Market Segmentation Of Unilever

Unilever recognises that it cannot cater to needs of all the consumers present in the market. Consumers are present in a very large number in the market place and they vary greatly in their needs and buying behaviour. Companies also are well aware that themselves vary greatly in their ability to serve various segments of the market place. Unilever is no different from other companies in this regard. It recognises that it is far better for it to cater to certain segments that it can serve the best rather than attempting to cater to the needs of the entire marketplace as a whole.

As a result Unilever like a vast majority of other companies have moved away from mass marketing their products and brands in favour of a more targeted approach.

The process of market segmentation involves the division of a market into groups of smaller size whose needs, behaviour and characteristics are distinct from each other. These smaller groups or 'segments ' may require separate marketing strategies. There are four major market segmentation variables namely behavioural, psychographic, geographic and

Sunsilks ' geographical segmentation is such that it is mainly available in Major cities (whose population is over 4 million e.g Karachi) and Mainstream cities (whose population is over 1 million). Density wise Sunsilk is available in areas of urban and suburban density.

Behavioural segmentation involves segmenting a market keeping in mind the attitudes,beliefs and knowledge of the consumers. Consumers can be classified with respect to their occasion of consumption, the benefits they seek to extract from the product, their attitude towards the product, the level of their loyalty amongst various others.

For Sunsilk the most important of the above mentioned factors is the benefits the consumer seeks to extract from the product. Sunsilk operates in the hair care category of the personal care industry which is further divided into three major segments I.e beauty, anti dandruff and herbal. Sunsilk falls under the beauty segment although it has introduced an anti dandruff variant. Sunsilk believes that the beauty of one 's hair can be judged by a variety of factors such as length, shine,straightness,freshness. Hence within the beauty segment Sunsilk further carries out benefit segmentation of market along the lines of consumers who view beautiful hair as hair that is shiny as opposed to those who view it as long hair or