1. What are the challenges a multinational such as Unilever faces in developing global brands whilst encouraging local responsiveness? 2. What other examples of local tailoring of global brands can...

Strategic innovation at Hindustan Lever Ltd Large multinational corporations may still need to tailor their products and services to local market needs. Unilever is one of the world’s biggest consumer products companies. It seeks to establish its brands on a global basis and support them with state-of-the-art research and development. However, it is acutely aware that markets differ and that, if it is to be global, it has to be prepared to adapt to local market conditions. It also recognizes that if it is to have global reach, it has to be able to market its goods in poorer areas as well as richer areas. Indeed it estimates that by 2010 half of its sales will come from the developing world – an increase of over 30 per cent from the equivalent figure in 2000. In the rural areas of India Hindustan Lever is setting about marketing Unilever’s branded goods in ways suited to local conditions. Much of the effort goes into marketing branded goods in local ‘haats’ or market places, where Unilever representatives sell the products from the back of trucks using loudspeakers to explain the brand proposition. Local executives argue that, poor as people are, they ‘aren’t naturally inclined to settle for throwaway versions of the real deal – if the companies that make the real deal bother to explain the difference’. To help develop the skills to do this Lever management trainees in India begin their careers by spending weeks living in rural villages where they eat, sleep and talk with the locals: ‘Once you have spent time with consumers, you realise that they want the same things you want. They want a good quality of life.’ The same executives have innovated further in the way goods are marketed. They have developed direct sales models where women, belonging to self-help groups that run micro credit operations, sell Lever products so as to make their collectives’ savings grow. Where television viewing is uncommon, Hindustan Lever marketing executives...