Effectiveness of Brand Extension in Personal Care Product: A Case Study on Dove of Unilever

mug is perceived to be in serious intangible addition for caller which gives caller-up a cutting brim in harvest-festival market with positioning in consumer intelligence. To supplement on supremacy of instigant, companies go for mark file name lengthiness which is offering assorted raw(a) return in the same cross out name.Such crack outline is intended to be chased to save follow of accounting entry in the buff-fangled shuffle, to minimize risk of blot failure and to leverage on victory of alive carry. Organization who be in in-person vexation harvesting business often go for such(prenominal) send denotation treating cross out as their assists where they try to leverage on their cross equity by launching un employ reapings infra already effectuateed pit label (Vanitha et al, 2001). There ar many situationors that define the metier and supremacy of grime continuation in ain financial aid products.Perceived Quality of Parent trade na me, the sexual similarity importance of fit of patsy with consumer characteristics and mission of shop are crucial vari up to(p) which determine brand success (Park, et al, 1991). Beyond those factors, in gaffe of personalised occupy brand continuation, media planning, brand phylogeny and brand focus and common relation to eliminate the brand are considered to be influential in evaluating the success of brand extension.This seek work is per utilize to evaluate the potential of brand extension dodge in personal care products in general and brand extension dodging of go down brand of Unilever. The traverse allow for elaborate whether brand extension scheme of plunk was winning wholeness considering the variable mentioned above.The report is prepared base on nodes responses stack away through survey and observations of stigmatisation expert to assess such forte. The utilisationee turnover rate from products launched under brand extension strategy allow be strung-out variable that entrusting be evaluated against dirt Campaign, Media Planning, chump Development and stigma Management, and familiar Relation Strategy of brand. The psychoanalyse allow be based on genus Columba brand of Unilever which depart outline how company turns branding strategy with evolution of Dove brand.1.1 Background of the OrganizationUnilevers journey as business transcription started at 1872 as margarine business. In 1890, the company was named as Lever Brothers Limited. In 1930 Margarine Unie (Netherland) and Lever Brothers Limited (UK) corporate and renamed as Unilever Limited. Serving 2 billion customers worldwide, the company is achieving yearbook turnover of 51 billion in 2012 (Unilever, 2013). The company sells its products across 190 countries where appear market now counts for 55% of the business. The company have portfolio of 14 immediate payment cow brand that are generating 1 billion sales worldwide. The company employs around 173, 000 people around the globe (Unilever PLC. 2013a).The portfolio of categories shows that around 35% of revenue comes from Suvoury, Dressing and spread, followed by Personal Care which is close to 28%, sign Care which is 18% and food and beverage segment trails 19%. Unilever has a portfolio of 400 brands among which some are world largest in terms of generating ideas. With an asset base of 46.16 billion, the company has operating profit of about 7 billion (Unilever PLC. 2013b).Dove is a billion brand of Unilever which is generating annual revenue of 2.5 billion a year in 80 countries. Dove punctuate was launched in 1957 as alternative to soap to care of dry skin. Since 1980 many product is launched under Dove brand ranging from body-wash, deodorants, body lotions, facial cleansers, to shampoos and conditioners through brand extension (Unilever PLC, 2013). Unilever terms Dove as a brand with a purpose.1.2 keen-witted of the StudyBrand is perceived to be actually important facto r to position product in consumers mind. A brand image has become a striking resource and critical success factors of competition which gives firm competitive prefer in product market. To leverage on such competitive advance firms at times takes strategy of brand extension to leverage the success of existing brand to optimize and rationalized investment in brand. But such brand extension produced confused result in terms of effectiveness or return on brand extension delinquent to brand fit with product launched, functionality of brand and consumer attitude to accept sunrise(prenominal) product (Kim and Deborah, 2008).To change consumer perception on the ground of functional benefit of brand, organization has toreshuffle its branding communication to reposition brand in consumer mind which communicate a broader view of brand rather than functional benefits. The effectiveness of such brand extension depends on how firm develop brand, take a shit brand and plan media to commun icate the brand and brinytain public relation to engage stakeholders (Bottomley and Stephen, 2001). Innovation of Branding streak is another important logical argument in this regard. The postulate volition evaluate the brand extension strategy of Dove through examining through different factors mentioned just above to condone brand extension strategy in Personal care product category.1.3 Business Research QuestionsThe interest look question volition be designed to conduct the survey. what is the brand extension strategy of FMCG company in personal care products What are the factors that affect brand extension strategy of an established brand in drive of personal care products How brand campaign, media planning, customer attitude, brand development and management, public relation reshuffle brand extension strategy in case of Dove brand of Unilever What is the statistical observations of effect of components of brand extension in positioning product in consumer brand1.4 Res earch objectiveEvery query is conducted with live up toment of some objectives in mind. Those objectives persuade the detective to pursue look in this field of teach to enrich the investigator intellectual observation. The following are the query objective of the regard which motivates the police detective to pursue this seek. To review brand extension strategy in personal care productTo trace out the lands that plays key role in exploitation brand extensions strategy in personal care products To explore the critically success factors that determines the effectiveness of brand extension strategy in personal care products To extract out how brand campaign, media planning, customer attitude, brand development and management, public relation played role in affecting success of brand extension of Dove brand of Unilever To evaluate the outcome of the study through statistical test to validate the findings of the study on rand extension strategy of Dove To suggest appropriate and circumstantial recommendations and to grant inference on with mentioning the scope of future scope of study.2.0 Literature ReviewLiterature review is very important part of any credible enquiry and it provides the interrogation an opportunity to review similar and link previous query to take familiar perceptiveness to design his or her study. The second chapter of the research testament cover the literature review related to title of the research. The following sections volition be covered by this chapter.2.1 BrandBrand can be defined as name, tern, sign, type or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and function of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers (AMA, 2011).2.2 Brand multiplication and Types of Brand ExtensionBrand extension is strategy of launching and selling newfound product under an established brand name of other existing products to persuade customers perception with success of existing products (Monga and Deborah, 2007). Extension can be described as strategy to sell new products without establishing a new brand of the company (Chen and Liu, 2004).There are two types of brand extension to the highest degreely used in branding strategy. The following graph is elucidating such types of brand extension.2.3 The Reasons of Brand ExtensionThere are logics why organization goes with brand extension instead of launching new brand for every new product. The most influential arguments are reducing risk and cost of launching new products, increasing sales and profit of the company and being able to ask a premium price (Alokparna and Zeynep, 2012). The other reason includes append brand awareness and perceived brand value of the company (Smith and Park, 1992).2.4 Brand Extension in Personal Care productsBrand extension in personal care product is much(prenominal) prevalent than other typesof product due to homogeneity in product temperament and communication of common perception to the consumers. From Unilever to P&G everyone does follow brand extension strategy more or less in their personal product portfolio (Xie, 2008).2.5 Factors that Determines the success of Brand Extension strategyVarious factors brand extension strategy of personal care products. The granted case outlined the following factors that were considered influential in affecting brand extension strategy to Dove from soap to other personal care products2.5.1 Branding CampaignBranding campaign is very important parameter to change customer perception from a narrower point of view to broader point of view. Earlier Dove is considered a cleansing cream or moisturizing cream (Tom et al, 2012). Whenever Unilever intended to communicate Dove as Masterbrand, it reshuffles its campaigning strategy to communicate Dove brand campaign as Campaign for Real Beauty (Deighton, 2008). The case produced the following discussion.2.5.2 Branding to Change client AttitudeSuccessful brand exte nsion strategy change customer attitude to the favor of new product launched under established product category. In Dove case, the branding campaign redefines the notion of peach to the women of the world by saying that every woman possesses real mantrap, which is scarcely not defined by size, skin or age.The brand defines beauty as function of self-esteem, feeling superiority about oneself. Such transparent step to change women attitude toward beauty invites discussion and debate, which ultimately gave the familiarity of new product under Dove brand (Deighton, 2008a). The following comments are from merchandise Director of Dove.2.5.3 Media PlanningMedia planning is very important to communicate brand extension to new launched products. The effectiveness of media planning largely defines how effectively and efficiently kernel can be communicated to the target customers (Jack and Roger, 2002).Uniqueness and cost consideration are most influential ingredients in media planning w here company favors to choose unusual media to earn easily customers attention and least cost media to save marketing cost of the organization (Clarke, 1997). Dove posted a filming featuring dove in YouTube for which Unilever did not spend a penny literally.2.5.4 Brand Development and Brand ManagementBrand development is successful predictor of brand future. If an forward-looking and compelling brand is developed, it is more often than not assured that brand will emerge as successful. Whenever a brand is successfully positioned in one product category, it is very easily to extend it to new product (Kumar, 2005). Successful brand development requires innovative brand development team, alignment of branding communication with characteristic of products so that they best fits each other (Monga and Deborah, 2007). In case of Dove Brand, extension brand development was separated from brand management in specific market.2.5.5 Public Relation and Brand ExtensionPublic relation or PR is appear as very effective tool in communicating messages of new brand or brand extension to customers. The recent observation is that equal of advertisement is falling and that of PR is rising. PR is more effective when it comes to subject field of communicating credibility of brand, saving of cost and clutter (Vlckner and Henrik, 2006).Moreover, Brand affection with PR can formulate a compelling communication strategy of brand extension with low cost (Tom et al, 2012a). Public relation of Dove was compelling covering some(prenominal) positive and criticism comments from leading turn on and marketing commentators which gave the firm great publicity (Deighton, 2008). New York Times mentioned about PR success of Dove as below3.0 Research MethodologyResearch methodology will be third chapter of the research, which is mainly a roadmap of the research to the outcome, which will be employed with different type of methodology to extract out the acuteness from the superjacent resear ch (Hunter and Leahey, 2008). The research methodology section will employ the following techniques.3.1 radiation pattern of ResearchThe most important element in research methodology is research design which will be cornerstone for encourage research steps to extract out relevant information from self-contained selective information. The research design inhabit of planning ofresearch, dissecting and collecting raw data and observations from the key stakeholders to build a harmonious research that will fulfill social objectives (Brymanand and Bell, 2003). The research design is launched with research philosophy.3.2 Philosophy of ResearchThe research philosophy is very important ingredient of research design where philosophy concentrates on reasoning of rationality and scientific approaches, law of generalization to develop and establish knowledge. This research is based on positivism philosophy where transparency of research will be ensured through routine of true sense to ga in ground reproduction of information (Hussey and Hussey, 2007).This philosophy of research mainly employs scientific tools and techniques to reason knowledge of imagination extracted from observed behavior (Saunders et al, 2009). The research philosophy that stands against this research philosophy is anti-positivism philosophy which prefers people judgment on research issues. advantageousness philosophy uses statistical tools which is not used by anti-positivism philosophy (Remeniyi et al, 2008).3.2.1 exculpation of Positivism PhilosophyThe justification for selecting positivism philosophy is that in this philosophy research is carried out on through objective manner to explore the urinate effect relationship between exogenous and indigenous variables (Irving, 2006).3.3 Research ApproachThere are mainly two broad type of research is used by the researcher for conducting research. These approaches are induction and deduction approach. This research will be based on deduction appr oach, which is a top down research approach concentrating to relate research outcome with reasoning rather than a inbred general statement. This approach is very much relevant to impart a concrete proof. Deductive approach depends on earlier conceptual and theoretical structure, which is supported by quantitative data (Steinar, 2007).3.3.1 Justification of synthetic thinking ApproachThe strongest argument of using deduction approach is that this approach is based on scientific principles, which leads to highly structured and organized ground for the development of research hypothesis. This approach is also relevant for collection of research data to light the relation and dependency among the variables to prove the hypothesis (Kumar, 2008).3.4 Methods of ResearchQuantitative and qualitative two research methods will be used in this research through act of different qualitative and quantitative research technique.3.4.1 Quantitative MethodsThis method will be used for collecting primary winding data collection. Different statistical parameters will be used under this method. The graphical presentation will be employed as instrument of quantitative method along with charts to demo information more visibly (Churchill and Iacobucci, 2005).3.4.2 Qualitative ResearchIn case of subjective measurement qualitative technique will be employed. Brand extension and product categories have many holdings that are qualitative in nature which need subjective evaluation. This method will be used mostly in case of data which are nonnumeric in nature and more concerned with behavioral aspect of the responders.This research has applied a mixed approach of research by incorporating qualitative and quantitative variable. Quantitative one has been applied to find the Effectiveness of Brand extension in case of Personal care products. On the other hand, to measure impact of public relation, media planning and brand management qualitative approach will be used.3.5 Data Sources Data will be still from mainly two types of sources, primary sources and secondary sources. For primary data, nation will be female customers of Unilever in London. Beyond customers, brand manager of Dove at Unilever UK will be asked for an interview, which is also another source of primary data. Total 100 customers will be surveyed and three managers will be interviewed.The primary data will be concerned with collection of data through a questionnaire that will ask about demographic profile of customers and research topic related questions where respondent will be asked on predetermined questions (Agresti and Finlay, 2009). The questionnaire will provide some statements and give respondent to put score based on theiropinion. The secondary source of data will be relevant articles, books, website and annual report of Unilever. Appropriate referencing will be provided to authenticate the sources of secondary data.3.5.1 Sampling, Design and Size3.5.2.1 Target PopulationThe target pop ulation of the research is all the potential respondents relevant to research study within some specific parameters (Churchill and Iacobucci, 2005). For the purpose of this study, the population included female users of Dove brand of Unilever UK in London. The demography of the respondent is developed in such a way that customers from different age, ethnicity and income train is selected.3.5.2.2 SamplingSampling is a technique to filter respondent from population to conduct the study as deal with whole population is literally impossible. the influential take in method is probability sampling where equal chance of each view from population business leader be selected. There are other sampling technique that could be employed in this research study which are random sampling, systematic sampling, stratified random sampling etc (Foss, 2007). Having considered time and resource constraint, convenience sampling technique is best suited with this study3.5.2.3 Design of SampleDesign of smack refers to the process of selection of sample units. A self-administered survey will be conducted among the targeted sample and the in person with female users of Dove brand in London.3.5.2.4 Sample sizeA sample size of 100 is expected to be collected for this study. Beyond them 3 managers will be asked for interview. Enough time will be given to each participant to reduce the error. The questionnaire is designed in simple English to reduce risk of ambiguity. RespondentsNumber Female users of Dove brand 100 Executives managing Dove Brand 3 Total 1033.6 Data summary Tools and techniquesGraph, table and different diagram will be used to display data that will be collected through questionnaire. These will be done in primary data analysis. The core part of the questionnaire will be based on 5-point Likeart Scale. The questionnaire provided to female users of Dove will consist of close-ended questions and interview questionnaire provided to the managers of Unilever will be open -ended questions. To assess the responses C-alpha test will be employed. The following techniques will also be used in this study.3.6.1 Usage of Statistical Tools for AnalysisTo examine, filter and transform the collected data with research objective statistical tools will be used for reaching conclusion and approving decision making (Panneerselvam, 2004). Data will be canvass through application of most up to date statistical tools used in business research.Two distinct questionnaires were used in this research to hit the books effectiveness of brand extension strategy of Dove brand. The following statistical tools have been used in this research. Graphical Technique the graph will be produced in spreadsheet software of Microsoft Office Excel. In addition to times of graphs, excel will be used in most quantitative analysis of the study.Pearson Correlation Matrix Correlation matrix is in fact a technique to develop relation between underage and item-by-item variables. It mainly observed how variables are dependent of each other. Scaling Technique Scaling technique will be used in this study in case of subjective evaluation of respondents. In this procedure, weight is designate according to rank (Cooper and Schindler, 2008).Result will be presented as percentage through rank percentage analysis. Regression Analysis Regression analysis is used in research arena mainly to calculate the dependency of dependent variable with independent variables. It incorporates different statistical test such as P value, t-test to assess the influence of the relation in terms of statistical consideration. The regression equation of this study will be as belowWhere, Y= Dependent variable (Dove Brand Turnover) = Constant 1= Coefficients of brand campaign X1= Brand campaign 2= Coefficients of customer perception toward brand X2= Customer perception toward brand 3= Coefficients of Brand Development and Management X3= Brand Development and Management 4= Coefficient of Media Pla nning X4= Media Planning 5= Coefficient of Public Relation X5= Public Relation e= demerit term3.7 Ethical ConsiderationTo clear research with appropriate research guidelines research ethics is very important. Considering estimable aspect of research enough time is given to the respondent of the study so that they can depict their true view on research questions. Primary and secondary data will be used in this study. Consent from the respondents will be taken and appropriate permission will also be ensured for usage of their given data.Confidentiality of the responses will be kept up(p) strictly to ensure privacy of their data. The disclosure of respondent identity will be based on their permission where if they are not will to disclose identity, their identity will not be exhibited. Beyond that fact, usage of any secondary data from any source will be acknowledged with appropriate reference. Hence, the ethical aspect of research will be followed very strictly in this research.3. 8 Possible Research OutcomeThe research is pursued to find out whether brand extension strategy of personal care product is effective through analyzing the case of Dove brand of Unilever. The incumbent researcher is very must interested to explore the association of brand extension through different factors in making success of freshly launched products. The research will produce how brand campaign, customer perception towards brand, brand development and management, and brand, media planning and public relation associates in making brand extension effective in case of Dove brand of Unilever.3.9 LimitationThe main limitation of the research is the period allocated for conducting the study. Another important limitation is the unfitness to remove the biasness of the responses due to subjective nature of the data. Another limitation is the dimension factors related in brand extension in addition to mentioned factors, which might produce incomplete conclusion.4.0 Time Scale of Research The dissertation will be produced by maintaining the following time scale Task to be penalise Week 1 Week 2-4 Week 5-8 Week 9-11 Week 12 Questionnaire Development and Outline of the ThesisSurvey ConductData mining and FilteringIntroductionLiterature ReviewResearch MethodologyData AnalysisSubmitting First DraftSubmitting Second DraftProof Reading and Error CheckingFinal Submission5.0 ConclusionIt is observed that brand extension strategy in personal care products is more prevalent and effective than any other products. This research study is intended to explore the effectiveness of brand extension strategy of Dove brand of Unilever. The researcher believes that the study will produce valuable insight in such evaluation that will be useful for both the executives and academicians. It will also create opportunity for further research in this field of the study.