Unilever drives growth and innovation through customer-centric insights

Facts & figures

Global HQ: London, United Kingdom

Founded: Unilever, 1926

Employees: 128K worldwide

Annual revenue (global): $59.6 billion

Unilever has recently refreshed its purpose, placing real consumers at the heart of everything they do: brighten everyday life for all. The company achieves best-in-class performance through market-making and unmissably superior brands. These "power brands" drive the majority of Unilever’s growth in both turnover and profit, with the flexibility to scale across global and regional markets. Consequently, power brands are the primary focus of Unilever's strategic growth efforts.

To support this renewed focus, the partnership with YouGov is centered on delivering consumer-centric insights. Real shopper insights empower Unilever to align its strategies with the needs and preferences of its customers, ensuring continued growth and market leadership. In the Dutch market Unilever has implemented continuous shopping behavior monitoring, uncovered a new target group for one of his power brands and strengthen their category cooperation with one of their key retailers.

Challenge

Market penetration - how much your products are being purchased in comparison to the total estimated buyer market - is the most critical shopper metric for Unilever’s power brands and serves as the guiding principle for every collaborative project with YouGov. The key challenge lies in closely monitoring and consistently driving penetration by effectively operationalizing the six marketing P’s: proposition, packaging, product, promotion, place, and pricing. Targeted improvements on pack, price and promotion levels have proven to support category- and brand performance at a Dutch key retailer for Unilever.

Solution & research results

In the Dutch market, Unilever has implemented YouGov Shopper Insights Monitor, a continuous monitoring system that tracks real buyer behavior and category purchases. This enables them to assess brand and category performance effectively, offering valuable insights to guide future growth strategies. By identifying where and which power brands are facing penetration challenges, Unilever can take targeted actions, such as enhancing promotions, optimizing distribution, or refining marketing strategies.

To boost penetration in one of their key categories, Unilever conducted an advanced analysis using YouGov Penetration Growth Driver to uncover the primary drivers for attracting and retaining buyers. YouGov insights revealed a clear opportunity to better serve a specific target group through a more tailored proposition, enabling the company to implement sharper, more effective marketing strategies.

Additionally, Unilever conducted a deep dive into a key retailer in the Dutch market to enhance category and brand performance in one of its identified growth channels. By examining the full shopper journey, enabled by bespoke YouGov Why2Buy shopper panel surveys, Unilever gained actionable insights on packaging, pricing, and promotions. Understanding their customer's reality led to stronger retailer collaboration and more effective communication, ultimately driving significant category growth for the business.

Business outcome & impact

The partnership with YouGov has played a pivotal role in driving market penetration, a key contributor to turnover growth, for Unilever’s power brands. By enabling more effective allocation of investments across the six P’s (proposition, packaging, product, promotion, place, and pricing), Unilever optimized its return on investment opening up an opportunity for gaining double-digit penetration on their power brands.

Accessing real shopper insights has reinforced Unilever’s customer-centric approach and strengthened its trade partnerships, fostering greater collaboration and mutual success.