PROJECT REPORT ON LIRIL MBA SEMESTER II (2012-14)

SUBMITTED TO PROFESSOR ABHILASH PONNAM

IBS HYDERABAD DONTANAPALLI, SHANKARAPALLI ROAD, HYDERABAD- 501203

SUBMITTED BY: SHWETA- 49 SRADHA SAHA- 50

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Working on this project was a thoroughly enlightening process. It gave me the opportunity to deeply look into and understand the marketing strategies that go into making a brand a success. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity for thanking some people without which this project would not have been possible.

Firstly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Professor Abhilash Ponnam, Marketing Faculty, IBS Hyderabad for his constant support, help and guidance throughout the duration of the project. Lastly, I would like to take the opportunity to thank my peers for their encouragement.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1 SWOT ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................... STP ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................ MARKETING MIX ....................................................................................................................... 2 A FADING BRAND ....................................................................................................................... 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................... 3 INSIGHTS FROM THE FGD..3 REVIVAL STRATEGIES4 RESULTS OF FACTOR ANALYSIS.5-7 ANNEXURE

INTRODUCTION
Hindustan Unilever was rated as the most respected company in India for the past 25 years in the year 2007 .HUL introduced Liril in the healthcare segment in the year 1975. Liril was a popular household name in soap category extending its roots to numerous countries in the continents of Asia and Europe. It gradually acquired the status of an iconic brand as it dared to break through the clich attitude of using sex appeal in the Indian context of advertisements which was evident from the success of Liril advertisements and Lirl girl had become the talk of the town. The ad was on air for 12 years since 1975 and single-handedly captured 14 per cent market share.

LIRIL
STRENGTHS 1. High brand awareness, strong brand equity. 2. Vast distribution network. 3. Breakthrough advertisement. 4. Positioning of the soap as freshness soap. WEAKNESSES 1. Intense competition in the market. 2. Low market share, failed to penetrate into the market. 3. HULs other brands like Lux , Breeze , Lifebouy ate up Lirils share ( Cannibalization ). 4. the Liril girl was lost with the launch of Liril 2000. THREATS 1. Internal competition from other HUL brands. 2. Highly competitive brands who were offering better products at a lower price. 3. Seasonal sale of the product.

OPPORTUNITIES 1. Untappped rural market. 2. Freshness was not explored as an USP. 3. Smaller packaging, tie-ups with hotels and corporate.

STP
Segment Personal care bathing Group

Target

Young generation , especially females

Positioning

The freshness soap

MARKETING MIX

Product

Introduced as a Freshness soap . Flavours introduced were Lime , Icy Cool and Orange Product had its reach in both urban and rural market LIRIL 2000 is priced at Rs.25 which come under the budget soap category as compared to other premium brands like Dove ( Rs 42 ) and Vivel (Rs 100 ) The Lirils ad shows semi-clad girls bathing in a water-fall and singing the famous jingle: La lara la l

Place Price

Promotion

A FADING BRAND
Once a popular household name soon started fading out from the market. Failure in terms of continuously evolving innovative marketing strategies to grip the existing customer base in addition to accumulation of new users to its consumer base, led to the gradual failure of the product. It was positioned on the platform of freshness right from its inception stage in the year 1975 and did not change its positioning strategy for 25 years. The soap segment was getting highly cluttered with the advent of new brands however Liril did not adopt any significant strategy to combat this competition.

SOAP ( HLL Brands ) Lifebuoy Lux Breeze Hamam Liril

MARKET SHARE category ) 17.5 % 15.0% 6.8% 3.8% 2.5%

( Of Rs 4800 cr soap

Liril had started losing its market share, where HULs own brand soaps like Lux and Lifebuoy started eating into Lirils share. HUL at the same time revamped its brand image and did away with the Liril girls in order to stabilize the worsening scenario. It launched Icy Cool Mint in2002 and Orange Splash in 2004. It even launched two new experimental variants i.e. Tea tree oil and Aloe Vera to attract new customers, but neither of these variants was successful in creating much hype in the market.
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Research Question : To understand the reasons for the decline in the sales of Liril . Methodology used:
1) Focus group discussion: A group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions and beliefs towards our product. All respondents were between the age group of 20 to 25yrs.There was a mix of both males and females. Ratio of male: female was 5:4. We tried to include an equal number of respondents to get fair opinions from both sides of the gender. The focus group discussion was carried out in an unbiased manner, where all the respondents were given equal chances to take part in the discussion. The discussion lasted for about 30mins. 2) Questionnarie method: 100 respondent were randomly selected and asked to fill up a questionnaire based on a 5 point LIKERT scale . Data collection process lasted for nearly 1 week. The place of the study was IBS Hyderabad.

INSIGHTS FROM THE FGD

The Focus Group discussion concentrated on understanding the reasons which did not work in favour of Liril resulting in a huge dip in the sales. Lirils best brand recall according to the respondents was the jingle la lara la la and the semi clad girls bathing under the waterfall advertisements. The non users attributed the lack of visibility in terms advertisements, availability of other alternative products and feminine image created, as the major reasons for not considering Liril as a good switch. Liril, a dominating brand at some point in time, was positioned around freshness, yet it failed to woo its already existing customer base. The users in addition to the already listed reasons quoted the lack of celebrity endorsements and the monotonous lime fragrance as the reasons that resulted in the decline of the iconic brand. The respondents further added that, Liril had very restricted variants namely Liril Icy Cool and Liril 2000 as compared to the other soap brands. Apart from the above listed reasons, one important observation also encompassed the inherent need for high visibility with respect to shelf space as one of the important attributes contributing to success or failure of a brand. Owing to this inability to have been able to satisfy this requirement, Liril could not withhold the sturdy position it had so long enjoyed in the soap segment as one of the respondents rightly quoted Jo dikhta hai, Wo bikta hai.

Variables that made an impact on the sale of LIRIL :

Price Fragrance Variants Packaging Ads Promotional offers Celebrity Endorsements Competitors Shelf Space Shape and Size

Revival Strategies
Product: 1. I plan to introduce the Lime variant with an improvised fragrance and ICY cool with a creamier base. 2. I would also introduce new shapes and colours like pink, purple etc. 3. I would come up with fascinating toys and cartoon shaped soaps to give the kids a fun bathing experience. 4. I would like to extend the brand into the body wash segment for the consumers who prefer body washes over soaps. 5. I would also like to get a total new range of mens soap to cater to the male population. Price: 1. I would aim at affordable pricing of the product (very recently we increased our price to Rs 22/75 grams), to ensure value for money. 2. I am also planning to slash the prices during festive seasons to make quick sales. Place: 1. Intensive and more penetrating distribution and I would try to occupy the top shelves with better negotiations, at the stores and supermarkets. Promotions 1. Can be bundled with other HUL products as free samples in the beginning to increase the grip of the product and increase awareness. 2. I would also introduce Combo packs like Soap and Deodorant, family packs (6 in 1pack) etc. 3. Other offers like Buy 3 get 1 free. 4. Collaborate with some dermatologists to conduct a skin check up camp to allow people to come and check how healthy their skin is. 5. I would also focus on male advertisements to engage the male segment of the target population. 6.
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RESULTS : Output was found using factor analysis .

KMO and Bartletts Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. Bartletts Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square df Sig. .516 54.024 45 .168

KMO i.e Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measures the sampling adequacy. In our study the value of KMO is 0.516 . High values between 0.5 and 1.0 indicate factor analysis is appropriate. Hence , this table helps the researcher in concluding that the sample is adequate. The Bartletts test of sphericity (54.024) is not significant because the value is greater than 0.05 which means that we accept the null hypothesis.

We generally use scree plot to select the no. of extracted factors . Since the major kink was observed at price and competitors, we come to know that these variables had a greater impact than the other.
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Rotated Component Matrix Component Price Fragrance AdS Packaging Variants Offers shelf space Celebrity Endorsement shape n size competitors 1 .706 .122 -.038 .155 .000 .332 -.410 .073 2 -.147 .020 .757 -.140 .124 .575 .147 .009

3 .022 -.736 -.168 -.033 .762 .234 -.123 .118

4 .068 -.092 -.070 .556 -.076 .129 .623 .724

.290 -.709

-.617 -.132

-.266 .215

.101 -.019

Rotation helps in redistributing the variance accounted for by the factors to make interpretation better. Varimax Rotation method was selected by the researcher. It is an orthogonal method of rotation that minimizes the number of variables with high loadings on a factor thus enhancing the interpretability of the factors. This means that the final factors will be as uncorrelated as possible with each other. Principal component Analysis method has been used by the researcher, as in principal component analysis Total variance is considered. It helps in determining the minimum number of factors which will account for maximum variance in the data. In this case there were 10 Variables which were reduced to 4 Factors. The researcher has used VARIMAX method of rotation, which is an orthogonal method of rotation, in which the loadings for the factors are given by the projections of each plotted point on the new axis Specified by the rotation. This matrix shows that clubbing of various variables into common factors. Rotation was converged in 25 iterations.

F1 F2 F3 F4

PRICE ADS FRAGNANCE PACKAGING

COMPETITORS OFFERS Variants Shape and Size

Celebrity Endorsement SHELF SPACE

Naming Factors
Factor 1 : Competitive Pricing Factor 2 : IMC ( Integrated Marketing Communication) Factor 3 : Variety Factor 4: Product Development

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Bibliography
Books
Principles of Marketing A South Asian perspective 13th Edition by Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong , Prafulla Y Agnihotri and Ehsan Ul Haque .

Sites
http://www.hul.co.in/brands-in-action/detail/Liril2000/296718/?WT.contenttype=view%20brands http://www.mouthshut.com/product-reviews/Liril-Soap-reviews-925027734 http://magicemart.com/product.php?id_product=255 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liril http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2009-08-05/news/27648888_1_karen-lunelbrand-liril-brand-ambassador
http://marketing-trends-india.blogspot.in/2009/07/liril-2000-attempt-to-re-establish.html

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ANNEXURES
THE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE FGD: 1. Which soap do you use? 2. Since when have you been using this soap? 3. Do you change your soap brand frequently? 4. Which are the brands of soap that you have tried earlier? 5. What comes to your mind when I say the word LIRIL ? 6. Have you used Liril? 7. Do you remember any of Lirils commercials? 8. On the scale 1 to 10, where 10 being the highest, rate the brand Liril . 9. One feature /attribute of Liril that distinguishes it from the other soap brands? 10.For the non users, what was the basic reason why you never tried Liril 11.For the user , what was the reason that made you stop using Liril ?did you stop buying Liril ? 12. Who are the competitors of Liril according to you? Now and then? 13. To what extent does celebrity endorsement make a difference to the sale of the product? 14. There were couple of variants that were introduced by Liril , do you remember any ? Or have tried it ? 15. What according to you lead to the decline in the sales of the product? 16. Some interesting change that you would like Liril to incorporate ?

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A QUESTIONNAIRE ON
STRONGLY AGREE AGREE NUETRAL DISAGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE 1 2 3 4 5

LIRIL

Questions

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly Agree

1. Liril was economically priced. 2. It had very limited choice in terms of variants. 3. It focused on soap fragrances which were offered by other competitors. 4. It has attractive packaging. 5. Liril had adequate shelf space in the stores. 6. It had a good number of advertisements being aired o the television. 7. Each variant of the brand was offered in different shapes and sizes. 8. Celebrity endorsements influenced the buying behaviour of the consumers with respect to Liril in the soap category. 9. It came up with a number of promotional offers. 10. Its competitors had better product offerings

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