660 Fair and Lovely Case PDF

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Harvard Business Publishing - case study...

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Fair & Lovely Case This case study discusses the marketing and selling of fairness skin products, particularly the branded fairness creams Fair & Lovely. HUL’s Fair & Lovely is a top-selling skin lightening cream in India, where 60 to 65 percent of Indian women use fairness creams daily. Before competitor CavinKare Fairever began to grow rapidly, HUL’s Fair & Lovely brand dominated the market with a 90 percent market share and generated about $60 million annually. Particularly in India but also other Asian countries, skin color is closely identified with caste and is laden with symbolism. Indians often marry within their caste, thus those with lighter skin color may be more likely to marry someone from a higher caste. HUL’s Fair & Lovely has exploited these cultural norms to promote their products through controversial advertising. The brand created advertisements that explicitly promoted the idea that darker skinned women are less attractive, less likely to have boyfriends and find husbands, and thus more unhappy. Although the “get fair to attract a groom” theme in advertisements was recently revoked, it has now been replaced by the message that lighter skin enables women to obtain jobs conventionally held by men. This is a major ethical issue for the brand as it denigrates dark skin and fosters racism within society. Furthermore, Fair & Lovely advertisements do not show what the product contains and how it works. They just show how happier customers will be with a lighter skinned complexion, but the efficacy of Fair & Lovely fairness creams should be questioned. While some individuals see results, others have reported to have been using the product daily for years and were dissatisfied with the results. Indian dermatologists maintain that fairness products cannot realistically work since they only reach the top layers of the skin and thus cannot affect melatonin production. Yet, the demand for fairness creams has not slowed down. Sales of Fair & Lovely have been growing 15 to 20 percent over year and the market has grown by 42.7 percent in the last three years. The advertising of Fair & Lovely is demeaning to women, especially darker skinned women. This is not an unusual issue in cosmetics marketing, but Fair & Lovely may take it too far because of its downright racist advertising messages. If this ethical issue is not addressed, the brand will continue to expand by exploiting cultural norms and fostering the denigration of darker skin within communities. Indeed, the brand has already been trying to expand sales to rural communities. Because of the low income level in rural areas, Fair & Lovely could not sell a big volume of products like it does in the urban centers. Therefore, the brand started reaching out to underprivileged rural women as a way to penetrate the market in the rural areas. They provide women with income-generating opportunities to sell small, lower priced packets of the brand in their villages. Although the sales are still much lower than in urban centers, the brand has managed to expand its market to the more underprivileged areas. This may be particularly unethical as cultural norms and values are exploited even within low-income communities, where people struggle meeting their basic needs and should not be encouraged to buy mildly effective fairness products. A potential solution could be to spread awareness about the severity of the issue presented by Fair & Lovely’s unethical and racist marketing practices. Educating the masses is

key to mobilizing an intervention to this ethical issue. Articles, newspapers, podcasts, and books should address the unethical marketing practices of the brand, allowing the masses to acknowledge the severity of the issue and start alienating Fair & Lovely products. Celebrities should also use their voices to criticize Fair & Lovely and encourage people to stop buying their fairness creams. However, this solution could fail if voices aren’t raised against the unethical marketing practices of Fair & Lovely or it would take too long to have any positive impact. A more extreme but shorter-termed solution would be to sue the brand for unethical and racist marketing practices. Litigation would surely diminish the value of the brand and drive down sales. This will be detrimental for the company, possibly driving it out of business and displacing a great amount of employees. Yet, it could set an important precedent for handling unethical marketing practices as other companies will want to avoid litigation....