“Softness, shine, and manageability of hairs.”

Sunsilk is a hair care brand, primarily aimed at women, produced by the Unilever group. Sunsilk is Unilever’s leading hair care brand, and ranks as one of the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate's “billion dollar brands". Sunsilk shampoos, conditioners and other hair care products are sold in 69 countries worldwide.

Introduction

Number 1 in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East

Sales of more than €1 billion a year.

Selling in 80 countries. Also sold as Elidor, Hazeline,

Seda and Sedal.

Recent Awards: Holds the Guinness World Record for the most heads of hair washed and styled in one day

Key facts

To know about the Sunsilk. To know about the competitive positing of the Sunsilk. To know about the branding strategies used by Sunsilk. To about the various promotional strategies of Sunsilk.

Objective

For an offering to achieve a point of parity on a particular attribute or benefit, a sufficient number of customers must believe the brand is “good enough” on that dimension

Like others SUNSILK consists of such POPs are:

Dream soft & Smooth Stunning Black Shine Lusciously Thick & Long Anti-Dandruff Solution Hair Fall Solution

Point of parity(POP)

With point of difference, the brand must demonstrate clear superiority.

Sunsilk’s PODs is Co-creation. They came with this idea to grab the market and to be superior in the market. From 2009 Sunsilk started working with a number of professional hair "experts" to develop new and improved products. Each hair “issue" variant links to an "expert” with the relevant specialist hair knowledge.

Point of Difference (POD)

CO-CREATED BY 7 OF THE BEST HAIR EXPERTS IN THE WORLD

Branding Decisions: Branding strategy is one of the most vital decisions taking by marketers. It is a strategy, which brings lots of positive feedback for a firm.

Indivual name: Unilever follow individual name for setting brand name for their different products, such as Sunsilk, Dove (Shampoo), Ponds, Fair & lovely, Dove for skin care.

Brand Elements: Brand elements can play a number of brand building roles. Band elements are those trademark able devices that identify and differentiate the brand.

Branding strategy

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Memorable: every consumers mind catches the brand name. Their marketing programs set the brand name in consumers mind. Their short brand name such as: Dove, ponds, Sunsilk etc are easily memorable.

Meaningful: Every consumer has a clear meaning about sunsilk. Consumer thinks about sunsilk as a product which solve their problem relating with hair. 

Likable: From our research we found that most of the people like the brand verbally and visually. 

Protectable: The brand name is legally and competitively protectable. The brand retain their trade mark rights and not generic.

Brand Elements

The main target market of sunsilk is females between the ages group 16-40 belonging to the middle & lower income classes.

Sunsilk target its market on the basis of consumer buying behavior, income level, and purchasing power of people.

Target market of Sunsilk

Classes of competitors: In urban areas, Sunsilk is acting as a market challenger against Head & shoulder.

Competitor review: The major competitor of sunsilk in rural areas is BIO AMLA and in urban areas sunsilk mainly cut throat of Head & shoulder.

Identifying competitors

Market share: Sunsilk as a market challenger, they are steadily gaining market share. At present market situation, they capture 34% of total market share.

Mind Share: To buy a shampoo rational consumers firstly think about Sunsilk due to the promotional strategies of sunsilk. So that Sunsilk rapidly increase their mind share.

Heart Share: Due to reach product and marketing attributes & features sunsilk’s mind share in total competitive market is higher than any other brand. Consumer choosing sunsilk as their first choice.

Expanding the total market: Sunsilk is very sensitive to increase its market.

New customers: Sunsilk trying to attract buyers who are unaware of the product or who are resisting it because lack of such features. Sunsilk using market penetration strategy, new market segment strategy and geographical expansion strategy for searching new consumers..

More usage: Sunsilk recently increase the amount, level and frequency of consumption. It also improves packaging and redesigns the product.

Competitive Strategies for Sunsilk

General Strategy:

Flank Attack: Sunsilk can follow segmental strategy. In market Head & shoulders targeting mainly high and middle class people but big portion in lower class consumer could not adopt their product. So, Sunslik can targeting the lower class, who have lower income and launch new product at a lower price.

Competitive Strategies for Sunsilk

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Frontal Attack: Sunsilk can launch new shampoo combining conditioner, anti-dandruff, and shinning in a one product as follow as Head & Shoulders.Bypass Attack: Sunsilk can introduce anti-dandruff shampoo and provide an extra conditioner in a package.

Competitive Strategies for Sunsilk

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Electronics Media Print Media Billboards Giving out free

Samples Advertising Alliance

Communication Tools of Sunsilk

1. Unilever must focus on social responsibility, to maintain image among customers, mainly advertisement covers huge expenses of sunsilk, but we recommend them to cut their advertisement expenditures, in the economic crisis and should more focus on social responsibility.

2. People are familiar with Sunsilk, however they are not interested in whether it is a unilever product or not. Through extensive marketing methods unilever should make people aware of the fact that it is a Unilever Product and not just any product so that the brand loyalty increases and people purchase its product due to its brand name and not just the product name.

Recommendation

Sunsilk has huge potential of rural market 72% of total population but not yet develop a successful strategy to penetrate this market. The success of sunsilk emulated which captured the rural market by two strategies- Develop strong distribution structure and Adopting packaging and pricing. Sunsilk increase buying of raw material so that it does not have to suffer devolution and continuously increase in tariff rates.

Conclusion