Assignment on

“RURAL MARKETING STRATEGIES”

With special reference to

“LIFEBUOY”

Submitted to: Mr. Mukesh Malik

By
Manasvi Pandey
Enroll no.: FMS/MBA/095
 RURAL MARKETING

The study of rural marketing comprises of all the operations and the agencies conducting
them, involved in the movement of farm produced food, raw materials and their
derivatives such as, textiles, from the farms to the final consumers and the effects of such
operations on producers, middlemen and consumers.

Rural Marketing Strategies:

4 P’s of Marketing

• Product: Product refers to anything that is capable of or can be offered to satisfy

need or want.
• Price: Price refers to the amount the customer has to pay in order to acquire a
product or service.
• Place: Place refers to the point of sale.
• Promotion: This refers to all the activities undertaken to make the product or
service known to and preferred amongst the user and trade.

MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR LIFEBUOY IN RURAL MARKETS

The following section deals with how LIFEBUOY a product of HUL has successfully

established themselves in the rural market.

(1.) Product Strategy-LIFEBUOY:

LIFEBUOY

• It is amongst the oldest brands of HUL placed as “health and hygiene soap”.

• It has crossed 1,00,000 tones consumption in single year.

• It has over 600mn consumer in India.

• It has undergone major changes in 2000.

• It has been repositioned as family soap with new variants.

PRODUCT depth of LIFEBUOY

• LIFEBUOY TOTAL: follow old ‘red soap’ image.

• LIFEBUOY DEOFRESHED: symbolize freshness.

• LIFEBUOY NATURAL: green soap resembling natural care.

• LIFEBUOY SKINCARE: for sensitive skin.

PRODUCT HIERARCHY
 Need : Cleanliness
 Family : Health and hygiene
 Class : Toiletries
 Line : Bathing soap
 Type : Carbolic soap
 SKQ : Lifebuoy total soap

PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

 INTRODUCTION
 1. Launched in 1895 and positioned as health and value platform.
2. Targeted initially at male with unique jingle.
3. Promoted by football players and athletes.
4. The soap was ‘brick red’ with carbolic ingredient.

 GROWTH
1. Grown at very fast rate.
2. Sold almost in every part of India.
3. Promotion and distribution channel strengthen to maintain supply.

 MATURITY
1. Over a period of 100 years, reached its maturity level.
2. Market share becoming almost stagnant.
3. Some customers became loyal while some went for new products.
4. Same brand image with limited consumer base.

DECLINE STAGE
1. Soap market fairly sluggish in 2001.
2. Lifebuoy share declined more than market decline.
3. 15-20% decline in volume of sale.

REPOSITIONING
• it is the single largest soap brand — with 20 lac soaps sold every day and an
estimated value of Rs 500 crore (600 million users annually).
• The relaunch of the 107-year-old Lifebuoy has been done in a bid to drive growth
in a sluggish soap market.
• HLL challenged everything that Lifebuoy stood for - perfume, formulation, size and
shape.
• extending it to talcum powder and also testing a herbal variant of this power brand.

Strategy: “value-added product would create a loyal customer”

(2.) Price Strategy:
Rural markets are low price high volume growth markets. The rural markets being
intensely price-sensitive in comparison to urban markets, reaching at a lower cost is a
major challenge.
LIFEBUOY SOLD AT Rs. 2
• HUL has deliberately introduced small pack sizes.
• Sold in new format like shampoo sachets.
• Targeted mainly at expansion of rural market.
• Translate increase in income into spending over FMCG goods.
• Lifebuoy, recently introduced at Rs. 2 SKU (stock keeping unit) of 18 gm targeted
at rural market.

Strategy: “value- for- money”

(3.) Promotion Strategy:

The challenge is to create communications to effectively tap the rural markets, a brand
must associate with their culture and personality.
HUL Lifebuoy
• TV and print campaigns, focused attention on the family health themes.
• conducted consumer education exercise using "Germ tests“.
• explored the communication options during World Health Day.
• HLL was also offering cross company product mixes
• HLL used Mahakumbh mela as an opportunity to change hand-washing and
bathing habits in rural India.
• Cinema van operations
• created The Lifebuoy Swashthya Chetana.

THE LIFEBUOY SWASTHYA CHETNA CAMPAIGN

 First largest rural health and education program.
 ‘Serious implication of laxity in health care’ as basic theme.
 Diarrhea which kills 3 mn people every year can be reduced by 48%.
 Visit village school to teach importance of hand washing.
 Recruit children and there parents on voluntary basis.
 Started with 8 states and covers 70 mn people.
 Sales during period increased by 20%.
 According to HUL it’s a marketing program with social benefits.

Strategy: “lifebuoy has always been positioned on the platform of health and .

hygiene”

(4.) Distribution strategy:

The distribution structure involves stock points in feeder towns to service these retail
outlets at the village levels.

DISTRIBUTION OF HUL LIFEBUOY

Hindustan unilever, the pioneer and a large player in India’s FMCG market. HUL is the
first company to step into the Indian rural marketing. HUL launched ‘operation stream
line’, distributed HUL’s products in villages using unconventional transport like ‘bullock
carts’, ‘tractors’ and cycles. Today HUL’s products touch the lives of two out of every
three Indians.

LIFEBUOY HAS
• Established strong single distribution channel by consolidating categories.
• Approximate 2000 suppliers.
• 1 mn direct outlet and 6.3 mn total outlet.
• 45 C&F agents and 4,000 stockiest.
• Mounted an initiative, project streamline, to further increase its rural reach with the
help of rural sub-stockiest.

Strategy: “HUL product can reach a place, where you can not reach”

SUGGESSTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• Be care full on product duplicates and using security features.

• Using value-based pricing strategy. That means fixing of price, starting with
customer and end with product.
• Effective total quality management is helps to low price high quality product.
• Be care full on retail margins other wise they promoted local brands.
• To capture the local sprit in the communication. Using local language.
• Best solution for enter into the rural markets, that is the company should start the
production in rural areas. Then it is easy to distribute and also its increase the local sprit.
• Tie’up with public distribution system (Fair Price Shops). In our country, the
public distribution system is fairly well organized. The revamped PDS places more
emphasis on reaching remote rural areas of hills and tribaks. So FMCG companies
collaborated with the PDS to utilize its well-established sales and distribution network in
the rural markets.
• Use a combination of wholesalers and retailers to penetrate every nook and corner
of rural market.
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