Factors Affecting Unilever

Political environment includes laws, government agencies, and pressure group that influence and limit various organizations and individuals in a given society. Economic environment consists of economic factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns. Social factors include the demographic and cultural aspects of the external macro environment. In which demography is the study of human population in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics; cutural environment consist of institution of other forces that affect society’s basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors. Therefore, these factors have an impact on customer’s needs and size of potential markets. Finally, technological

Like many multinational companies, Unilever has to execute the local, regional and global rules, laws and regulations. They cover in many terms, including product safety, employment health and safety, the environment, taxes... Legal frameworks affect on the ageing of the population (Maestas and Zissimopoulos, 2010).. For example , the age of mandatory retirement was removed in both the UK and the Netherlands , which means that Unilever can no longer force employees to retire when they reach the age of 65. This factor could lead to several threats and opportunities. Whenever Unilever has failed to comply with laws and regulations, it has to face with many challenges about civil and criminal laws and could result in fines or imprisonment. Moreover, Unilever’s reputation could be significantly damaged, which means the trust of clients would be decreased. However, having well managed relations with government is one of the most important opportunities of Unilever in term of political and legal area. Unilever company uses its widespread contacts in many countries to modify regulations, and easily bargain with

Many changes of the ageing population lead to several threats for Unilever. Firstly, the structure of demand in future is likely to be changed. Unilever has to meet special needs and desires from older people. For example, greater and greater demands for frozen “ready meal” by older people that the company has to deveplop their products to satisfy customers (Ahlgren, Gustafsson and Hall,2004). Besides, there may be lack of labour in the future. To confront to this problem, Unilever would encourage workers to work longer or recruit migrant workers (Maestas and Zissimopoulos, 2010). However, with the fact that people are more concern about healthy and safe products, Unilever has successfully maintained high social and environmental standards by designing and producing that meet consumers’s needs. They have many effective activities including promoting sustainable development and utilisation of renewable resources. Therefore, it can not be denied Unilever has built its image as an environment friendly and socially responsible