MARKET SURVEY

ON
PONDS

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mrs. Lakshmi Venkatesh M/s Chaitri Chatterjee
Class: XII-Humanities
Roll No.:
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I owe a great many thanks to a great many people who helped and
supported me during the making of this project.

My deepest thanks to my teacher, MRS. LAKSHMI VENKATESH the Guide of

the project for guiding and correcting various documents of mine with attention
and care. She has taken pain to go through the project and make necessary
correction as and when needed.

I express my thanks to the Principal of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Vasant Vihar, for

extending her support.

I would also thank my Institution and my faculty members without whom this
project would have been a distant reality. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to my
family and well wishers.

CHAITRI CHATTERJEE
 CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that CHAITRI CHATTERJEE of XII - HUMANITIES from
CHINMAYA VIDYALAYA, VASANT VIHAR, has completed her project
under my supervision. She made this project to my entire satisfaction and as per
requirement of the course.

MRS. LAKSHMI VENTAKESH

ENTREPRENEURSHIP TEACHER
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. About Pond’s

2. Company Structure

3. Our People

4. Market Conditions

5. Targets/ geographical units of the company

6. Pond’s market segmentation

7. About the brand

8. Positioning

9. Promotional Activities

10. Motivation

11. Sales forecast and planning

12. Routing– efficiency/ controlling and planning of the sales force management

13. Scheduling – efficiency/ controlling and planning of the sales force

management

14. Productivity Study

15. Budgeting and Audit

16. Conclusion

17. Survey Questionnaire

18. Bibliography
 ABOUT POND’S
 Pond’s range of products were in India from 1947

 In 1955, Pond’s merged with another company Chesebrough

 Since 1956, Pond’s talcum powder has been a trusted beauty product for
Indian women

 In1987, Unilever purchased the brand from Chesebrough-Pond’s

 PONDS is a brand that has been carefully nurtured by HUL and has thus
added to its success

 PONDS falls under the personal care segment of the HUL brand

 Ponds has been at the forefront of skincare technology and usage, and
possess decades of global expertise and research on advanced skin care
solutions

 Ponds has earned a reputation for fulfilling a woman’s dreams and

ambitions

 Mission statement of the mother company is to ‘add vitality to life’

COMPANY STRUCTURE

Boards of Directors
|
Management committee
|
Sales force
 OUR PEOPLE
Our approach
Our biggest asset is our people and they are the central pillar that supports our
growth agenda. We nurture, care and drive our people to fulfill their optimal
potential. We enable them to develop new skills to stay on top of the success curve.
The key action areas are: a)Build capabilities of our people b)Ensure employee
health and safety c)Instilling values

Our goal
Our goal is to build capability of our people so as to enable them to grow
markets with innovative solutions and make a difference to India and create a
competitive, profitable and sustainable business.

People
With over 400 ex-Leverites at the helm of companies, HUL is almost a CEO
factory.

Our people processes are defined with a singular purpose - to keep people
ahead of their talent thresholds by embedding world class leadership capabilities.
At the same time their health & well being is cared for. We also ensure that
successes are built on an unshakeable value system.
 MARKET CONDITIONS
Strengths
Parent company is a trusted company

Ponds in a well sought after brands

Premium brands are well accepted by consumers

Consumers are willing to pay high prices for beauty/skin care

As a strong brand it has a better pricing power

Weaknesses
Controlling prices is an ongoing market effort

Getting consumers to try and like revolutionary products

Making money on premium products requires time

Opportunities
Competitive intensity of the market is on the rise

Growing needs of consumers

A rising need for beauty related products

Threats
Entrance of new products and sub-brands by competitors
Competitive prices

TARGET/GEOGRAPHICAL
UNITS OF THE COMPANY
Geographical Presence
 Headquartered in Mumbai.

 National Sales Network

 with offices in 4 metros.

 More than 35 manufacturing

 locations across India, with major

 hubs being Assam, Uttaranchal,

 Himachal Pradesh, Pondicherry

 and Dadra & Nagar Haveli

Reach/Target
 Over 700 million consumers.

 Covers over 6.3 million retail outlets including direct reach to over 1
million.

 Over 2,000 customers.

 Over 2,000 suppliers and associates.

 POND’S MARKET
SEGMENTATION
A typical consumer profile
Age: 20 years and above (till the 1950’s it was 30 years and above)

Sex: Female

Class: Working, independent women

Demographics: metros and mini metros, cities, towns

Psychographics: self assured, confident, young, forward thinking women

PONDS targets the super premium segment

ABOUT THE BRAND
 Ponds is a brand that has tried to evolve with the changing persona of Indian
women while celebrating women’s courage and personality

 In a survey on consumers by AC Nielsen ORG Marg, PONDS was among

the most trusted brands in India

 It is commitment to providing Indian women with innovative breakthrough

skincare solutions and delivering superior products

 It has successfully transformed itself into a face care expert with holistic
products across all face care needs, from anti ageing, skin lightening, basic
care, oil control to anti acne ranges

 The brand boasts of state-of-the-art R&D facilities

 Known as the ‘masstige’ brand, which is a combination of mass and

prestige. The focus is to tap the segment in between the mass and the
premium end of the segment
 POSITIONING
 PONDS is a brand for ‘well grounded, self assured and confident’ women

 The role of the brand is to provide the Indian woman with beauty that gives
her confidence and courage, thereby giving her the freedom of expressing
herself, for the benefit of herself the people who matter most to her. The
brand helps her get a sense of role fulfillment as she plays many roles in life

 Through its positioning, PONDS also became a generic name in the winter
care market

 The baseline for PONDS cold cream ‘googly woogly woosh’

 PROMOTIONAL
ACTIVITIES
 Use of discounts, offers, free samples and trials for all ponds products eg)
Buy any 100gm or 400 gm PONDS talc pack, tear off the contest strip and
see what luck has in store for you

 Brand association through partnerships or sponsoring of various events like

1) Ponds Femina Miss India 2) Beauty Council etc

 Advertising through all forms of media : print, tvc, radio

 Creating awareness through social media :facebook, twitter etc to gain

feedback on the products

 Direct marketing and sales through the launch of Hindustan Lever Network

 The advertising and promotional spend for the last quarter was up 66% due
to the re-launch of Lux, new close up variant, dove and most importantly,
PONDS age miracle

 Types of products are also promotional in nature- for oily skin, summer
packages, anti aging, daily use, whitening creams
 MOTIVATION
Motivational levels
It is always important to motivate employees so they remain optimistic and
can perform better under unfavourable conditions too. For encouraging their
employee Hindustan Unilever conducts different project and programs time to
time. Some of them are as follows: (ref to word document)

1) Project Millenium

2) Sankalp

3) The Vitality index

 SALES FORECAST
AND PLANNING
 Pond’s is the ‘growth driver’ for Hindustan Unilever Ltd’s (HUL’s) skincare
portfolio

 Pond’s is now geared to aggressively build the category and capture

consumers who are willing to upgrade to this segment

 The focus is on the quality of how to reach people rather than the frequency
and quantity of reach

 Attractive pricing is being introduced to lure more consumers into sampling

the brand

Eg) Last year, Pond’s had offered a trial price of Rs 295 (from Rs 595)
for its 50 ml Pond’s Age Miracle Cream

 The company has not cut prices for Pond’s but have a programme for a trial
price as the purpose was to get in as many consumers as possible

 Stepping up media spends for Pond’s as an attempt to stay ahead of the

competition
 ROUTING– EFFICIENCY/
CONTROLLING AND
PLANNING OF THE SALES
FORCE MANAGEMENT
 What is routing ?

 Routing is a travel plan or pattern used by a sales person for making

customers calls in a territory.

 Routing is a managerial activity.

 PLAN FOR ROUTING:

 Identify the present and potential customers on a territory map.

 Classification of Customers in to High , Medium & Low Sales Potential.

 Reduction in travel time and cost by excluding backtracking and criss-

crossing by sales people in their territory.

 Improvement in territory coverage.

 Sales people reduce their travel time and increase selling time.
 SCHEDULING –
EFFICIENCY/
CONTROLLING AND
PLANNING OF THE SALES
FORCE MANAGEMENT
 What is Scheduling?

 Scheduling refers to establishing a fixed time when the

salesperson will be at a customer’s place of business.

 It is planning a salesperson’s specific time of visits to customers

 In theory, strict formal route designs enable the salesperson to:

1. Improve territorial coverage.

2. Minimize wasted time.

3. Establish communication between management and the sales force in

terms of the location and activities of individual sales people.
• The salesperson should schedule the visits in
considering the time factor, the allocation of
time should not create any problem.
Sales people task Time spent
Administrative task 20

Face to face selling 40

Traveling 25

Telephone Selling 20
PRODUCTIVITY STUDY
- A full day in the life of a salesman studied & time spent on

• Active selling

• Passive Selling

• Administration

Delivery Order Taking

• Traveling

• Available/Free

- Comparison of

Reality

Perception

Ideal

- Diagnosis of sales man’s productivity & alignment to business needs

 How the salesman actually spent the day

7% 1% 23% 7% 23% 39%

How the salesman thought he spent the day

55% 10% 10% 15% 10%

How the salesman would like to spend the day

50% 10% 15% 15% 10%

Active Selling Delivery / Order Taking

Administration Travelling
Passive Selling Available
BUDGETING AND AUDIT
 CONCLUSION
The conclusion of my study is that Pond’s Advertising has a major impacts
on its users. People like its products very much. Pond’s had created a very
good image on the mind of the new customers. Pond’s has adopted a very
good strategy by providing new products and schemes.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ON-LINE WEBSITE:
www.google.co.in
www.pond’s.com

NEWSPAPERS:
Times of India (15 Oct 2006- 2 Nov 2006)

BOOKS:
Marketing Management, Dr. S.L. Varshney and Dr. R.L. Gupta,
Third Revised Edition, Sultan Chand and Sons.