Group-2 (MM) PGEXP-2012-14
Fairness and Color in Indian History
It was way back in the 1970s, when Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) launched its first version of FAL. At that time, the market was dominated by the cold cream manufacturers, such as Ponds and Lakme (HLL was subsequently to acquire these firms). Before this, the 'fairness ' aspect of creams was not directly mentioned, though some products did advertise that they offered consumers protection from the sun, in the form of a sunscreen.
4P strategy of Marketing for the brand creation of the Fair & Lovely.
Broadly we can categorize this into 4 phase – Product Evolution phase, Promotion of brand phase, Price rationalisation phase & Targeting different group of people and product diversification phase. The phase I (1986 – 2006) is basically the Product evolution phase wherein the effort through the advertisement was made to Re-script Destiny by first fairness product. The cream assured to provide fairness within 6 weeks as a guarantee for marriage. Hence the product was sold on Need, Want and Demand. The 2nd phase (2001 – 2006) emphasized on Promotion of the product through brand expansion. It targeted the young college going women, rural women etc. In the 3rd phase (2006 – onwards) there was aggressive competition among various companies producing similar products. The different players adopted various modes to capture the share of market through Price rationalization, Extra 50 – 100gm within the same price, cream in sachet etc. The 4th phase (2010 – onwards) emphasis is on product diversification and targeting new group of People i.e. Men. In this period the companies started producing fairness facewash gels, fairness soap, fairness talc and the effort is also to target men through fairness cream for men etc.
For a very long time, HLL was the dominant player in the fairness cream market. However, seeing the enormous success that
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