Case Study: Unilever

Unilever is a multi-brand company who sells a variety of goods across the globe making it a universal company. Unilever own over 400 brands including brands like Dove, Omo, Lipton, Rexona, Sunsilk and Nestle. Majority of the goods that Unilever companies sells are cleaning products, personal care products and food/drinks. Unilever has three main goals that wish to achieve throughout their business lifespan. These goals are to help over a billion people improve their health and wellbeing, to halve the environmental footprint of their products and to Source 100% of their agricultural raw materials sustainably and enhance the livelihoods of people across their value chain. Their mission statement reflects Unilever’s goals as well; ‘Unilever has a simple but clear purpose – to make sustainable living commonplace. We believe this is the best long-term way for our business to grow’. Some other bits of information is that Unilever is a public limited company meaning that they are under United Kingdom company law, …show more content…
Most of this pressure originates from competition. Despite being a universal company, other smaller national companies from different countries pose a threat to Unilever sales. Some of Unilever’s major business threats are Cadbury, a British multinational confectionery company. An example of the competition between the two companies is that Nestle has a limited selection of chocolate compared to Cadbury. Nestle has 3 top-selling chocolates (Kit Kat, Milkybar and Nestle Smarties) compared to Cadbury who has 5 top-selling chocolates (Dairy Milk, Dream, Marvelous Creations, Freddo and Caramello Koalas). The fact that Cadbury has more top selling products and a larger range of products reduces the sales of Nestle chocolate thus reducing the sale growth of Unilever. Some other companies that pose a threat to Unilever are Kraft Foods, Colgate-Palmolive and Avon