External Environment Of UNILEVER

Analyzing the external environment for Unilever

Environmental scanning

Unilever focus on the external environment and take into account the changes undertaking in the environment outside the organization. Its environmental scanning includes the following things:

·         Emerging competitors

·         Competitors strategies

·         Competing products

·         Changing market trends

·         Policies of the competitors

·         Substitutes availability in the market

·         Needs of the customers

·         views of the customers

Environmental monitoring

It takes into account the emerging market trends and changes in the market conditions very seriously. It tackles this phase in the following way;

·         Market share

·         Inflation

·         Product pricing

·         Low price and better quality substitutes availability for customers

·         Potential customers

·         Emerging needs of customers

·         Lifestyle of the targeted audience

·         Customer’s response to new products

·         Interest rate and availability of cheap inputs

·         Market timing and availability of demanded products at time in market

·         Daily sales of a product and its comparison to the competitor’s sales

·         Net disposable income and yearly earnings

·         Interest rates, taxes, profit maximization, cheap labor, low cost inputs and incentives from the government

·         Capturing more and more customers and increase in daily sales of the product

Competitive Intelligence

The biggest competitors of Unilever Pakistan Ltd are P&G, Rackitt Benckiser and Nestle. Unilever carefully analyze the strengths and weaknesses of its rivals and understand the industry. It gathers the intelligence of its competitors and gathers data on competitors. Such as;

·         It identify trends

·         Conduct competitive analysis

·         Analyze carefully the employees, sales, products, market share, product prices etc of competitors

·         Better provision of services and up to date customer dealing

·         Competitor’s potential

·         Government regulations

·         Keep track of new competitors

Environmental forecasting

By all the above activities it predicts change. Environmental forecasting asks about;

·         How much time a new technology or competitor will take to reach the market?

·         For how long the government policies will not change?

·          Is the current trend likely to continue?

·         For how long current prices of the products remain same?

·         Is new product needed?

·         For how long customers remain satisfy with the existing products?

·         For how long competitor’s products will perform in the same way?

·         What are the potential strengths and weaknesses of the competitors?