1. Introduction:

If the adage 'two heads are better than one' applies to business, then certainly Unilever is a prime example. The food and consumer products giant actually has two parent companies: Unilever PLC, based in the United Kingdom, and Unilever N.V., based in The Netherlands. The two companies, which operate virtually as a single corporation, are run by a single group of directors and are linked by a number of agreements. Unilever the Company Formed in 1930 considers itself the second largest consumer goods firm in the world, trailing only Philip Morris Companies Inc., and produces numerous brand name foods, cleaning products, and personal care items. About 52 percent of revenues are generated in the foods sector; brands include Imperial and Promise margarines, Lipton tea, Ragú foods, Lawry's seasonings, Breyers ice cream, and Birds Eye and Gorton's frozen foods. One-quarter of sales come from the personal care area; brands include Caress and Dove soap, Pears and Pond's skin care products, Degree, Fabergé, and Sure deodorants, Suave and Salon Selective hair care items, Close-Up, Mentadent, and Pepsodent oral care products, and Calvin Klein, Elizabeth Arden, and Elizabeth Taylor prestige fragrances&mdash well as such miscellaneous brands as Q-Tips and Vaseline. Unilever's third major sector is that of cleaning products, which is responsible for about 22 percent of turnover; brands include Wisk and All laundry detergents, Snuggle and Final Touch fabric softeners, and Sunlight dish detergents, and this area also includes the company's line of institutional cleaning products. Unilever maintains production facilities in 88 countries and sells its products in an additional 70. About 47 percent of revenues originate in Europe, 21 percent in North America, 14 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, 12 percent in Latin America, and six percent in Africa and the Middle East. In Fortune 500 ranking Unilever is 95th in Profits and 122nd in Revenues.

2. Company Profile:

Unilever, 'a truly multi-local multinational'

Unilever's mission statement is 'meeting the everyday needs of people everywhere', and the multinational definitely has a huge and expanding global reach. Unilever proudly declares that every day 150 million people are choosing their brands 'to feed their families and clean their homes'. Unilever is one of the world's top makers of packaged consumer goods and moves countless products like deodorants, fragrances, soap, margarine, tea and frozen foods all over the world. The corporation sells products in over 150 countries and has annual sales of approximately $ 46 billion [£31,5bn]. Unilever controls subsidiaries in at least 90 countries and employs 295,000 (in 2000) people. Unilever is one of the world's top three food firms -after Nestle and Kraft- and the world's second largest packaged consumer goods company -behind Procter & Gamble.
Unilever’s brand portfolio includes worldwide favorites: Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Axe and Vaseline. Their portfolio is diverse in response to the varying needs of their customers across the globe. Unilever offers world-class brands, many of which are customized for local markets. Unilever invests €1 billion or BDT 94.4 billion every year in cutting edge research and development and has five laboratories around the world that explore new thinking and techniques to help develop their products. The following figure shows the portfolio of categories Unilever operates in:

Figure: 1 the portfolio of categories
However, in spite of Unilever's vast size and presence worldwide, the company's actual visibility is surprisingly low. Anonymity hides the company's importance. Unilever does not retail under its own name, preferring brand names to create the illusion of diversity. Who does not know brand names like Magnum, Omo, Dove, Knorr, Ben & Jerry's, Lipton, Slim-Fast, Iglo, Unox, Becel, and Lever2000? They're all part of the 'Unilever armada of brand names'. To make sure the brand names do not go unnoticed, Unilever spends huge amounts of money on marketing and advertising. Advertising has always been a keystone of Unilever's businesses. The Dutch-Anglo company is likely to be the world's number one advertiser. (Advertising Age estimate a 1999 global media spend of $3.7bn [£2,539bn], of which $3.1bn [£2,127bn] was outside the US, making Unilever the world's number 1 advertiser.
3. Organizational Structure:

Unilever Bangladesh is headed by a Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Rakesh Mohan, in Bangladesh. There are five departments headed by five individual directors. Presently the company has the following departments at its corporate headquarters:

Unilever Bangladesh Limited (UBL)

4. Unilever Bangladesh at a glance

Unilever Bangladesh is a company that has its own history intrinsically built with the development of our nation and our culture. It has been part of the Bangladeshi household since the 19th century with the same intention of bringing cleanliness and convenience to households. The company is registered in Bangladesh with the Government holding 39.25% of shares and the rest owned by the parent company, Unilever.

The origin dates back to 1964, when the first Manufacturing Operations were set up as a part of Lever Brothers Pakistan operations. After independence, it was incorporated as a separate Company under the laws of Bangladesh. Later on the Company diversified into different categories.

4.1 Type of business

Fast Moving Consumer Goods company with local manufacturing facilities, reporting to regional business groups for innovation and business results.

4.2 Operations

Home and Personal Care, Foods

4.3 Constitution

Unilever - 60.75% shares, Government of Bangladesh - 39.25%

4.4 Product categories

Household Care, Fabric Cleaning, Skin Cleansing, Skin Care, Oral Care, Hair Care, Personal Grooming, Tea based Beverages.

4.5 Manufacturing facilities

Their own manufacturing operations are based in Chittagong where they have soap manufacturing unit and a state of the art Personal Product manufacturing plant. Besides, there is a tea packaging operation in Chittagong and three manufacturing units in Dhaka, which are exclusively dedicated to Unilever Bangladesh
4.6 Employees
Unilever Operations in Bangladesh provide employment to over 10,000 people directly and through its dedicated suppliers, distributors and service providers. 99.5% of UBL employees are locals and we have equal number of Bangladeshis working abroad in other Unilever companies as expatriates. 5. Product Line:

Unilever Bangladesh Ltd offers a wide variety of consumer goods to the people of Bangladesh. Its operations are categorized into three categories

- Food

-Home Care

-Personal Care

Under these three operations Unilever manufactures various categories of products andfor each of those categories they have successfully established many brands. The product mix of Unilever Bangladesh Ltd is as following:

Household Care |Fabric Cleaning |Skin Cleaning |Skin Care and Personal Grooming |Oral Care |Hair Care |Tea Based Beverage | |
*Vim

|
*Wheel
*Surf Excel

|
*Lux
*Lifebuoy
*Dove
*Vaseline

|
*Fair & Lovely
*Pond’s
*Rexona
*Vaseline
*Lakme
*Axe

|
*Pepsodent
*CloseUp

|
*Dove
*Sunsilk
Clear

|
*Taaza

| |Table 1 Product mix

Unilever Bangladesh Ltd produces pure consumer goods. Some its brands are producedlocally in Bangladesh and some are imported from other regional factory of Unilever, likeThailand, China, and UK etc. In Bangladesh the company has a Soap Manufacturingfactory and a Personal Products Factory located in Chittagong. Besides these, there is atea packaging operation in Chittagong and three manufacturing units in Dhaka, which areowned and run by third parties exclusively dedicated to Unilever Bangladesh.

6. Foreign market entry strategies

Unilever entered the Multinational market through wholly owned subsidiaries. Wholly owned subsidiaries is one of the means used in entering the foreign market and it is done in two ways. One of which is by establishing a new operation in the chosen country and the second is by acquiring an existing and established company in the chosen country and using it to sell its products which is what Unilever did in most counties but in countries where they could not enter through Wholly owned subsidiaries they entered through Joint venture. As one of the strong and healthy companies in the world with many successful brands, Unilever has an opportunity to expand into foreign markets in order to gain access to customers around the world. Supported by strengths of its four key global brands – Dove, Sunsilk, Rexona and Lux, Unilever firstly entered in foreign market to compete internationally by entering just one or select few foreign markets. Once successfully introduced its product in several market, Unilever expands its success brand to many other markets and starting to compete globally.

7. Selection of Foreign Market:

In reality, a great deal of market research can be accomplished for very little money multinational companies know where to look. Before entering to Bangladesh Unilever did a complete market analysis and assessment. Many of the data requirements for a foreign decision are the same as those for a similar domestic decision though, they tried to gathered additional information about Bangladesh market and environmental forces that need to take in consideration for setting up their business in Bangladesh. The procedure they used is given below:

Table 2

8. Reasons for entering the Bangladesh market
The reasons why Unilever entered the Bangladeshi market are these:

❖ To increase their market size that is the number of customers and this is because the Bangladesh population was much and the market was growing.

❖ To acquire resources and secure key supplies. ❖ To access cheaper factors of production and reduce cost. ❖ To transfer technology and managerial know how. ❖ To increase foreign competition and protect their home market share.

❖ To prevent themselves from the uncertainties of their domestic market.

❖ To overcome protective devices like tariffs.

9. Market Segmentation:

In this competitive business world, market segmentation is an essential part of any company. The main two ideas of market segmentation are to attract the market and do the activities to retain them. In order to do the jobs of marketing a proper marketing plan is very important. While entering to Bangladesh market Unilever segment its market like followings:

Figure: 2 Market Segments

Figure 2. Shows that Unilever Bangladesh ltd. Segment their market according to geographical areas. The population of the country is segmented into three parts which are urban, sub urban and rural area consumers.

The company farther differentiates the geographical segments according to the socio economic cluster (SEC) i.e. education and income (Table.1) overleaf shows the socio income clusters the company uses five segments starting from A to E, where A categorizes the highly educated and high income earners holders, and sequentially in descending order E categorizes the opposite who are the people who consume this product.

Table 2 Socio Economic Cluster Segment

10. Factors Considered by Unilever While Setting up Price for entering Bangladesh Market
Finally in entering the emerging-country market Unilever prepare to compete on the basis of low prices. Unilever pursued this strategy because consumers in emerging markets are often highly focused on price, which can give low-cost local competitors the edge unless a company can find ways to attract buyers with bargain prices as well as better products.
While setting price of its products, in consider following factors:
1- Competition
2- Size
3- Cost
4- Target market
5- Value maximization
6- Inflation 11. Lesson I have learnt:

12. Conclusion:

International trade performs important roles in a foreign market therefore for it to be successful depends on the strategy put in place by the company. Good international strategy yields good result so for a company to be successful in international trade they have to ensure that they carry out a detailed research about the market they want to enter into and find out the perfect means of entry into the particular market. Unilever follow a global brand strategy while at the same time running local brands in Bangladesh. More often they adopt several generic global strategies and run them in parallel. They used global branding strategies while entering to Bangladesh market, which is using the same brand name or logo worldwide. To obtain place in buyer mind Unilever Bangladesh spend a huge amount of money for promoting its product through TV commercials, newspaper advertisements and billboards. Moreover, it also undertook promotional campaigns at different at different schools, colleges, universities, and recreational parks to let people know about the brand. Because of these strategies now in the market of consumer goods Unilever Bangladesh Ltd is considered as the market leader.

Bibliography:

Google, Yahoo, Answer.com,

Reference:

Unilever website (Unilever.com)

Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. official website www.unilever.com.bd

1. Unilever Bangladesh Limited: Private Company Information ...

Bangladesh Yellow Pages: Unilever (BD ) Ltd.

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CEO & Chairman Rakesh Mohan

Human Resources Jerry Jose

Brands & Development K.S.M. Minhaz

Supply Chain Imran Momin

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