Strategic management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 3

Strategic management - Essay Example It is ranked among the top 100 ethical and sustainable companies globally (L’Oreal, 2011). The company has about 23 global brands in around 130 companies with 66, 600 employees. The brands annual sales turn up to be more than 50 million Euros. Some of the consumer products of L’Oreal are L’Oreal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline New York, soft sheen Carson to name a few. The brand has its presence felt globally and has been well accepted by the people. 2. Company background L’Oreal is the largest cosmetic company across the world and was established in 1909 by Eugene Schueller, who was a French chemist. By the year 2003, the company had entered 130 countries through 290 subsidiaries and agents. The main heart of L’Oreal strategy is the dermatologist and cosmetic department. The L’Oreal group had thus marketed about 500 brands and provides services for all sectors of business such as body care, skin care, fragrances, hair colour and other products. L ’Oreal owns various brands such as Garnier, Armani, Maybelline, and others. According o L’Oreal innovation and diversification were the critical success factors for the brand and invested highly on research and development but recovered the investment made by launching the products globally. L’Oreal markets its product under its name and also other family brand names. L’Oreal strategy was to drop down technology over the time from high end outlets and markets to the mass population. The brand Plenitude was the market leader in France but in US it was not that promising but with its innovation and diversification strategy the company was able to overcome it (Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson, 2007, p. 158-159). 3. Competitive advantage Focusing on fundamentals of strategy does not always lead to formulation...Base on the analysis from various tools it can be concluded that L’Oreal in order to remain competitive in the market place has adopted various strate gy and with needs and demands have also altered the strategies from time to time. L’Oreal has primarily adopted the premium price differentiation strategy in order to stay ahead but as stated above the company also make use of the cost leadership strategy. L’Oreal is the most popular and well known cosmetic brad and in order to maintain its position the company invest heavily in its R&D to innovate and create new products to suit the demands and need of its target market. With the female segment the many has also targeted the male segment and as per reports huge opportunity tends to exists as the male have started to take care about grooming themselves.