Segmentation and target marketing strategies for Dove soap

Segmentation and Target Marketing - Dove Soap

This paper will deal with segmentation and target marketing of Unilever's Dove brand of soaps. A brief description of the product, its target market, and demographic, geographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmenting will be provided.

Identify and describe a product currently on the market

The Dove brand holds the belief that beauty -- looking as well as feeling your best -- results from proper personal care. With Dove, manufacturer Unilever has always aimed at offering products that noticeably improve hair or skin condition and afford its users a pleasurable care experience. This is because, one feels happier if one feels and looks beautiful, and this feeling is something all women must be able to experience on a daily basis (Unilever, 2016).

Right from the outset, the brand has made real women its inspiration and the focus of all it believes in and does. Genuine beauty accepts and supports diversity. Thus, Dove tries to ensure no woman feels left out of its sphere of beauty; it welcomes all women (Unilever, 2016).

The Dove Difference

Dove was first launched in the United States in the year 1957, with its new and revolutionary beauty cleansing soap. The highly popular Beauty Bar with its original and patented mix of moisturizing cream (1/4) and mild cleansing agents rinses better than soap, and leaves one's skin soft, smooth and clean. In Canada, France and the U.S., Dove is the No. 1 brand recommended by dermatologists. Even in the rest of the world, dermatologists strongly recommend it (Unilever, 2016).

The basis of the brand's legacy is "moisturization" -- first-hand experience and proof, rather than empty promises, with its Beauty Bar, transformed the brand into one among the most beloved global beauty brands. Now, Dove's product range covers: Body and Hand Lotions, Body Washes, Facial Cleansers, Shampoos, Conditioners, Hairstyling products, and Deodorants, all of which have been created on Dove's universal foundation of real personal care (Unilever, 2016).

2. Through research into its marketing draw conclusions about and describe the product's target market.

Unilever's April 2004 Dove campaign - "Real women" -- stirred quite a lot of excitement and interest. More than a decade on, one may conveniently play down the true revolutionary nature of Dove's advertising campaign at that time. Although not at the level of casual marketing sexism of the 1970s (which was the concept's absolute low point), the former half of the twenty-first century was an era in which toiletries and cosmetics advertisements featured skinny or slender women who bore hardly any likeness to the majority of women across the globe, just as Diet Coke's hunk was hardly representative of the average male (Bold, 2015).

Dove's campaign featuring 6 curvy women deviated sharply from convention. Tabloids expressed glee at the campaign, which had an impact that went beyond media buyers' plans and garnered considerable publicity. Furthermore, Dove's 'Real women' campaign brought about a sales growth of 700% during the former half of 2004. Its theme proved worthy and Unilever subsequently extended to it to television idents which portrayed aging women asking 'Wrinkled or wonderful' (Bold, 2015)?

Dove targeted the average woman, who comes in different sizes, shapes, and ages. After its 2004 ad campaign, the brand tweaked its marketing strategy to target the aging women population. This shift was consistent with the much-heralded, promising consumer influence of the aging Baby Boomers (Pitman, 2007).