Nivea is the world's leading skin care brand. It introduced innovative products like the world's first liquid cream and the first aftershave that soothed skin. To maintain its leading position in the global facial care market, Nivea expanded its product line, pursued a global strategy while respecting cultural diversity, and plans further expansion in the future.
Oscar Traplowitz buys company from Beiersdorf in 1890
In order to come up with products, once should understand about the market and what the market wants from the company. This is what Nivea works upon. They do extensive market research to understand what people want from Nivea. Product line consists of skin care products, face care and personal care products. Under Skin care, it has Nivea crème, Nivea body, Nivea Hand and Nivea Baby. Under face care, it has Nivea Visage, Vital. Lip care and Nivea for men. Personal care includes Nivea Deo, Nivea bath care and hair care.
This explains the product strategy in the marketing mix of Nivea.
Pricing strategy plays an important aspect of marketing mix. In order to achieve company’s objectives, pricing should be done strategically to have required number of sales. Like, When they relaunched their product Nivea Visage, they brought it at higher prices because of new formula and packaging.
There is a very unique strategy adopted by Nivea with their retailers. They have made a rule that they will sell the products to retailers at one price. Now, these retailers can in turn sell to customers at any price. Thus, you can find prices do differ at different places.
Distribution channel plays vital role to make the products available to the customers. They do adopt various channels to reach out to the customers. Customers can buy Nivea’s products online which means they themselves need to take care of the promotional activities. But the main channel for selling the products is the retail outlets. They have many outlets spread across the country where customers can directly choose the products based on his/her needs. It has been that around two-third of the sales happen through high street shops such as boots and Superdrug. One-third of the Nivea sales happen through grocery chains.
Nivea products are best in the skin and beauty care segment. It is because of the product quality that makes them the market leader. They use various promotional techniques to attract their customers. They follow above the line marketing technique, that is, they go for mass media. They also follow below the line strategy such as trade fairs and promotional events. They also have presence in social networking sites such as Facebook.
This covers the entire Nivea marketing mix.
reshaped core values – trust, care, closeness.
Product portfolio was reduced by dropping products that were not relevant to the reshaped core values.
Local adaptations example – cream with fragrance in the Middle East.
NIVEA
Skin Care
NIVEA Cream
NIVEA body
NIVEA hand
NIVEA sun
NIVEA baby
Face Care
NIVEA For visage
NIVEA For vital
NIVEA For beauty
NIVEA For men
Cosmetics
NIVEA deo
NIVEA Bath care
adopted line filling technique
Increased the width of its product mix, moved away from ‘only cream’
Offered features and conformance quality as no one did at that time
Developed products as per the needs of its customers
New packaging induced greater visibility at the point-of-purchase
Cultural norms affect both, the core benefits and the expected product, thus potential product may vary from place to place
Integrated international expansion strategy with local product adaptations, while keeping the brand appearance standardized
Varies its product mix in accordance with cultural diversities
Nivea should stretch its product line both ways, so as to serve a larger segment
Should increase its width of product mix by introducing speciality skin care products for infants and old-aged people
Can invest more into developing new products that reduce the company’s environmental footprint