Nestle and Unilever, Ice Cream Market

In order for a company to succeed in a market, a sum of management activities and execution skills have to output a product/service that match the client’s expectancies and demands. The combination of the company’s skills that make the client choose their product over the competitors’ are called Critical Success factors in the industry. Ben and Jerry’s is seen as a superpremium brand (key buying factor. Ben and Jerry’s is one of the most well known ice cream brand in the U.S.A. and, after being acquired by Unilever, it continued to develop it’s small company philosophy and operate as a semi- autonomous corporate inside Unilever group, developing its own worldwide strategies and not using the heart-shaped logo. Those are its main industry strategic success factors. As competition engines, its semi autonomous management allows Ben and Jerry’s to develop their own products and continue to have a close relationship with their customers. (haggen daz – falta esta analise)
Unilever is a multinational company that operates in many markets and market sectors all over the world. Unilever, along the years, have made huge investments to buy (financial resources) local brand ice cream names and take advantage of its positioning in the local markets (organizational resources). Unilever now covers certain common products with strong brand positioning such as Magnum, Cornetto and others that have been developed in the past 15 years (intangible/tangible assets). Unilever strategy determines that the products and managements have to be adjusted according to the country they are sold (organizational resources). Unilever has developed strong distribution channels and maintained a close relation with retailers, specially smaller ones that are persuade to rent Unilever’s freezers and forced to sell their products (organizational resources). On the other hand, large market share allows Unilever to explore economies of scale.
Unilever’s main strengths are: local brand image through