 3 Roses, Red Label, and Taj Mahal under the Brooke Bond brand. Bru is the brand of Hindustan Unilever Limited in the coffee sector. Salt and Atta are sold under the Annapurna brand. It also provides instant food and spices under the Knorr brand, which includes noodles, and also provides ketchup, squashes, jam under the Kissan brand.

• Home Range Products – Home Care HUL offers a variety of detergents, including the well-known Surf Excel, Rin, Comfort, Wheel, and Sunlight. It also has Cif and Domex in the household cleaning market, as well as Vim and Cif in the dishwashing segment.

• Personal Range Collections – In the shampoo category, Hindustan Unilever Limited has Clear, Tresemme, Clinic Plus, and Sunsilk, Dove, Lux, and Pears. On the other hand, the company provides a variety of home cosmetics. Vaseline belongs to the skincare category. Lifebuoy belongs to the hand soap and toilet soap category. Axe grooming products for guys as well as Brylcreem hair styling products also come under the category of HUL.

• Water Purifier – Pure It is the sole brand that has several products concerning water purification systems. HUL merged with GSK Consumer Healthcare, which strengthened its position in the Indian market.

These are the major brands that are managed by HUL. So, let’s see how the company dispersed its variety of products through the distribution strategy of HUL.

2. Place & Distribution Strategy of Hindustan Unilever Limited

The organization has a broad distribution network which includes directly 2 million outlets and retail outlets of 7.7 million across the world. The company has a direct selling network which is regulated by the Hindustan Unilever Limited network.

According to HUL’s distribution, about 2500 redistribution stockists cover 6.3 million retail outlets in metropolitan India. Around 250 million people live in rural India, and 35 important Indian brands are consumed by them.

The corporation export’s vision is to prioritize quality, reliability, and remarkable consumer experience. The foreign brands mostly invest capital management and manpower as a counterpart to export home and personal care products, food and beverages, the marine product, and rice to the foreign alliance.

To serve in the rural areas as well, the distribution system is divided. The company is being able to reach a wide market is because of the reasonable price and quality.

The pricing policy is unpretentious, for some of its products the pricing is maintained according to its competitors. Let’s take a look at the pricing strategy of HUL in the coming section.

3. Price Strategy of Hindustan Unilever Limited

HUL generates a huge amount of sales in different parts of countries with its reasonable pricing policy. Being a company with consumer-leading brands here are some of the pointers to clarify its pricing.

The firm has always been known for its products, which have a diversified economy to reach the rural market and are priced competitively. It applies a simple pricing strategy. Most of the daily used products in middle-class Indian households have a standard quality with low costing.

To maintain proper balance in the market with its competitors, HUL sets a competitive pricing policy. This leads to an increase in price with the increase in competitors’ price of similar goods while a decrease in price with the decrease in competitors’ price.

Having an enormous number of consumers dependent on your product with fluctuating demand is complicated. So HUL offers consumers intriguing marketing plans, let’s witness it below.

4. Promotion Strategy of Hindustan Unilever Limited

Promotion is a crucial part of any company to create a magnificent impression on consumers. It will offer intelligence to support them in constructing a choice to purchase a product or service.

It encourages building a long-term bond with the brand. When it comes to HUL, its overall expenditure on advertisement is u to 18%. It mainly targets the audience via Television advertisements.

To target the rural area HUL has come up with sustainable projects to support and uplift green alternatives. Some promotion strategies are as follows:

• Shakti campaign
• Project Bharat
• Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana.

Surf Excel had released a new ad, which aimed to encourage people to keep their inner child alive. The brand is well known for it’s advertisements centered around the Holi festival in India, take a look at one of their ad campaigns which was launched in the year 2022,

There are also various promotion tactics applied via newspaper, internet, personal and direct selling, and many more.

With this, the exploration of HUL’s marketing mix comes to an end, Let’s close the case study with a conclusion below.