SWOT for Unilever

SWOT analysis for Unilever

Unilever is a company that serves in almost all the continents and over 190 countries of the world. It has a wide variety of products serving the people of all ages. Based on its core competencies and strategic outlook its strengths are;

Strengths

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           Company operating in nearly 190 countries

·         Company operates its operations nearly 190 countries in the world. And they also have 270 manufacturing sites worldwide

·         Strong portfolio of brands and diversified product range

·         Company has more than 400 brands all around the world. Most of the brands known as multinational brands but some of them operate in some countries and company calls it local brands.

·         More than 13 international brands have contribution in sales more than 1 billion Euros. And Unilever top 25 brands account for more than 70% of sales

Products of the company

·         Personal wash: soaps,

·         Laundry: Surf, detergants,

·         Skin care: Dove, Ponds,

·         Hair care: Sunsilk,

·         Oral care: CloseUp, Pepsodent,

·         Deodorants: AXE, Lynx,

·         Food and beverages: Lipton, PG Tips,

Research and development

·         Company spend huge amount on Research and development worldwide.

·         Price, quality and variety

·         Unilever has 400 brands worldwide. But brands available in market are with different packaging with different quantities.

·         Customer rely and believe in the quality of product because of their trust in unilever brands

Competitive advantage

·         Wide product variety

·         Promotion, marketing and advertising

·         Effective and attractive packaging

·         Research and development

·         Economy of scale

Unilever operates more than 270 manufacturing sites around the globe. That is how they can achieve economy of scale easily. It gives competitive advantage to company.

Weakness

  Internal attributes of the organization that are harmful to achieving the objective. Unilever has the following weaknesses out of which the strong competitors like P&G, Nestle and

• Strong competitors

Unilever has strong competition worldwide by multinational. E.g. P&G, Rackitt Benckiser, Nestle, etc these are also the companies that operate worldwide, have big market shares, huge product line and millions of customers.

• Substitute products

As Unilever operates in more than 100 countries and there are lots of substitute products available in the local market. Because of product quality and extensive R&D company charge higher prices for its products but the local products are much cheaper.

Opportunity

External conditions those are helpful to achieving the objective.

·         Health conscious products demand

Now a day's people like to eat healthy food which contains fewer calories and use those products which will not harm their environment. This gives a good opportunity to Unilever to add more and more products in its product line.

·         Changing life styles

Now people are more aware about innovations because of the media. Company can use changing life style and increase the demand of the products.

·         Emerging new markets

Now a day's new markets are emerging company can expand their business to cover these markets. Like Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

·         Increase production volumes

Unilever can concentrate to increase production volumes and they can try to increase their availability in the market. By increasing production volumes and availability it is possible to achieve high demands of products.

• Move operations to undeveloped countries

Company needs to focus to move their production operations in undeveloped countries. Than they can find cheap labor and save money on operations and they can build a supply chain towards expensive markets. Then their profitability will be high.

Threat

External conditions which could do damage to the business's performance.

• Economic downturn

Biggest threat now days are recession. Most of the companies shut their operations or make redundancies people losing their purchasing power. It has affect all over the world in this situation coming times will be very crucial for company.

• Environmental effects

Peoples are very conscious about the environment. They don't like to buy products which can be harmful for the environment. Company needs to focus on how to become environment friendly. It needs to focus on its environmental friendly products.

• Global competition

The chances of Global competition are growing. New companies are coming with innovation. If Unilever wants to stay in market they need to focus on innovation to kill competition around the globe.

• New local products

New local products are introducing in the market. As the sizes of local companies are small they have fewer expenses and when they provide cheap product they can grab the market share of Unilever easily.

• legal effects

If the government introduces any sort of law for tax or it introduce new limits for production because the product is harmful for human use or natural environment. It will be very hard to sell out the product in the market.