BACK TO CONTENTS How does the idea of sustainability play in emerging markets?
In some respects they are running ahead of developed economies – China certainly is. The emerging markets are where population is growing fastest, and where resources are most constrained. It is better for those countries to develop growth in a more sustainable way. Because the people there have never had much, they are more resourceful so it is much easier to start a circular economy there and to make sustainability mainstream.
Consumers in these regions understand this need. Where do our waterless shampoos grow fastest? The emerging markets. Where was the one-rinse fabric softener that saves an enormous amount of water most successful? In emerging markets. Where do we make bar-soaps that take 10 seconds to disinfect hands rather than 30? In India.
We sometimes discuss the emerging markets as if they are one homogenous block. In reality, how do Latin America, Africa and the Far East differ?
I had the fortune to have some interactions with the business thinker C. K. Prahalad [author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid] when he was still alive and he made it very clear to me that the world is not fl at. Just to take the Far East, there are many different stages of development there, with Singapore at one extreme and North Korea at the other.
FOCUS 8
At Unilever, we have divided the world into seven clusters. De-averaging is very important. Even in the US you have to de-average. It looks like the US economy is improving, but the middle classes are actually slipping back so you have to make adjustments by having low- price, mid-price and high-price products. In the emerging markets you see the same thing – a premium sector but also a segment where you have to raise people out of poverty still.
The overall state of the emerging markets is not as bad as the newspapers make you believe, there is a lot of geopolitical tension, but a lot of people are being lifted out of poverty. The fact, though, is that a system where we over-use resources, where the rich part of the world lives beyond its means, or a system where too many people are left behind is not a system that is in equilibrium and so we have to address that. We have to evolve our business models and reinvent capitalism a little bit.
is the waste impact
11% 450 million
reduction achieved by Unilever since 2010.
consumers across the globe use Unilever’s Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
UNILEVER by numbers
€100m
(US$136m) in revenue is generated by the
Cornetto ice cream brand in China.
© 2014 KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership, is a subsidiary of KPMG Europe LLP and a member fi rm of the KPMG network of independent member fi rms affi liated with KPMG International Cooperative, a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.
42%
of Unilever’s managers are female.
UNILEVER
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