NMIMS Global Access
School for Continuing Education (NGA-SCE)
Course: Consumer Behaviour
Internal Assignment
Applicable for December 2020 Examination
Assignment Marks:
30
Lifebuoy
was
introduced by Lever Brothers in 1895 in England. Originally a carbolic
soap
containing phenol, different varieties were later introduced without the
medicinal
carbolic
smell, such as the coral-colored Lifebuoy during the late 1950s and Lifebuoy
Minty
Refresher in 1966. Lifebuoy first came to India in 1895 in Bombay. It was an
instant
success. Lifebuoy is India‟s largest selling soap brand and has been so for a
long time now. It is the only soap brand to
have ever crossed 100,000 tonnes in sales in
a single year. The brand has a mammoth user base of over 600
million consumers in
India and is one of the most recognisable symbols of health.
Remarkably, over the next
109 years the brand has never veered away from its original
platform. It has
consistently stood for „Washing away germs to keep you protected
and healthy‟.
Constantly evolving and keeping pace with the times, the brand
has undergone huge
makeovers and still delivers a distinctive, compelling promise
of health for the whole
family.
In the product front from the very early stages, Lifebuoy
was the basic brand that
upgraded consumers who used other products by delivering a
basic, cleansing
experience. In 1964, it saw its first major re-launch with
significant improvement in
product quality, a change in the tablet shape as well as the
wrapper which had
continued from the initial days of Lifebuoy.
The latest formulation was introduced in the market in 2002.
Today, this soap
continues to be the most effective against germs and also has an
invigorating and very
distinct perfume that makes every bath enjoyable. The new avatar
is just the beginning
in the evolution of Lifebuoy. This brand aspires to make the
concept of health and
hygiene not only an important one, but also an enjoyable
experience for the consumer.
Keeping in line with its objective of providing „Health and
hygiene for everybody‟,
Lifebuoy has added to its repertoire, Lifebuoy Active Green
(with the goodness of
neem and tulsi) and Lifebuoy Active Gold (with the goodness of
milk cream). This is
of course, in addition to Lifebuoy Active Red and Lifebuoy
Active Orange which are
the trusted choice of millions. There is also the Lifebuoy
liquid soap that ensures that
hands are protected from germs. Now Lifebuoy also has a talcum
powder, efficiently
delivering a promise of „All day protection from body odour, by
fighting germs‟. The
Lifebuoy franchise, through each of the products, has stayed
true to its promise of
meeting health and hygiene concerns.
On the pricing front, Lifebuoy in urban and rural
markets, the brand has gained a
familiar and likable status due to its effective pricing. A 125
gm lifebuoy soap costs
about Rs26. Bodywash costs around Rs175. Lifebuoy keeps its
product prices
relatively lower than the prices of its competition. This has
been an advantage for the
brand and has led to making it one of the most popular choices
among Indians.
Promotions with Lifebuoy has always made in win many
accolades. The advertising
and communication for Lifebuoy has been recognised as one of the
most effective at
the advertising effectiveness awards „Effies-2003‟. The Lifebuoy
jingle, synonymous
with health and hygiene, has become a classic – indeed, it can
be considered as part of
the Indian social fabric. The Brand Equity Survey, 2003 ranked
this mega-brand as one
of the Most Trusted Brands in India.
Be it promoting itself in traditional media through ATL
(Above-the-line) or BTL
(Below-the-line) activities or social media.
It created a hysteria in Dubai where it partnered with Geometry
Global for an onground activation awareness programme. Since shoppers can pick
up germs when they
shop for groceries with your cart in the supermarket. The
Lifebuoy‟s team created a
handy doughnut-shaped gadget that slides along the shopping cart
handle, instantly
sanitizing it. On the one hand, this enabled healthier shopping,
killing 99% of germs
with one swipe, and on the other, it raised awareness of
Lifebuoy‟s sanitizer gel (refer
figure 1).
In India, Lifebuoy as a brand has taken long steps in generating
good health hygiene
habits among Indian consumers. In the year 2013, at the world‟s
largest religious
festival Maha Kumbh Mela, Lifebuoy reminded
attendees to wash their hands before
they eat by hand stamping 2.5 million chapattis (rotis) with the
message: “Did you
wash your hands with Lifebuoy?” (Refer figure 2).If that was not
all Hindustan
Unilever‟s created an award-winning campaign with social cause
marketing at its
heart, which went viral. The soap brand that has been an active
proponent of
handwashing with soap, kickstarted a movement “Help a child
reach 5” to instill
hygienic handwashing behaviour in schools and villages, as over
two million children
under five die of infections like diarrhea and pneumonia. A
heartfelt digital film about
Gondappa and his son Muthu was created for the campaign, while
Facebook and
Twitter were abuzz with pledges and the hashtag #helpachildreach5.
The video
depicted how a father “Gondappa” walked on his hands to a
village temple on his son‟s
fifth birthday as a part of his son‟s good health wish. The
3-minute film garnered over
a million views in the first two weeks and now stands at 19M+
views (refer figure 3).
Indian market is witnessing the creation of a new category in
the hand hygiene
segment - hand sanitizer. Although hand sanitizer products
existed in India since 2002,
this category is witnessing a lot of marketing activities only
in the last couple of years.
Two giants in the Indian FMCG market are fighting it out in
creating this category -
Dettol and Lifebuoy. Hand Sanitizer is an alternative to soap
and used for maintaining
hand-hygiene. This product which is available in gel, spray,
liquid, or foam form can
be used directly to the hand and unlike soaps need not be washed
away. Just apply the
hand sanitizer and leave it like that. It is not Lifebuoy or
Dettol which introduced this
product in the Indian market. Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, had
introduced this
product in the Indian market even as early as 2003. Later
Himalaya introduced its
brand - Pure Hands – which is a herbal hand sanitizer. But these
brands were not able
to create a noise in the market so far when compared to Dettol
and Lifebuoy.
Hand sanitizers are popular in markets like the West and Europe
because of fear for
hygiene coupled with the convenience of the product. In India,
the Hand Sanitizer
market is still nascent but marketers believe that this category
will do well on Indian
soil due to its vulnerability to various infectious diseases
like SARS, bird flu, etc. In
fact, in 2002-03, hand sanitizer companies in India tried to
cash in on the SARS Virus
pandemic which created huge amounts of concern and did not pull
up sales as
expected. Despite the setback, marketers are optimistic and give
a new push. Lifebuoy,
a brand that promotes healthy hygiene habits crafts many ways to
protect its consumers
from these dangers. Hand Sanitizers are priced between INR 30 to
as high as INR 500
depending upon the brand and its size of the product offering.
Given that, India has more of the rural population (at 66.46 %
in 2017, according to the
World Bank collection of development indicators) than that of
urban crowd,
1. Which psychological factor or factors of motivation,
perception, learning, and attitude
is Lifebuoy trying to target in India (10 Marks)
2. Reading the case above suggests the segmentation, targeting,
and positioning Lifebuoy
is trying to achieve. (10 Marks)
3. Lifebuoy has channelized its hygiene habit formation efforts
through various
campaigns and events in India as discussed in the case above.
Given, that you are a
brand manager of Lifebuoy
a. Discuss, what are the other promotional tactics, you will use
to make these campaigns
intensify in rural India. (5 Marks)
b. Basic Hygiene and cleanliness falls under which cultural
value component. Discuss
how as a Lifebuoy brand manager you are planning to address it
in India. (5 Marks)
Figures
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