Introduction
In the first section the marketplace where the organization operates, will be analyzed. The nature of the market has a direct impact on the brand and the sub brands. Following the section, the report will include a detailed industrial analysis. In this section, an illustration of the industrial position of the organization will be described by means of a tree diagram.
In the next section detailed analysis of the macro environment of Lipton will be conducted. This will include a detailed analysis of competitors. The importance of the competitors in the market and their threats towards the brand will also be highlighted in the section of the report (Qasim 2015).
The following section will include a macro environment analysis where other important factors impacting the organization will be highlighted in detail. The second section will discuss recommendations for additional market research. The third section is regarding consumer segmentation where overview of the structure followed for sleeping the consumer base in the smaller segments for a marketing purpose will be discussed.
Section 1: The marketplace and influencing factors
Industrial background
Lipton tea is one of the most widely recognised tea brands in the whole world. It has the most unique range of tea and experimenting with a wide range of variants, almost all their tea brands and sub brands have been hit. One of the sub brands is there green to which has the highest adoption rate owing to the health awareness as well as other benefits related to green tea (Wafler and Badir 2017). Moreover, this brand enjoys benefits in the market because of theirfantastic distribution which is spread all throughout Europe, various regions of Asia, Africa, North America as well as USA and Middle East. However, the most popular product of Lipton is their ice tea which was developed in collaboration with pepsico. This was an unique market product, packaged as well as marketed in the form of cold drinks.
Competitors’ analysis
The two major competitors of Lipton are Snapple and Nestle. The competition with Nestle became fiercer when Nestle join hands with Coca-Cola to produce similar products like Lipton (Hilal and Mubarak 2016). Nestle tried to develop sustainable relation with coca cola and thereby give strong competition to the Lipton pepsicopartnership by ensuring a strong distribution system around the world.
In order to give a strong market competition to Lipton, Nestle launched Nestea. Unlike the previously adopted strategy Nestle wanted to emphasize their marketing strategy around premium packaging, but it fails to offer the diversity in flowers that is offered by Lipton. the consumption value provided by a healthy ideal as well as ready to drink beverage, as Lipton offers, is nothing like Nestea. Along with continuous marketing campaigns, the competitive rivalry in the market of ready to drink tea products has given a promotional thrust to Lipton (Hansen 2015). This helped in increasing the brand loyalty of Lipton among the conventional groups of tea drinkers. The branding and packaging of Lipton ice tea was also successful in attracting a significant section of soda drinkers.
However, only one factor of concern for Lipton ice tea is that the competition gap between Nestea by Nestle and Lipton ice tea is dominated by snapple iced tea. The snapple ice tea is second most popular product and they also have wide variety of flavours. Because of lesser organisational strength snapple has not been able to position themselves properly in the market. The listener budget also hinders their constant research for innovation and improvement of products.
Other players of importance
The bottom line managers of Lipton decided that there was a larger opportunity to win greater market share by making Lipton 100% guaranteed environmentally as well as socially sustainable. In order to do so, Lipton certified the plantations from where the raw material of Lipton tea came from. This help in conversion of the whole supply chain to sustainable methods. the strategy involved in this process was to purchase third party certification of the plantations. Potential market partners where selected at first on the basis of factors like recognition by customers, flexibility as well as capacity to certify large as well as small suppliers the ability of working with the local organizations as in training the employees and so on (van Driel 2019). However, there are very less partners to satisfy all the criteria of Lipton. That is why the organisation has to depend very much on Rainforest Alliance, which is is an USA based International non governmental organisation dedicated towards conservation of biodiversity as well as ensuring sustainable livelihoods. Lipton along with Rainforest Alliance has purchased big tea estates in Kenya where the sustainability initiatives had long been underway.
Macro environment
Demographic factors
The Asian market is suitable for maximum admission of tea products when contrasted with the other popular nations in the world. The individual customers consume tea more than once each day. That is why, advancement in the product line or item augmentation would help in the sustainable growth of Lipton in the Asian markets. The demographic factors that determine the sales of Lipton ice tea products all over the world are age groups, occupation, gender and so on. The health conscious up of customers of Lipton ice tea is mostly female. However recently, in the Asian as well as European countries the trend of ice tea consumption by teenagers has increased.
Political factors
The imposition of GST on the the individual customer items is an alarming factor for Lipton tea products. This is because it would be difficult for them to satisfy the customers and their demand for product diversity as well as take care of their production costs. The targeted market for Lipton as well as other popular competitive brands like Nestle is the Asian markets only. Therefore enhancer operating costs for their market prices also (Kim et al. 2018). Besides, it should also be mentioned that the localised iced tea brands like Tapal, supreme, Tetly and so on has been a danger for them as these local brands are largely protected by corporate veil in the local market.
Section 2 recommendation for additional market research
Question 1
What is the product diversification strategy that the organisation is carrying out for entering the new and emerging markets?
Question 2
What are the unique brand promotion strategies for Lipton ice tea in Asia?
Question 3
What are the popular funding and investment strategy of Lipton?
Question 4
Is the strategy of merger and acquisition applicable only to the American market or it is an universal strategy of Lipton?
In order to extract information against the first question, a detailed to consumer survey has to be conducted by the researcher. The researcher has to conduct and online survey in two to three popular target markets of Lipton. Based on the typical favourite Lipton ice tea products, as evidenced in the customer survey the researcher would analyse how the organisation has worked towards product diversification on the basis of the local taste preferences.
In order to answer the second question, the researcher will analyse the marketing content of Lipton in major countries of Europe from Asia as well as America. Secondary research will also be contacted in order to understand which campaigns has been successful and which campaigns have failed.
In order to answer the third question the annual financial plans of Lipton has to be analysed.
In order toanalyse the 4th question, one of the executive heads of Lipton has to be contacted for an exclusive interview. in this interview, details about the collaboration strategies of Lipton outside America have to be discussed.
Section 3: Consumer Segmentation
One of the Primary characteristics that is highly favoured by the mostly targeted demographic section of customers belonging to the age group ranging from 20 to 45 years of age is the product packaging of Lipton ice tea. The divisions of customers based on their behaviour shows that most of them prefer to carry this product for refreshment in offices, parties and in various travel and tours.
The most important profiling elements that attracts customers are its packaging strategy, branding with celebrity endorsement as well as unique taste of tea resembling a cold drinks.
Using the last strategy, the organisation can diversify their bigger customer bases into smaller segments which will develop preference for different unique flavours of Lipton ice tea. Evidence, the customer section which refers taking the product to the office and corporate tools, can avail the mint flavoured ice tea. The section which refers to consume this product after their diet can consume the spiced iced tea which would be cumin flavoured. The health conscious group of customers can consume the yellow ice tea.
The growth of all these three customer segments is pacing up. The resources and objectives of Lipton ice tea are matching with the segment which refers to consume it during their daily activities. This is why Lipton is emphasising on installation of vending machines in offices and large factories also.
Conclusion
Lipton is a comparatively new concept in the market of Ice tea. The major strengths of this product are large market presence of their parent brand as well as uniqueness of their product, packaging and branding. The market diversity is also wide because of which all the flavours of Lipton ice tea has been hit in the market.
Reference list
Hansen, S., 2015. An examination of the focus strategy a literature review. In Proceedings of the 1989 academy of marketing science (AMS) annual conference (pp. 334-339). Springer, Cham.
Hilal, M.I.M. and Mubarak, K.M., 2016. International tea marketing and need for reviving Sri Lankan tea industry. Journal of Management, 9(1).
Kim, J.H., Lee, J.H., Choi, Y.K. and Chun, S.S., 2018. A Lexicon for Descriptive Sensory Evaluation of Blended Tea. Preventive nutrition and food science, 23(4), p.364.
Qasim, M.S., 2015. Study of competitive strategy and promotional scheme of Lipton Green Ice Tea. International Journal in Management & Social Science, 3(4), pp.96-101.
van Driel, G., 2019. Lipton’s Tea Plantations in India: Is There a Gap Between Saying and Doing in Sustainability?. In Management Practices in Asia (pp. 127-140). Springer, Cham.
Wafler, B.H. and Badir, Y.F., 2017. Global products marketing strategy of two European MNCs in Vietnam. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 26(6), pp.573-588.
