Marketing strategy for Lifebuoy Vietname

Published Date: 03 Oct 2016 Last Modified: 08 Mar 2017

Table of Contents

Introduction2

Relevant Context and Background Information2

The Company’s Overall Marketing Orientation3

Lifebuoy Vietnam’s Marketing Process3

Lifebuoy Vietnam’s Marketing Orientations6

Recommendations for Improvement in Marketing Orientations2

Conclusion2

References2

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this analysis report is to examine the overall marketing orientation of our company, Lifebuoy Vietnam, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of the orientations that we have followed. Another objective is to suggest potential solutions that may lead us to improve on our shortcomings. The focus is primarily on the product named Lifebuoy Total 10 Bar Soap, which belongs to one of our most significant product lines.

RELEVANT CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Lifebuoy is the oldest brand of Unilever with a history of more than one hundred years. As stated on our global website, over the past century, Lifebuoy has “evolved into the world’s #1 selling germ protection soap and a worldwide leader bringing better health and hygiene to billions.” This social mission has been accomplished and continued in many countries around the world, including Vietnam. Lifebuoy Vietnam partnered with P/S (another brand of Unilever) to carry out the Behavior Change Program, which aims to educate everyone on how to prevent diseases. Up to now, the program has touched the lives of thousands of children, promoting the importance of washing hands with soap and brushing teeth before bed. The children are provided with helpful information to share with their families and encouraged to practice cost-effective and healthy hygiene habits at home. Furthermore, Lifebuoy and Unilever’s health programs have reached rural communities through women unions, significantly helping more children reach their fifth birthday and improving school attendance. This movement has delivered the message about health and hygiene to 1.4 million Vietnamese people during the last five years.

Regarding the featured product in this report, Lifebuoy Total 10 Bar Soap contains active thymol—an antiseptic and antibacterial ingredient—and Lifebuoy patented germ-protection ingredient, Active5. Thymol is an ancient medicinal chemical attained from the natural thyme oil, known for its capability of effectively killing off bacteria and fungi. The rich and soapy foam of this product ensures cleanliness and freshness while the advanced formulation takes care of users’ skin. The overall effect of Lifebuoy Total 10 Bar Soap—when used at five critical occasions in a day—is lab-proven to keep users protected from germs for twelve hours after bath.

THE COMPANY’S OVERALL MARKETING ORIENTATION

Lifebuoy Vietnam’s Marketing Process

What is marketing? According to Philip Kotler et al. (2009), marketing is defined as the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return. Also, as mentioned in the book Principles of Marketing: A Global Perspective, the general marketing process can be broken down into five simple steps, as illustrated in the model below.

Figure 1: A simple five-step model of the marketing process

In the first four steps, a company invests time in comprehending the marketplace and its customers, devising a customer-driven strategy, planning an integrated marketing program that appeals to target customers with its superior value, and creating lucrative relationships with those customers. And in the final step, that company will be able to gain back value from its satisfied customers in the form of greater customers’ trust and loyalty, better reputation, increased sales and profits, higher market share, and higher customer equity (i.e. loyal customers will buy more from the company in the future and convince potential customers to buy the company’s products as well). This five-step model closely applies to our situation. In the following paragraphs, the effectiveness of our company’s marketing process is going to be evaluated.

Firstly, Lifebuoy Vietnam identifies its possible marketplace as essentially every location throughout the country, since our products are affordable to consumers of all levels of income. This affordability factor is particularly important when we operate in developing Asian countries like Vietnam, where the majority of consumers have very low earnings and get by on relatively tight budgets. We clearly understand that, irrespective of differences in economic status, the basic need to maintain good health and hygiene is common for every consumer. Hence, we set the prices of our market offerings—bar soap, shampoo, body wash, and hand wash—at reasonable prices so as to fulfill that intrinsic need and attract a huge array of consumers. Although Vietnamese buyers tend to associate inexpensive goods with poor quality, they are well aware that Lifebuoy products are among the best in its category.

In the second step, we design a customer-driven marketing strategy by choosing which segments of customers to serve and selecting a remarkable value proposition—a set of benefits we promise to deliver to our customers. We actually don’t have any specific market segmentation because we advertise our products as ideal buying options for families. There is certainly no limit to who can have access to and use our health products; we believe that we are able to serve all customers equally well. With that purpose, we position our company in the marketplace by claiming to offer “unbeatable protection” and stating that “As the world’s No. 1 germ protection soap, our vision is to bring health and hygiene to a billion people.” Through this proposition, we differentiate ourselves as the global leading soap brand which can make a difference, thereby implying that buyers should choose our products over our competitors’. We have managed to engage a lot of customers with this well-planned strategy.

Then, we move on to putting our previously planned strategy into action. In this third step, we prepare an integrated marketing program that communicates our intended superior value. This program is composed of our company’s marketing mix, the set of four major tools called the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. According to surveys about our service, Lifebuoy’s high-quality hygiene products manage to satisfy the customer desire to stay clean, healthy, and active. Turning to the prices of our offerings, as mentioned above, we take affordability into great consideration. We consecutively charge 5,000, 8,000, and 11,000 VND for our 70g, 90g, and 125g Total 10 Bar Soap products. And we widely distribute our products at various places—central business districts (e.g. Ben Thanh Market), supermarket chains (e.g. Co.opmart), informal markets (e.g. Xom Chieu Market), grocery shops (e.g. Circle K), and various retail stores. Finally, our promotion campaigns have been very effective in communicating with target buyers about the quality of our offerings. For instance, recent surveys show that our consumers knew about our hygiene products’ merits through daily TV commercials, newspaper advertisements, online social media (e.g. Facebook), word of mouth, and especially touching promo clips. Emotional connection is positively linked to our marketing campaigns’ success.

The purpose of the first three steps in the marketing process is to reach the fourth and also the most crucial step: building sustaining and profitable relationships with our customers. In order to do so, we need to provide our customers with the desired superior value and satisfaction. Indeed, whenever customers consider our brand, they always weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our products (e.g. Lifebuoy Total 10 Bar Soap) relative to similar market offerings of our direct (e.g. Acnes, Dial, Dettol) and indirect competitors (i.e. general soap brands such as Camay, Coast, or Romano). The marketing department’s job is to persuade customers into perceiving that, when it comes to hygiene products, they can gain the highest value from the Lifebuoy brand. In every marketing campaign, we let potential buyers know that by using our soap, they will earn not only incomparable health benefits, but also general values offered by other brands (e.g. good smell, comfort, cleanliness). Annual surveys show that our customers are highly satisfied with their experience, since Lifebuoy products’ performance exceeds their usual expectations of economical offerings’ quality. Additionally, in view of our commitment to supporting the young generation, we develop marketing programs that give our buyers special offers throughout the school year. For example, during the starting week of school, customers who buy a 125g Lifebuoy Total 10 Bar Soap will receive a free pencil case or a set of three hand-shaped pencils. These marketing tools certainly have contributed to increasing customer delight and enhancing customer relationships.

After the first four steps that involve the company’s responsibilities, the company now can reap value from profitable relationships with its satisfied customers. At this stage, satisfaction will result in more loyal customers, who will then talk others into selecting our brand and buying our high-quality products. We are trying to keep this kind emotional attachment, long-term customer relationship, loyalty, and retention in order to achieve customer lifetime value—the purchases that customers would make throughout their lifetime of support for Lifebuoy’s offerings. Over the past few years, Lifebuoy Vietnam has experienced a remarkably growing share of customer, since more and more Vietnamese customers tend to think of Lifebuoy’s products as the best buying options in the hygiene product category. The fact that our variety of products is able to meet customers’ different washing needs also added to this greater share of customers’ spending budget. Furthermore, the ultimate goal is to build higher customer equity—the aggregate customer lifetime values of all of our customers. Statistics indicate that the majority of Lifebuoy’s first-time consumers are willing to purchase more offerings from our brand, and at the same time, happy to recommend our products to their acquaintances.

Lifebuoy Vietnam’s Marketing Orientations

“Marketing management wants to design strategies that will build profitable relationships with target customers. But what philosophy should guide these marketing strategies? What weight should be given to the interests of customers, the organization, and society?” (Kotler et al. 2009). A company’s marketing orientations can be deduced from the incentive to become superior to its competitors in the customers’ eyes. Once we are able to satisfy our customers by meeting their expectations, we will be able to maximize our profits and thus have a higher market share. In the long term, an effective marketing orientation will help us acquire more loyal and profitable customers. In short, a marketing orientation is the approach that guides marketers in managing their marketing strategies. In keeping with Kotler’s standpoint, there are basically five concepts related to a company’s marketing orientations—production, product, selling, marketing, and societal marketing.

1. The production concept advises companies to focus on increasing the efficiency of their production and distribution procedures.
2. The product concept advises companies to focus on constantly improving their products.
3. The selling concept advises companies to focus on promoting, searching for prospects, and selling their products on a large scale.
4. The marketing concept advises companies to focus on satisfying customer needs and wants better than their competitors.
5. The societal marketing concept advises companies to focus on balancing company profits, consumer wants, and society’s well-being.

Table 1: Evaluations of five concepts under which marketing orientations are designed

As for Lifebuoy Vietnam, we have been mainly employing the production and product concepts.

In line with what was stated above, Lifebuoy Vietnam holds the elements of affordability and availability in very high regard.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT IN MARKETING ORIENTATIONS

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

1