MARKETING STRATEGY AND COMPETITOR ANALYSIS OF AMUL INDIA

Vision: To provide more and more satisfaction to the farmers , employees and distributors

AMUL'S MARKETING STRATEGIES

Amul is an India based company, headquartered in Anand, Gujarat,India. Amul is a cooperative dairy company started in year 1956. Amul remains in the headlines due ti its creative advertisements, its advertising team is considered as one of the most creative and active team. 

In this blog, I'll discuss various prominent strategies used by Amul, starting from the very basic,i.e., Pricing Strategy.

• Pricing Strategy: India is a price sensitive market, hence, Amul tries to cater to the needs of all the Indian market segments keeping in mind the wallet size of its target customers without compromising with the product quality. Amul deals in daily need dairy products like milk,butter, cheese, ghee, cream, ice-cream at comparatively lower prices offered by its competitors which in return helps Amul to capture huge market share. 

• Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning Market strategy of Amul: Amul's target segment is the mass population, we generally see people of all age groups and demographics enjoying Amul's dairy products,as Amul's dairy products are a common product for all, have you ever heard of any ice-cream or butter only to be consumed by aged people? 

      - As it has a very vast product portfolio, the company doesn't differentiate in its customers but uses Mass Marketing principle,and this strategy has proven itself to be the most suitable one,as this principal is still working well with the Amul's marketing strategy.

    -Amul's target audience are the regular users and middle class people. However, for products like Butter and Cheese, both upper middle class and lower middle class people are the target audience.

    -Positioning Strategy used by Amul is at the top of the mind, as it got some leverage fopr being the first brand which comes in mind when talking of milk,cheese,butter,ice-cream or any other dairy product from Amul's product portfolio.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE MARKETING STRATEGY OF AMUL

Amul carries two major competitive advantages listed below:
1. Its supply chain: Amul has large number of dairy suppliers which provides it tremendous strength and facilitates Amul  to produce high volumes by relying on its supply chain.
2. its Wide Product portfolio: Amul  has a really wide product line due to which it can run Amul shoppes's and also maintain its products presence in market, especially at retail level. Amul's product portfolio analysis indicates that its Butter and Ice cream are cash cows for it.

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY IN THE MARKETING STRATEGY OF AMUL

like any other FMCG firm, Amul focuses on breaking down the bulk.It supplies in huge amounts to its C and F, which is responsible to store Amul products in bulk. C&F then transfers the company's products to distributors who forward it to retailers. Amul has its own storage and also has a strong and reliable C&F.

BRAND EQUITY IN THE MARKETING STRATEGY

Due to the quality products, the top of the mind positioning , Reliable and strong distribution and supply channels, and finally the point of purchase branding and advertising of the Amul girl, Amul is at very strong position when its brand equity is concerned. Amul's brand worth is more than 3.8 billion which is ecpected to cross 4 billion mark in near future, but the dropping value of rupee and economy slowdown may cause the difference.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS OF AMUL'S MARKETING STRATEGIES

Amul has many competitors, who has entered the market in last decade and are growing their market share steadily. In Ice cream category, Amul owns a major share but even though individually these competitor brands might not be a worthy adversary,combined and due to synergy, all of them together are giving very tough competition to Amul. 

List of its top competitors:

• Kwalty walls
• Vadilal
• Havmore
• Dinshaws
• Baskin Robbins
• London Dairy
• Arun Ice cream

Many of these ice cream products are niche or geographic targets centric. Havmore is more successful ansd strong in west India whereas Arun ice cream is strong in south.

Besides these organised players, Amul has many unorganized and small competitors as well which offer their own ice cream variants in own outlets. But the competition in other dairy products like Butter and Cheese  is far less.

MARKET ANALYSIS

The FMCG market is highly competitive in nature and is known to have a combination of organized players as well as unorganized players. Similarly, in FMCG, direct competion is equally important as indirect competition. For example – During winters, ice cream and cold milk products will not sell, whereas butter and cheese will sell equally well.

But on the other hand, during summers the demand of ice cream shoots up so much so that companies are not able to meet demands. Thus, when we analyse the market of Amul, in some cases Amul is the clear market leader, whereas in other products it is a competitor in the market.

CUSTOMER ANALYSIS

The typical customers of Amul belong to the Sec B and Sec C segment wherein they are either middle class or lower class. Amul in general uses mass marketing and therefore it targets these 2 classes majorly. The high end customers are more likely to prefer a Naturals, a Baskin robbins, or any other such brand which meets their taste and status.

This completes the analysis of the marketing strategy of Amul. 

When we plot Amul's products on BCG Matrix, we get to know that:

• Amul's certain products stars whereas others are cash cows.
• Amul's chocolates are question marks as they have very low share in growing market, Cadbury is the market leader.
• Amul's Butter and Ice creams are cash cows as they have a huge market share which is still growing with the market growth.
• Amul's Milk, buttermilk, cheese, Amul kool  have alot of direct and indirect competitors in their niche market, but syill Amul has high market share for niche as well so ,it is right to say that all these products fall under Star for Amul.