UNILEVER

A CASE STUDY

MICROSOFT ACCOUNT
[COMPANY NAME]
[Company address]
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................1
Historical Overview.........................................................................................................................1
SWOT Analysis...............................................................................................................................1
Strengths......................................................................................................................................1
Weakness.....................................................................................................................................2
Opportunities...............................................................................................................................2
Threats.........................................................................................................................................3
Business Level Strategy...................................................................................................................4
Company Structure..........................................................................................................................4
Functional Level Strategy................................................................................................................5
Recommendations............................................................................................................................5
Introduction:
Businesses now-a-days, throughout the world have aspects related to growth, strategic decisions
and achieving different goals oriented with various mission and vision statements. Today’s
Unilever as it stands, started its initial phase operations back in 1930 starting of a Margarine
Manufacturing Dutch company and Lever Brothers of the then Britain. Ranging from food items,
personal care products, beverages, canned and storage based foods, ice creams, beauty care
products and a lot more, Unilever holds a vast range of products which are also taken to be the
world’s most famous consumer brands. In this case study we will start with having some insights
into the historical overview of Unilever, gradually looking into a SWOT analysis, Business
Strategy, Structural Overview, and Functional Level Strategy of Unilever.

Historical Overview
Unilever, one of the global leading consumer brands organization founded in 1929 had been led
by two separate Dutch and British, Unilever N.V. and Unilever Ltd., which after the year 1981
turned to Unilever PLC. With similar Board of directors but different set of shareholders,
Unilever started to operate business headed under two different national locations though the
business operations remained fur reaching worldwide. The Head offices were in Rotterdam and
London headed by two Chairmen with an “Equalization Agreement”, which ensured the
equivalent payment of dividends at all times in both the locations. In the year, 1996 anew change
in leadership roles came into adoption. A three-person led “Chief Executive” role was introduced
with two respective Chairmen and one single Director. This whole setup was termed as Special
Committee.

Underneath the two widespread parent companies, a big number of companies were operating
actively in the various different locations of the world where the business of Unilever were
already in operation under various local company names. The names, being varied in nature,
mostly depicted the inherent firms or companies’ name from which had they been acquired or
merged in the primary phase of operational initiation. “Lever”, “Gibbs”, “Sunlicht’, “Van den
Bergh & Jurgens”, “Batchelors” were a few of the mention worthy top locally operating
company names in those times. However, the name Unilever was not launched or introduced as a
complete in those phases of business operations for certain reasons. “Lever Brother” and “T. J.
Lipton” were two prominent U.S. affiliates in those times. These nationally operating companies
were given the rights to be either limited company (Ltd.) or Private Limited Company (PLC) or
in some case N.V. for some geopolitical reasons. In the year 1937, Lever Brothers was ordered to
be N.V. and stayed so until the year 1987 when a 25 percent share rights of the company was
issued for company shareholding and Lever Brothers finally became a PLC.

In a major initial market like the United States, the business operations of Unilever was
completely owned and functioned by Lever N.V. and was therefore taken to be a part of the
foreign direct investment in that country. Unilever and a major Anglo-Dutch company, Royal
Dutch Shell maintained roles as major elements of the historic Dutch Foreign Direct Investments
(FDI) in the US. In spite of the fact that all the crucially earnt dividends were sent back ass
remittance to the N.V., it did not that the U.S. affiliating companies were directly managed by
the then Unilever N.V. head office in Rotterdam. The “Special Committee” structure formed
since 1987 had members of both Dutch and British head offices, including their following
immediate associate “Directors” and functional divisions in both the operating countries and
managed responsibilities irrespective of the fact of considering N.V. officials or PLC officials,
rather focusing on capability and suitability. Therefore, though the then ownership remained in
the Netherlands, managing controls were also Anglo-Dutch.

Within the early 1950s, Unilever gradually started manufacturing a vast range of diversified
products, including but not limited to, personal care products, convenience foods, and so on. A
company owned by Unilever namely, “United Africa Company”, imported and exported into
West Africa.

Within the early mid 1970s, the total employment of Unilever climbed up to over
350,000 which was approximately an amount of seven times larger than the then Proctor
& Gamble (P&G) which was considered the main industry competitor of Unilever at that
time.

Gradually increasing and developing throughout the whole lifetime, Unilever today is one of the
largest consumer goods manufacturer company of the world and undoubtedly the leading
company in comparison to any other competition throughout the world in the similar industry.

SWOT Analysis
Strengths
One of the Biggest Global Company:
Unilever is operating business in more than 190 countries in the world and in today’s world it is
highly doubtful to find of a person who has not used either one single product of Unilever’s wide
range of products. All these are sufficient indications of Unilever to become one of the biggest
and most widespread company of the world till date, leading their world market share of business
to be one of the highest in the current times of the world.
Source: https://www.unilever.com/our-company/at-a-glance/

Around 400 Global Business Brands:

The company makes its unique highly diversified portfolio for the globally well-known brands
and their products to earn a huge amount of revenue from numerous markets of the world.
According to the data publicly available for the fiscal year 2020, 51 Billion Euro was the
turnover while 2019 data depicts 52 Billion and 2018 reports show 51 Billion Euro respectively.
Majority of this was generated through the sales of brands like Dove, Lifebuoy, Knorr and
brands that aimed to bring improvements to the environment and bring a global social impact.

Marvellous Financial Standings and Performances:

In the year 2019, among the 52 Billion Euros earned, almost 22 Billion was generated through
sales of Personal care and Beauty care product ranges of famous brands and around 19 Billion
Euro was generated from refreshment and food product ranges. All the rest financial
performances were also quite satisfactory and led the foundations of a further strong future
business operation.

Strong Research and Development Facilities:

Focusing on their overall business motto and supported by their strong financial standings,
Unilever continues to conduct rigorous continuous efforts of research and developments in order
to bring new range of products for their efficient and effective business operation in the global
market in upcoming days and so on.

Control over Calamity Damage by Diversification:

Having the competitive advantages of these wide range of products and brands, the operations of
Unilever are diversified to minimize the effects of calamity and distortion like the COVID-19
crisis situation. More than 400 brands and their products do keep up the business going smooth
in the run to take over any stress in operation.

Weakness

Potential Threats of Substitution:

Having a considerable amount of huge range of products, 400 brands running in the world may
easily have a threat of finding competitions in the market. These often occur in regions or
countries where the locally available raw material or the cost of manpower are comparatively
less for the locally operating businesses in countries of Asia and Africa.

Alternative Natural Products:

It can be seen that in countries or regions of the world where the availability of directly
receivable natural products are higher, the consumers tend to grow an affection for switching
towards the completely natural alternative over Unilever products. These not only is a condition
in regions of lower economies of scale but also in a lot of places in the western world as well.

Dependency on Retailers:
Unilever being such a giant global company has to be dependent for the direct sale through the
market retailers in order to reach out to the direct consumer market throughout a lot of the 190+
business operating nations.

Opportunities

Growth and Expansion:

Having the competitive advantage and solid financial standing as backup effort, Unilever can
easily think about expanding business operations exceeding the products from Consumer good to
multiple other range of products for new opportunities of business hence also enhancing market
and business diversification for reduction of competitions and diminishing the prevalent threats
of substitution.

New Market Acquisition Scopes:

The process of globalization has made the operation of business far more convenient and
effective in today’s world. Global media promotions have increased the demand of western
improved lifestyle in mid-level economic regions of the world. This in terms creates new scopes
of market acquisition in the new demand generating nations in order to portray itself as a
conglomerate bringing in purposeful brands and better lifestyle products creating a tremendous
scope of achieving the “newly affluent trillion-dollar consumers” in regions close to China and
India who on the way to copy and gain better western lifestyle would automatically create scopes
of business operations for Unilever in certain underlying nations and regions.

Public Demands towards sustainable healthy products:

Unilever can focus on increasing business opportunity by rooting into the mass public tendency
of the millennial generation towards leading a healthy and better life through sustainable
products. New product development from the ever continuing research and development sector
of Unilever would definitely bring an added advantage in this specific circumstance.

New technological Inventions for financial growth:

As of widely spread public news circulated throughout the world by virtue of fair and open
global media, it widely known that Microbac laboratories partnered up with Unilever in order to
create a unique consumer product, a special type of mouthwash which will be highly effective in
reducing the viral load of SARS_CoV-2 virus by almost 99.99%. Such terrific Innovations will
open immense possibilities towards high sales generating product line up discovery. Funding and
associating with similar continuous efforts will therefore be undoubtedly great opportunities for
Unilever in upcoming future.

Threats

Global Industry Competitors:

Being an industry leader has its perks in some cases while being continuously chased by
competitions in the industry is a different issue to always look about. Famous companies namely,
Proctor & Gamble (P&G), Reckitt-Benckiser (RB), Nestle, Colgate Palmolive, and so on puts on
a continuous competitive global market pressure on Unilever. While such efforts are always a
part and parcel of business but looking out for the fellow industry competitions for their pricing
strategies, market share conditions and profit margins are always a wise thing, especially during
post pandemic crisis-led global economic conditions similar to recent times.

Global Financial Crisis:

It is evident that the recent unlikely incident of the outbreak of Covid-19 has impacted business
throughout the world a lot in financial aspects. Unilever is no different to that. Learning from
such recent occurrence, Unilever needs to look out for measures to prevent any drastic financial
droughts in the global economy.

Business Level Strategy

Develop the company portfolio for higher growth opportunities included but not limited to:
o Hygiene products,
o Skin care products,
o Prestige & beauty product range,
o Functional nutrition products,
o Plant-based foods products.

Establishing the globally operating brands as a good force driven by purpose of growth and
innovation for the betterment of humanity. Such actions include:

o Working for the improvement of health of the customers throughout the globe.
o Looking out for the improvement of peoples’ wellbeing, health and confidence leading to
a better lifestyle.
o Making considerable amount of contribution towards building a more socially inclusive
and fair world.
o Winning in the long run with the help of science and emerging technology.

Accelerating business growths in Asian Markets of India, China and a major portion of USA by
focusing on some key aspects, which include:
o Developing pre-existing range of products in markets of USA, China and India.
o Finding out and ensuring the leverage in the emerging market for competitive strength.

Leading the future channels of the business distribution by focusing on:

o Accelerating e-Commerce sales in pre-existing markets.
o Developing Business-to-Business platforms as much as possible suggestively through
online arena.
o Gathering customer preferences through collection of shopper insights in local markets
and driving flow of supply in related high sales generating brands. insight

Build a sustainable and purposeful growth driven company culture by:

o Unlocking agility in business through online business transformation.
o Ensuring lifelong trainings, learning and research-oriented development for capacity
building to sustain in future.
 o Valuing locally inclusive and diversity based leadership to attain acceptability and long
term sustainability in regional markets.

Source: Annual Report and Accounts 2020, page 8

Company Structure
Unilever is at present run by following a structured observatory 12 Members of the Board, under
whom are 13 leadership role playing executives know as ULE, who are to be succeeded by
regional senior management who are 72 in number, reporting to the ULE, who also supervises
the different management executives in different role, precisely around 15 thousand. These 15
thousand management executives manages another workforce of around 149,000 officials for the
smooth functional operation of Unilever throughout different locations across the globe.

Board Members: 12

1. Nils Andersen: Chairman

2. Youngme Moon: Vice-Chairman/Senior Independent Director

3. Alan Jope: CEO

4. Graeme Pitkethly: CFO

5. Laura Cha: Non-Executive Director

6. Vittorio Colao: Non-Executive Director

7. Judith Hartmann: Non-Executive Director

8. Andrea Jung: Non-Executive Director

9. Susan Kilsby: Non-Executive Director

10. Strive Masiyiwa: Non-Executive Director

11. John Rishton: Non-Executive Director

12. Feike Sijbesma: Non-Executive Director

Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE): 13

1. Alan Jope: CEO

 2. Graeme Pitkethly: CFO

3. Conny Braams: Chief Digital & Marketing Officer

4. Marc Engel: Chief Supply Chain Officer

5. Hanneke Faber: President, Foods & Refreshment

6. Fabian Garcia: President, North America

7. Sunny Jain: President, Beauty & Personal Care

8. Sanjiv Mehta: President, Unilever, South Asia and Chair and Managing Director,
Hindustan Unilever

9. Leena Nair: Chief HR Officer

10. Nitin Paranjpe: Chief Operating Officer

11. Richard Slater: Chief R&D Officer

12. Ritva Sotamaa: Chief Legal Officer & Group Secretary

13. Peter ter Kulve: President, Home Care

Senior Management (reporting to ULE): 72

Management: 15,161

Total Workforce: 148,949

Source: Annual Report and Accounts 2020, page 19

https://www.unilever.com/our-company/at-a-glance/

https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2020/full-year-growth-led-by-emerging-markets-
and-home-care.html.

https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2020/half-year-results-performance-reflects-
agility-and-resilience-of-the-business.html.

Functional Level Strategy

The main Motto of functional level strategy being, “Purpose Led, Future Fit”, continuous work
towards attaining a sustainable future is what Unilever focuses on for maintaining proper
business operational functions throughout the vast global markets comprising more than 400
brands.
Focusing on the five basic growth fundamentals, Unilever looks forward to implement its
functional level strategies for a better future.
With the vision to be the global leader in the future of sustainable business models, Unilever
looks out for proper execution of utmost superior performance of the brands and products
improvising the strategic aim of futuristic sustainable business and thrives for achieving stunning
financial turnovers and becoming the valiant leaders of the industry.
This is what they term as “Compass Strategy” for their functional level of operations throughout
the 190+ business operating countries of the world.

Source: Annual Report and Accounts 2020, page 8

https://assets.unilever.com/files/92ui5egz/production-
v2/ebc4f41bd9e39901ea4ae5bec7519d1b606adf8b.pdf/Compass-Strategy.pdf

Recommendations
A mentionable number of strategic factors which are worthy of inclusion which ensuring
decision making roles have been found in the overall above-mentioned discussions.
Diversification of Unilever’s business apart from the consumer goods business industry in the
upcoming days is a strategic suggestion given by many world famous and highly popular
business strategy analysts.
And as the glorious past records, maintaining a continuity in bring innovative product is a must
do recommendation for Unilever in order to prevail its uniqueness avoiding the challenges of
similar brand imitation and customer retention records untouched and prevails as one of the top
in the industry as always.