1. Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Division of Knowledge Management
UNILEVER - LIPTON RISK ANALYSIS
Submitted By
SESAGIRI RAAMKUMAR ARAVIND (G1101761F)
MANE SHIVAJI DILIP KUMAR (G1101841A)
THANGAVELU MUTHU KUMAAR (G1101765E)
BALASUBRAMANIAN DIVYA (G1101736H)
SELVARAJU NIRMALA (G1101760J)

2. Unilever
Unilever is the world‟s third largest Consumer goods company and market leader in tea industry. Unilever group
consists of Unilever NV and Unilever PLC headquartered in Rotterdam and London respectively. This makes
Unilever a dual listed company. However both these companies operate as a single business and share the same
directors. Unilever has annual sales turnover of €46 billion for 2011.Unilever NV shares are listed in both New
York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Euronext Amsterdam. The PLC shares are listed in London Stock Exchange
and as American Depository receipts in NYSE.
Any company which has to survive and grow through such a long period of time as Unilever has to evolve with
their business models and strategies periodically. Unilever has always affirmed their global presence over their
acquisitions of brands which satisfy every customer needs. More lately, the company is trying to present
themselves more as marketing company rather than a manufacturing company and this is evident from their
actions to scale down the brands from 1600 to 400 during the period 2000 to 2004. As on date, Unilever has 13
one billion € worth brands and Lipton is one among them. (Image4.Image5.in Appendix)
“We’re not a manufacturing company any more. We’re a brand marketing group that happens
to make some of its products.”
- Niall FitzGerald (former Unilever Chairman and chief executive)
In this report we focus on Lipton and discuss the different factors and risk events associated to their supply
chain. We try to mitigate the risks through the business intelligence solutions provided.
Lipton
Tea is the most consumed beverage in the world next only to water and to be a market leader in the field further
affirms its global presence. All this was possible for Unilever after their acquisition of Lipton. Both Lipton and
Unilever share a long history on their own. Lipton as tea brand was first created in the year 1893 by Sir Thomas
Lipton. Unilever completely acquired Lipton in the year 1972 which actually began in the year 1938 following
the acquisition of Lipton‟s North America Operations. It became the first company to commit its sourcing of tea
in a sustainable manner, through Rainforest Alliance.
Lipton forms the major part of the refreshments sector in Unilever which accounts for 19% of the total revenue
in year 2011. Lipton‟s major brands are Lipton Yellow Label and Lipton Iced Tea (LIT). Iced tea forms the
major share (85%) of tea business in the US with Lipton clearly leading the market. Lipton created its first joint
venture with PepsiCo in year 1991 for marketing of its ready to drink products in North America followed by its
second joint venture with the same company covering non-American markets too in year 2003.(Table3 in
Appendix)
The Supply-Chain Network:
The tea industry is a significant contributor to the economy of the tea producing countries. Tea is a major cash
crop that provides for the food, schooling and other basic needs of the poor communities in the remote rural
areas. The sustainable production of tea and the social changes that are brought about by it are greatly impacted
by the policies and the practices adopted by the companies at the buying and the retailing end of the tea value
chain.

3. In addition there are the potential problems like the volatility of the tea price and the long term decline in the tea
price with a raise in the production costs that forces the lowering of wages of the tea workers that in turn causes
social unrest among the workers. Tea being a commodity that deteriorates quickly the need to clear stocks
necessitates the cutting of down of the prices.(Image6. & Image7 in Appendix)
Unlike the other consumer goods or commodities, the ratio of stocks to demand does not play a major role in
determining the price level of tea, as a result of which, the tea stocks are at all times maintained at low
quantities. Therefore the stocks of tea acts more like a “pipeline” stage in the supply chain framework.
Figure1: Supply Chain Network of Lipton
Unilever Plantations:
“LIPTON uses only the top tea leaves of the tea plant” .The tea leaves that are the youngest and the most
flavourful of the plant contribute to the highest-quality to the tea. To achieve this they grow their own tea. They
own plantations at India, Kenya and Tanzania. Continuous and extensive research programs are conducted at the
estates to ensure the improved growing and harvesting practices.
Besides the plantations they own, raw material is also sourced from thirty five other countries in order to
guarantee an uninterrupted and a consistent supply of tea.
Production & Processing:
Teas being a labour intensive crop, thousands of workers are employed to maintain and harvest the tea fields.
The major part of the harvesting is plucking and the allocation of workers for plucking is gender specific and
female workers are preferred for this activity.
The challenge is to transfer the tea to the factories and launch processing within five to seven hours after
harvesting. The processed tea is then shipped to the various distribution centres that strategically scattered all
over the world.
In the case of USA the single distribution point is Suffolk in Virginia, from where the tea is blended and packed
and then from there distributed to the retailers all over the country.

4. Blending & Packaging:
Every flavor of tea has its unique taste and aroma, this part of the supply chain is the most revenue generating
part. Blending is considered to be an art where the numerous tea tasters are employed to assure the consistency
of the quality and taste of the tea in each tea bag. The Lipton Institute of tea has been established for
maintaining and improving the blends.
Marketing:
The belief of the market analysts is that the tea industry will continue to boom and that there is no saturation
level in the near future. This propitious timing for tea is ascribed to two factors, the consumers need for
convenience and time-saving services and the bolstering of tea adverts by the press.
Convenience has been made a necessity by the American life style and the work habits. The ready-to-drink
variant of Lipton was introduced to capture this new turn in the tea market. In order to drive this capture of the
market, the Unilever Company established a joint agreement with American PepsiCo in 2003.
The three important aspects of marketing:
Aggressive marketing strategy
Improved packing
Improved Shelf presence
Innovative products
Sustainability plans:
Sustainable agriculture is towards profitability for all involved. The sustainability plans include:
All the tea for Lipton shall be from Rain Forest certified plantations from 2015.
“The Rainforest Alliance pioneered the practice of setting standards and certifying well-managed forests nearly
20 years ago, and developed comprehensive principles and standards for sustainable agriculture shortly
thereafter. Rainforest Alliance works with a number of crops, including coffee, bananas, wood, and chocolate.
The companies they work with include Kraft, Chiquita, McDonalds Innocent Smoothies and Ikea.”
The energy needs are from renewable sources
“Specifically in Kericho, 98% of our energy needs are from renewable sources through 4 hydro electric power
stations and renewable fuelwood for our factory boilers.”
Save Transport costs by using plastic slip sheets for shipping tea.
“„The „slip-sheets are much thinner than the traditional wooden pallets which will help cut down transportation
and fuel costs while reducing the impact on the environment. It is expected that this initiative will result in
ocean freight savings of approximately 10 – 20%”
Zero Land fill Facility at Suffolk

5. “Zero-landfill means that we do not send any waste materials to landfills from this particular plant. Instead, we
process our waste through robust recycling and composting programs and turn some of it into usable energy”
Risk Map Analysis:
Based on the risks identified and categories in the PEST and the SWOT frameworks the RISK MAP has been
plotted. (Table1.&Table2. In Appendix)
Figure2: Risk Map
Risk Events identified in the Supply Chain & other key processes and Mitigation:
“Supply chain risk is the damage - assessed by its probability of occurrence - that is caused by an event within a
company, within its supply chain or its environment affecting the business processes of more than one company
in the supply chain negatively” ( Kersten et al., 2006).
A general classification of the risks with majority of players in supply chain and others along the marketing and
communications line of process is summarized as follows.
Procedure Risks - lack of formal procedures, lack of quality control system
Decision Risks - Bureaucracy, lack of authority, lack of decision support

6. Communication Risks - cultural differences, language barriers, misunderstanding
Knowledge Risks - lack of formal education, lack of training, unskilled labour
Supply Risks - disruption of supply, inventory and schedules, incoming delays
Operational Risks - failure or breakdown of operations, changes in technology
Demand Risks - variations in demand, changes in technology
Security Risks - theft, counterfeiting, terrorism, piracy, infrastructure breakdown
Macro Risks - economic shifts, recession, labour costs, exchange rates, customs
Policy Risks - actions and sanctions of governments, shifts in legislation
Competition Risks - uncertainty about competitor's moves and actions
Resource Risks - lack of human resources, capital or technology
Business continuity management is the common concept that is applied to mitigate the effects and impacts that
are caused by the various risks. Strategies, plans and actions are devised to provide protection as a means of
alternative solutions or modes of operation to those processes, which if interrupted might bring about a serious
damage or potential fatal loss to the enterprise.
The elements of the Business continuity management can be summarized as:
Figure4: BCM Plan
Classifying the sources of information based on Business information Cube Framework (Hannula &
Pirttimäki 2004) ( Table4. In Appendix)
Designing an efficient Business Intelligence Solution:
Chadwick (2001) lists three features of effective BI systems - Integration service, the facility to gather and
integrate data and information from several sources, Information service, the facility to convert raw data into
relevant, high-quality information and knowledge and Interaction service, the facility to share information and
increase interaction among employees, the management, suppliers, and customers. Kalakota and Robinson
(2001) categorize the foci of BI applications as Information organization and collection, Analysis and
segmentation, Real-time personalization, Multi-channel delivery and interaction and Performance monitoring
and measurement
Grounded on these theories the risks and mitigations for Lipton-Unilever have been identified and listed
below:

7. 1) Risk event & Factor: As 60% of the tea dust for the distribution centres comes from the unilever
estates at Kenya, Tanzania and India; political unrest or change of the policies and procedures, for
example the inheritance law, property law or the commercial transaction law in any of these countries
could be a major supply or resource risk for the industry.
Type of Risk: Supply/ Resource Risk
BI Solution: In order to mitigate the risk one needs to get periodic information regarding the political
unrest regions which generally are associated with our tea plantation countries. The information
sources include Newsfeeds, Government Reports and other government data from embassies and press
releases. Decision Support System and Supply Chain Management Systems help in identifying
alternate suppliers and Enterprise Information Portal for displaying political unrest news. If required
the plantation would need to shut down for the safety of the employees. Supply demand simulation
with alternate suppliers on a specific supplier channel disruption can help us to plan the situation and
hence mitigate risks proactively.
Risk Mitigation: To mitigate risks of this type, dependency and good relations with alternative
sources of tea plantations and third party suppliers can be maintained and initiatives like deploying
resources at the plantation countries, to monitor and report the potential risks can be regulated.
2) Risk event & Factor: 80% of the operating cost from the retail price has been invested in the supply
chain and so the proper maintenance of the operational production and distribution capability is an
operational risk that could have a major impact on the profitability of the industry.
Type of Risk: Operational risk
BI Solution: Bar-coding data, Radio frequency (RFID) data, Biometric identification data can help in
monitoring the efficiency of operations during warehousing and movement of raw materials and end
products along the supply chain. Enterprise Application Integration Systems like ICAN and Tibco help
in integrating various sources of organizational data from ERP, CRM in different platforms or vendors
(IBM, SAP) and other work flow software in different units of organization or sometimes cross
organizational data from suppliers. Data from internal audits, process and quality control reports are
also sources to eliminate the risks
Risk Mitigation: Training for the workers at the plantations and implementation of strict quality
control measures would ensure the mitigation of such risks.
3) Risk event & Factor: The social issues like standard of living of the workers in the plantations
including high discrimination, gender inequality, the economical issues like low wages, high
casualisation of labour and uneven value distribution can cause disruptions in the supply of the raw
materials leading to a resource risk.
Type of Risk: Resource Risk
BI Solution: The information regarding the local living standards is often obtained from agency
Survey reports and necessary actions needs to be taken if any insufficient standards identified from
sources [1]. Benchmarking can well be applied to gauge the company standards with respect to the
survey results and take necessary action. Open house with workers union and adopting regional
standards like CSR and ILO conventions help minimizing this risk.

8. Risk Mitigation: In order to limit the impacts of these risks, measures like strict adherence to the ILO
conventions and national laws, open house with the worker‟s union to deploy and manage the standards
can be followed.
4) Risk event & Factor: The major share of the retail income goes to the supply chain and the instances
of corruption and collusion in the network involving the plantation country governments could result in
the major shares of the company‟s investment being appropriated.
Type of Risk: Procedure risk
BI Solution: The kind of information which we deal to mitigate this risk is often opportunistic in
nature. For example, the people within the Organisation come to know about the collusion that occurs
with the trade unions or the external agencies which are clearly against the fair play. Data mining
technologies such as Content Analytics, Social Network Analysis, Opinion mining helps in getting the
information from the employees which leads to reporting such cases before it gets out of control to
tarnish the company reputation.
Risk Mitigation: For preventing such loses, contracts with the government agencies and other third
parties should be renewed periodically and even assigning an external NGO or an agency to monitor
the control over the contracts can help.
5) Risk event & Factor: 50-60 % of the production costs are contributed to the labour wages, and the
inflation in the wages leads to a resource or a macro risk.
Type of Risk: Resource/ Macro Risk
BI Solution: Forecasting Systems provide information regarding the impact on the profitability due to
the rising labour costs. The regional rise in labour costs can be obtained from the union groups and
regional government data. Decision Support Systems facilitating „What if Analysis‟ and Social web
Mining can be adopted to get trends whether the rise in cost is temporary or does it have some
correlation with other political events in the sequence.
Risk Mitigation: Casualisation of the labour without permanent work solution is one way of
mitigating; adherence to the conventions and national laws and audits by the external agencies are other
ways.
6) Risk event & Factor: The raw material is majorly from agriculture and so any uncertainties in the
weather or water scarcity or the greater impacts of the natural calamities might affect the supply of the
raw materials.
Type of Risk: Supply/ Operational risk
BI Solution: These are forecasted through the data sources like weather forecast data or the regional
demographic data and to solve these Decision Support Systems or the Supply Chain Management
systems can be deployed. Getting the information regarding the business continuity plans and periodic
review of it helps to minimize the damage and loss due to natural calamities. Worker attitude and
regional demographics in uncertain environmental conditions can be a valuable of information to be
analysed. The plantations owned by Lipton and the employees must properly covered by insurance and
periodic review of it will only help in minimizing the losses during times of natural calamities in the
plantation sites.

9. Risk Mitigation: Finding and maintaining cordial relationships with alternate suppliers and due
insurance of the crops assist in mitigating the risk
7) Risk event & Factor: The ever-changing customer needs and trends have to be matched by the up-to-
date innovative processes and products; lack of this creates a demand risk, the customers‟ demands are
not satisfied and there are chances for the competitors to capture the market at such a vulnerable state.
Type of Risk: Demand Risk
BI Solution: CRM systems help in getting the demand information of the customer groups and the
kind of brands they are interested in buying more and the fast moving type of packages of the brand.
Opinion mining and Sentiment analysis help in getting additional information from retailer giants,
distributors and customers respectively. The trends give some valuable insights into the kind of
products customer are more interested in buying and also to change our production plan for each
product. This is a cyclic process. The CRM systems have to be monitored periodically for the
emerging trends which help us to minimize the risk to an extent. Crowd sourcing data can be
interesting to look through and analyze the current trends aligned with latest scientific discoveries
which can drive Lipton‟s innovative strategies to address future solutions focused on water scarcity,
carbon foot print reduction and green sourcing. For example, Procter & Gamble employs more than
9000 scientists and researchers in corporate R&D and still have many problems they cannot solve.
They now post these on a website called InnoCentive, offering large cash rewards to more than 90,000
"solvers" who make up this network of backyard scientists.
Enterprise Application Integration systems connecting cross organizational and university research
groups and technology related knowledge bases, Enterprise Data Warehouse consisting of KPIs of
effective research like Patents per person in a specific timeline, latest scientific publication, journals ,
magazines and conferences data , Knowledge Management metrics, best practices data, social network
analysis data from communities and interactions., resource utilization percentage, intellectual capital
and intellectual property audit data and subject matter expert data .
Risk Mitigation: To alleviate this risk the regular and periodic customer fee back sessions and crowd
sourcing contests for finding innovative solutions can be conducted and besides, the R&D has to be
committed to highest level of innovation at shorter time periods.
8) Risk event & Factor: When there occurs fluctuations in the foreign exchange markets, there arises
difficulty in making investments and in expanding the Developing & Emerging markets.
Type of Risk: Supply/ Resource Risk
BI Solution: Data mining techniques help in forecasting the future growth based on the historical data
and the correlation with other economic indicators obtained from reliable reporting agencies like
Bloomberg, Reuters and IQ Capital .‟What if Analysis‟, Hedging Simulation and Decision Support
Systems trained with extensive historical and real time scenarios and business impacts can facilitate
study of investment trends before new ventures.
Risk Mitigation: Allaying these fluctuation risks could be done by utilizing the financial instruments
like the Foreign exchange derivatives – which are the currency swaps, forward or future contracts or
the options contracts that can be used to hedge the exposure to currency exchange risk; the availing of
the electronic brokering service systems – who provide trading solutions for preserving income in
commoditized products and leveraging the market presence.

10. 9) Risk event & Factor: The breach in the strategic alliances or partnerships is likely to happen for
numerous reasons and it is a potential risk that could have a significant impact on the market
performance of the product. In this case the alliance with PepsiCo ltd for the marketing of Lipton RTD.
Type of Risk: Operational Risk
BI Solution: Collecting data from social web mining, ESS, Opinion mining of public speeches
Risk Mitigation: The Mergers and Acquisitions with the other options in the market could be one way,
although a far-fetched mitigation strategy. The other option could be to re-phrase the terms of the
contract and renew it.
10) Risk event & Factor: The competitors can be the greatest challenge when they capture the market by
the introduction of new product changes or through new partnerships. The Nestea alliance with Coco-
cola is one such instance and the Arizona‟s introduction of a new Jug concept is also an example of
such risks.
Type of Risk: Competition/ Demand Risk
BI Solution: Keeping a regular watch on the Communities, social media, opinion mining of speeches
and corporate stories in news articles will give crucial clues for the Lipton‟s top management to revise
their strategies. This helps Lipton to be well prepared to face such competitor mergers
Risk Mitigation: The up-scaling of the R&D to counteract the risks with new innovative products and
analyzing through SWOT frame-works to gain competitor intelligence to predict these risks before-
hand.
11) Risk event & Factor: The recession periods brings about such depressive seasons that there could be
decline in spending trends of the customers and so the beverage consumption patterns also could be
affected; as it did happen in 2008 when there was a 33% decline in the commodity food and beverage
price index. A risk that affects the demand from the customers.
Type of Risk: Demand Risk
BI Solution: Decision Support Systems to facilitate „What if Analysis‟ with a sudden change in
consumption trend with an economic event like recession. Process cost reduction and profit margin
hedging can be carried out with simulation of process productivity and efficiency indices.
Risk Mitigation: Mollifying such risks could be done by periodically revising the sales forecast, by
repackaging and by finding alternate avenues like showcasing the product in the light of health
improving drink or depression alleviating drink confining to the laws of the FDA.
12) Risk event & Factor: When certain processes are being outsourced, for example the Siruis (SAP
based) or the mountain internal information systems that are main source of the data or information
tracking systems; when there happens to be unexpected downtime with such systems it might prove to
be an operational risk that could delay the process that depend on the information from these systems.
Type of Risk: Operational Risk
BI Solution: System Availability Dashboards revealing information about process memory allocation,
resource sharing, network traffic allocation, possible deadlocks of processors and databases. Mobile
and Cloud based services increase the possibilities of system uptime and reduce infrastructure costs.
Risk Mitigation: The competent maintenance of the Disaster Recovery Management Systems
(DRMS), as a part of the business continuity management plan and adopting solutions like Software as
a Service, Infrastructure as a service and Platform as a service.

11. 13) Risk event & Factor: Pressured by the urge to capture the market, resorting to extensive
advertisement campaign is a common phenomenon; but care should be taken that there is no
misleading of the consumers with exaggerated or misleading promotional campaigns that includes
unquestionable or unproved health facts. There are always activists of all sorts out there waiting to
point out the misbranding and this would become a policy risk for the industry.
Type of Risk: Policy Risk
BI Solution: Proactive E intelligence with government policy reports, standards and compliance data,
scientific discoveries publisher‟s data, Proof read by experts in the field and providing disclaimers
appropriately help in minimizing the risks. Gathering adequate information from the health authorities
before make inconclusive or controversial judgments will only lower the brand value and face several
legal consequences which are additional expenses to bear for Lipton. EAI services can help in
identifying proactively this branding miscommunication proactively.
Risk Mitigation: To assuage the warnings from FDA caused by such risks, there has to be a strict
review process for these adverts or promotional campaigns and the confining to the FDA norms to be
ensured.
14) Risk event & Factor: Lipton has spent double the investment of the previous year for digital
advertising in 2010; there is risk of the failure to realize the return of investments in the digital
advertising sector due to the intended impact not being achieved or the target sector been mis-
identified.
Type of Risk: Demand Risk
BI Solution: Information congregated from online sources like social media, blogs, Youtube, Google
trends , social networks like facebook and google+ data reflecting upon customer‟s attitude towards
different channels and forms (Audio, video, interactive content, digital stories) of communication can
form a rich source of intelligence to study the customer sentiments about the channels of
advertisements. Further customers increasingly need a personalized approach based on their selected
interests mined from their open data and sometimes interactive media or augmented reality based
advertising solutions for a strong appeal. Online ad feedback, surveys, digital advertisement consultant
practices and reports from firms like RGA, Wunderman and significant others act as vital source of
information to realize Unilever‟s strategies. Point of Sales data can be an efficient source of data for
validating the marketing campaigns and reach of advertisements with different channels of sales
Risk Mitigation: Periodic monitoring of the analytical data and making of appropriate financial
planning for the investments, promotion of the digital adverts by offering incentives or the gamification
of the adverts are all possible solutions.
Challenges in BI implementation:
Different levels of users of BI solutions need a significant consideration on the Human Information
Behaviour factors and their perception towards the using BI solution as illustrated in Technology
Acceptance model (Davis, 1989)
Specific Security and access privileges to all information sources accessible to BI framework and high
encryption and authentication standards need to be set for applications on open web where remote
terminal intrusions may be possible, say when the BI solution uses cloud as a platform.

12. Costly, time consuming and "risky implementation of cross-organizational information systems" with
Enterprise Application Integration Services (Dvorak et. al., 2009)
Incompatibility of technology levels of Unilever with its suppliers
Social Media mining and social network data Analysis are emerging trends where there isn‟t many
robust software to accurately reflect on behavioral trends and causal mining of a context on the web
becomes difficult with reliability and consistency issues. Difficulty to mine sentiments, handle word
sense disambiguation and Natural Language Processing can also be a challenge while extracting
information from interactive sources on the internet.
Organizational and Cultural barriers hindering the flow of knowledge, sharing and codification in
relevant information portals so that BI can analyze it efficiently and help in dissemination after
transforming into an easily consumable form.
Rapid obsolescence of technology can pose threats of frequent software replacements and upgrades for
organizations.
References:
Wolfgang, K., Philipp, H., & Mareike , B. An empirical approach to supply chain risk management:
Development of a strategic framework . Hamburg University of Technology
TCC Tea Barometer 2010
Annual Report- Unilver2008, 2009, 2010.
http://www.liptont.com/tea_experts/growing/research.aspx
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/lipton-reinforces-green-supply-chain-operations-in-middle-east-
45794.html
http://www.industryweek.com/articles/the_greenest_tea_unilevers_lipton_tea_achieves_zero-
landfill_goal_at_suffolk_va-_facility_20248.aspx?SectionID=3
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Teaprocessing.svg
http://freshpakcorp.com/products/lipton
http://www.teausa.com/index.cfm/14709/bioterrorism-legislation-guidelines
http://www.teausa.com/index.cfm/14655/tea-fact-sheet
http://tradeunionfreedom.fnvcompanymonitor.nl/perch/resources/Unileverandthetradeuni
onchallenge1.pdf
http://www.investorwords.com/

13. APPENDIX:
Table 1.Lipton SWOT Analysis
Owned by Unilever.
Long history in tea manufacturing industry.
Extensive knowledge of local culture and tastes.
Wider product range with technological superiority, e.g.
Brooke Bond‟s hot tea can.
Alliance with Rainforest Organisation.1
Strengths
Single point of tea distribution in US from Suffolk.
Strong financial position.
Increased health consciousness among US
population and health benefits of tea such as herbal
and green tea is another major cause.
Supply Chain Management.
Having too many brand extensions can dilute and
confuse consumer perception and give fresh and new
Weaknesses competitors to seize market share.
Political unrest in certain plantation country
Alliance with Pepsi to access massive distribution
network. Presence of big, well known partners drives
demand further.
Technology advancements in manufacturing.
Opportunities Greater awareness of health benefits of tea.
New varieties of tea drink flavours can be launched
particularly in the Ready to Drink segment.
Acquisitions of companies in developing markets.
Overcrowded and small market with about 200 other
brands which might cause significant demand reduction.
Presence of other major players such as Coca-Cola and
Nestle leading to tough competition.
Threats Competition from local competitors
Indirect completion from other energy drinks like
Redbull which could eat into Lipton‟s market share.
Increasing Tea prices
vi) Fluctuating Economy

14. Table2.Lipton PEST Analysis:

15. Table 3.Lipton Unilever Sales Information:
EntitySales ( in millions ) (Euros ) 2011 2010 2009 2008
Unilever Global 46,467 44,262 39,823 40,523
Unilever US 15,251 14,606 12,743 12,967
Unilever Icecream Beverages in US 2,890 2,840 2,478 2,521
Approximate Revenue of Lipton 1,177 1,157 1,010 1,027
Image1. Sales Information Comparison Graph

16. Image2. Profit Margin and Sales growth Comparison Chart
Image3.

17. Image4.
Image5.

18. Table4. Business information Cube Framework (Hannula & Pirttimäki 2004).
Type Qualitative Quantitative
Source Internal External Internal External
Subject
Internal Server and System Social network Process Audit Agency/ Analysts/
maintenance logs, data, Labour union Reports, Quality Research reports,
worker surveys, audit reports, Management/ Investment hedging
Enterprise 2.0 data,, Agency/ Analysts/ Assurance Reports, reports, Lipton
Intellectual Research reports, Production Reports, Market share / Sales
Property Audit University/ Reports on volume fluctuation
Reports, Research databases, liquidity, cash flow reports
Information FDA and and investments,
Security Audit, government agency financial
Customer service/ policy data, statements,
Call centre reports Scientific Marketing, Sales,
publications, Social Organic growth and
Media, Audit market value
reports of Small reports
holder firms,
promotional
campaigns
External Infrastructure and Newsfeeds, Bank/ financial Market Research
equipment Lease Government institutions Agency/ Analysts/
reports, Third party reports, Supplier, transactional Research reports
expert (Consulting Partners, reports, Insurance about competitors
firms) audit/ Distributors, transactional and market, World
advisory services, Retailer surveys and reports, Supplier, Bank/IMF/ News
General Broking reports, Agency/ Retailer, Partners, Agency like
services reports, Analysts/ Research Distributors Bloomberg
Sustainability reports about transactional Economic
compliance reports competitors and reports, Electronic indicators data,
market, Press broking services Meteorological data
releases, Bench reports
marking standards
of competitors

19. Image6. Tea Supply Chain:
Image7.Tea Production-Coutrywise Infographics:
Image8. Challenges of Tea Industry

20. Image9. Business Intelligence Stack Solutions: