Full Case Study: How Nestle’s Digital Marketing and Social Media Strategy Is Winning

marketing case study of nestle

By Aditya Shastri

Nestle’s Marketing Case Study - Featured Image

In this Nestle ​ case study, we would go through one of the oldest and most famous brands of our time, Nestle. It is a Swizz multinational conglomerate operating worldwide for more than a century now.

In a country like India where there is so much competition in the industry already, Nestle has come a long way and has given its counterparts a run for their money.

This Nestle case study will examine how this mega-corporation in the Indian market has maintained a unique brand image for itself through innovative marketing campaigns and strategy that has created a strong brand connection among consumers even in this increasingly digitized world .

So let’s start by understanding a little more about Nestle’s company profile.

About Nestle India

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study

Nestle SA is a Swiss multinational food and beverage conglomerate operating its business in India under the name of Nestle India.

It first arrived in India in 1956. Since then, from selling its first milk product in the 1960s to offering a wide range of quality products in the Indian market, Nestle has grown exponentially in India.

It offers products in beverages, breakfast cereals, chocolates and confectionery, dairy, and nutrition foods as well as vending and food services. Popular products such as Maggi, Kit Kat, Polo, Milkmaid, and Nescafe fall under Nestle India’s portfolio. The brand’s mantra of “Good Food, Good Life” transcends mere slogan status; it represents a dedicated pledge to offering nutritious and flavorful products that foster a healthier way of living.

Nestle’s Marketing Case Study - Nestle India

Today, Nestle India has a significant presence in the FMCG sector and enjoys a healthy market share in the food and beverage industry. The company has established ambitious sustainability objectives, aiming to attain zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and implement 100% recyclable or reusable packaging by 2025.

The brand observed a 14.8% sales growth in the year 2022. This is a representation of the decade long growth that Nestle has gained.

Domestic sales growth of Nestle - IIDE

Strong Product Mix of Nestle

2. gerber cereal, 4. ceregrow, 6. purina – for pets.

Being the largest food and beverage brand in the world by revenue, Nestle’s targeting and positioning strategy has played a key role in establishing itself all around the world. So let us understand how it has positioned its products to cater to the Indian audience.

Nestle’s Target Audience

Nestle India has positioned its wide range of product offerings in such a way that it covers audiences beginning from 2-year-olds to working-class professionals. Nestle target market includes almost every conceivable age group . Let’s check out Nestle’s Target Market based on age demographics.

Kids Ceregrow, Koko Krunch, Lactogrow, NanPro
Working Professionals and above Nescafe, Sunrise, Protein Products
General Audience KitKat, Maggi, Milkmaid

Nescafe has been a hit among working professionals as Nestle has promised Nescafe to be the coffee that would keep them fresh throughout the day and who would not want to be fresh?

Parents have been tempted to feed their little ones with ‘Ceregrow’, a product from Nestle that contains cereals to keep young children healthy. It also has ever-popular products such as Maggi, KitKat, and Milkmaid which are targeted toward the general audience.

This is how Nestle has designed its targeting strategy in India and let’s now understand what it has done to market itself and its offerings in the coming section.

Nestle’s Digital Marketing Strategies

By now, you are aware of the fact that Nestle is the world’s largest food and beverage company by revenue. This might also come as very basic information for you.

But what if I told you that Nestle has always been one step ahead when it comes to its marketing policies and tactics? It has always worked on the most up-to-date marketing methods be it offline or digital marketing strategies , which matter the most in today’s day and age.

Let’s start with Nestle’s social media marketing strategy first.

Nestle’s Social Media Marketing Strategy

Nestle India is active on all three major social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Here’s an overview of the same.

About 11 Million people like Nestle’s Facebook Page It enjoys about 28.1K followers on Instagram Nestle has about 100 K followers on Instagram

Now that you have an idea about Nestle’s presence on major social media platforms . Let’s now understand how and what it is doing on each social media platform.

Facebook and Instagram

Nestle India has designed its Facebook and Instagram profiles moreover the same. It shares posts related to what Nestle India is currently up to. It also announces its new launches, talks about its corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures, etc.

It maintains separate pages for its brands such as Maggi, Kit Kat, Nescafe, Koko Krunch, etc. which also have an insane amount of followers on both Instagram and Facebook.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Facebook Pages

Nestle’s Facebook Pages

To put it in a gist, Maggi has around 16 million followers. Nescafe has 36 million followers and Kit Kat has about 11 million followers on Facebook.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Instagram Pages

Nestle’s Instagram Pages

On Instagram, Maggi has around 105K followers. Nescafe has 156K followers and KitKat has about 1 million followers.

Having separate social media profiles for its various brands, helps them organize marketing campaigns effectively and thus resulting in a strong brand connection with its customers.

Nestle on Twitter

Nestle India has been maintaining its Twitter profile as a medium of communication between the company and its audience. It also solves queries related to its products by replying to every comment and mentions done by the general public on the platform.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Twitter Pages

Nestle’s Twitter handles

Just like Facebook and Instagram, Nestle on Twitter too has maintained separate profiles for its various brands. This helps them promote their products effectively.

Nestle on Youtube

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Digital Marketing - Social Media - Youtube

Nestle India’s Youtube channel has about 95K subscribers. On this platform, they post all the advertisements of their brands. However, Nestle maintains the same strategy of maintaining a separate profile for its various brands.j

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Youtube

Nestle’s Youtube Channels

Now that you have a complete overview of Nestle’s social media presence . Let’s have a look at some of the campaigns rolled out by Nestle’s brands and along with a few creatives under their marketing campaigns which have helped them to maintain the attention of Indian consumers.

Marketing Campaigns of Nestle

Nestle marketing strategy is to roll out several campaigns that connect emotionally with the consumers. Here are the few marketing campaigns that have left a lasting impression on the Indian audience.

1. A Campaign for the Youth: Karne Se Hee Hona Hai

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Marketing Campaign - A Campaign for the Youth Karne Se Hee Hona Hai

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things for everyone, especially the millennials who were accustomed to doing certain things in a certain way.

This campaign by Nescafe was launched in July 2020 as India was preparing to come out of its series of lockdowns and begin life in the “new normal”.

Nescafe, in the above advertisement, encouraged the youth of the country to dream, act, and achieve their life goals.

And in the process, Nestle also highlighted to millennials that “It all starts with a Nescafe” . Thus promoting Nescafe and once again establishing that Nescafe plays a vital role in keeping the youth alive and fresh.

2. A Caring Campaign: Poora Poshan Poori Tasalli

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Marketing Campaign - A Caring Campaign Poora Poshan Poori Tasalli

Poora Poshan Poori Tasalli: This campaign was initiated by Nestle Ceregrow in 2019 targeting urban couples who had children between the age of 2-5 years.

In a country like India where parents pay a lot of attention to their child’s health and proper nourishment right away from the child’s birth.

Nestle very smartly portrayed how Indian mothers are worried about their child’s proper nourishment. The brand showcased its product and communicated that Ceregrow not only fulfils the child’s hunger but also provides the right kind of nutrients for the child’s immunity and overall development and nourishment.

You can watch this short 45-second video by Nestle Ceregrow which delivers the message beautifully and convinces urban parents why Ceregrow is a must-have for their growing toddler.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Marketing Campaign - A Caring Campaign Poora Poshan Poori Tasalli

3. A Campaign for Maggi lovers: Meri Maggi

Meri Maggi has been one of the most successful mass campaigns led by any brand in India. The Meri Maggi campaign started with the motive to promote Maggi as a snack.

In this marketing strategy of Nestle , they also encouraged its consumers to personalize Maggi as per their wants and taste and share it on social media pages to get featured on Maggi’s official Facebook page.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Marketing Campaign - A Campaign for Maggi lovers Meri Maggi

Nestle started posting pictures of Maggi with different captions to make it relatable for different sets of audiences. Be it a Pyjama Party or a Break after Long Lectures in the college, Maggi made sure it relates to everyone and at the same time creates a strong brand engagement .

It did not stop there! Maggi then asked its followers to write back to them about their “Meri Maggi” and people started sharing their versions of Maggi and when they would have it. What’s your version of “Meri Maggi”?

Watch the Meri Maggi Ad campaign here,

This is how Nestle India strategically uses its social media as a tool for its marketing and campaign-related activities. Let us now examine how it is doing on its website in the next section of this case study of Nestle .

Nestle’s Website Overview

Nestle has a very strong website presence compared to its competitors. It has separate websites for its brands as well which helps Nestle to rank itself better on Google Search.

In today’s world where brands are working on spreading awareness via social media, Nestle has gone one step ahead and made its audience visit its websites by releasing various campaigns.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Brand Websites

We would go through how Nestle has been doing on its official website by analyzing the Search Engine Optimization aspect of its official website to understand its strength in the internet space.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization helps us rank better on the google search. It also showcases to us how well a website is in terms of customer experience.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Website Overview - SEO

UberSuggest tells us that the website is very well-optimized. Nestle has nearly 3,55,206 Organic Keywords. That’s something commendable. Not only that, but it also has more than 2,547,008 monthly organic visitors.

Let us understand further by going through its backlinks as it also has its own separate websites for its ever-popular brands.

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Website Overview - Backlinks

Nestle has a Domain Score of 68 and has about 128,114 backlinks. This is huge when compared to any other FMCG brand in India. No other brand has such a high number of Backlinks as Nestle has.

marketing case study of nestle

Let now go through this unique campaign launched by Nestle to drive traffic to its website in the coming section.

Ask Nestle Campaign

Marketing Strategy of Nestle - A Case Study - Ask Nestle Campaign

In this campaign, Nestle India introduced a digital tool, NINA (Nestlé India Nutrition Assistant) on AskNestle.in which uses artificial intelligence to provide real-time nutritional information on the foods we intake. This helped Indian parents to create a nutritious custom meal plan for their children below 12 years of age.

AskNestle’s NINA was dubbed as India’s first artificially intelligent assistant that allows you to find nutritional information for children. So this is how Nestle India played its cards on digital fronts to drive organic website traffic growth and better overall engagement compared to its competitors.

Key Learnings from Nestle Marketing Strategy

1. diverse portfolio:.

In the fiercely competitive FMCG industry, thriving can be a daunting task. Nestle, however, has strategically utilized product diversification to not only overcome challenges but also achieve remarkable success. When faced with adversity, such as the ban on Maggi in India due to the detection of a harmful ingredient, Nestle responded by embarking on a comprehensive diversification initiative. They revamped the Maggi brand and expanded their product range, showcasing their adaptability and resilience. Offering an extensive array of products ranging from coffee to milkshakes, beverages to breakfast cereals, seasonings to infant foods, soups to chocolates, refrigerated foods to pet foods, Nestle demonstrates its versatility and ability to cater to diverse consumer needs.

Diverse product portfolio of Nestle

2. Localization of Products:

Nestle customizes products for local markets adeptly. For example, in Japan, where tea is prevalent, Nestle launched coffee-flavored candies to cultivate a taste for coffee among children. This was followed by successful introductions of Nescafe and KitKat, leading to over 300 KitKat flavors in Japan today. Similarly, in India, Nestle tailors products such as Maggi Atta Noodles, garlic and onion-free Maggi noodles, and Maggi Special Masala to suit local preferences.

Nestle launched local products according to regional preference - IIDE

3. Co-Branding:

Nestle has effectively utilized co-branding strategies to bolster its product promotion. One notable instance is its collaboration with Starbucks to introduce a line of coffee products under the Nescafe brand.

Nestle's co-branding with Starbucks - IIDE

4. Promoting Sustainability:

Nestle’s marketing strategy prioritizes sustainability and reducing its environmental impact. Nestle revealed its commitment to utilizing food-grade recycled plastics and investing over 700 million in sustainable coffee production for Nescafe. Additionally, the company has taken proactive measures to combat deforestation.These consistent efforts have positioned Nestle as a globally recognized sustainable brand.

Sustainability approach by Nestle brand - IIDE

With this our Nestle Case study comes to an end, Let’s now conclude the case study in the final section.

Note: Check out Free Digital Marketing Masterclass by IIDE to understand what digital marketing is all about.

Nestle India’s campaigns have always been short, sweet, and easy to relate to. The company has always relied on organic growth and does not run paid promotions on social media or Google or any other digital platforms.

So far, Nestle’s digital marketing campaigns have been very successful. However, it should continue to work towards unleashing its creativity to its full potential to remain connected with its customers.

If you like this case and want to learn more on the line of digital marketing, then do check our website for more information .

Have any thoughts on this case study? Let us know in the comments below.

Liked our work? Do share it with your friends. Thank you!

marketing case study of nestle

" * " indicates required fields

I’m Interested in This Masterclass

By providing your contact details, you agree to our Terms of Use & Privacy Policy

Schedule a Call

marketing case study of nestle

Nestle Case Study: How Nestle’s Marketing Strategy Helped Them Grow as a Brand-2023

How many of you can answer this?

What is one common thing among Nescafe, Caregrow, KitKat, and Maggi?

Any guesses?

Yes, they are world-renowned brands, are familiar names in every household, and are products you must have consumed in your life at one point.

Anything other than these?

Yes. All these belong to one and only Nestle.

Be it in the fresh smell of hot coffee, a short break, or a bowl of tasty noodles- we cannot deny that all of us have enjoyed the awesomeness of Nestle’s products.

The brand has come a long way, crossing so many hurdles and achieving success, and it keeps growing.

Today, nestle is a brand that everyone is familiar with and uses in their day-to-day life.

Curious to know how?

In this Nestle case study, we are discussing everything about Nestle company, the marketing mix of Nestle, nestle competitors in India, marketing sales promotion techniques of nestle, and much more.

Nestle owns more than 2000 brands, from global stars to local ones.

How did Nestle achieve this level of success?

The brand has been in the market for more than 150 years, but many companies got this opportunity but failed. Nestle survived.

What is the secret of Nestle’s success?

This Nestle case study shows you a glimpse of nestle strategy and what digital marketing and social media strategies they followed that led to achieving this success.

So, let’s start by understanding a bit more about Nestle as a company.

Nestle had come a long way from when it entered the market by selling infant food in the 1860s with a motto to reduce child mortality rates.

marketing case study of nestle

Gradually, it became a renowned name in the wellness, healthy food, and pet care industry with its evergreen tagline, “Good Food, Good Life.”

Now, you must be thinking that how did Nestle reach this position? How can a company build a legacy which is so powerful that it has stood still since its birth?

The answer to this may lie in Nestle’s digital marketing and functional strategy.

Nestle Case study: Introduction of Nestle company

Nestle is a world-renowned manufacturer of packaged foods and beverages. It is the world’s largest food manufacturer operating in more than 186 countries and with over 2000 product brands.

The brand came to India in 1956. Since that time, from selling its first milk product in the 1960s to selling a wide variety of Nestle products in India, Nestle has grown exponentially in India.

With such exponential growth, Nestle’s umbrella keeps widening day by day. They are not only the largest food and beverage company in the world but also one of the best companies that have effortlessly collaborated with the online world and achieved immense success.

Gradually, Nestle India started making its presence felt in the FMCG sector, and now the brand enjoys a good market share in the food and beverage industry.

Being the most extensive food and beverage brand in terms of revenue, the pricing strategy of Nestle company, along with its targeting and positioning system, has played a vital role in reaching the position where it is currently.

Let us find out how it has served the Indian market with its products and services.

Detailed Nestle Case Study

Nestle offers products in breakfast cereals, beverages, dairy, chocolates, nutritious foods like vending, and food services.

Popular food products like Kit Kat, Maggi, Milkmaid, Polo, and Nescafe come under Nestle’s products sold in India.

For more than 150 years, this iconic brand has been applying its expertise in Health, Nutrition, and Wellness to help its customers, pets, and families live a healthier and happier life.

However, they believe what is good today might not be suitable for tomorrow.

marketing case study of nestle

So, they keep exploring and focusing on pushing the boundaries to find more to experiment with foods, nutrition, and beverages.

Nestle unlocks the power of food to improve the quality of life for everyone, not just today but for generations to come.

The brand focuses on bringing more pleasure and enjoyment to the customers, how they can enable better health, and how they can make the best nutrition affordable to everyone.

Not just these, but the brand tries new ways to protect and improve natural resources.

History & Founder

Nestle was founded in 1905 by the union of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, set up in 1866 by brothers Charles and George Page and Farine Lactee Henri Nestle, founded by Henri Nestle in 1866.

Nestle originated in 1860 when two separate Swiss enterprises later created Nestle.

In the following decades, the two rival companies grew their businesses throughout the United States and Europe.

In 1866, George Page and Charles Page, brothers from Lee County, Illinois, USA, formed the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company in Cham, Switzerland. The company’s British operation started in 1873 at Chippenham, Wiltshire.

It was during the First World War when the organization grew significantly, and again during the Second World War, the company increased its offerings beyond its initial condensed milk and infant food products.

Nestle Case Study : Facts & Figures

Here are a few interesting numbers about Nestle that sets it apart from others.

marketing case study of nestle

  • Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage company.
  • The brand has 276000 employees
  • Nestle has acquired 30 companies

Nestle Case Study: Nestle competitors in India

Nestle has many major customer brands like Carnation, Kit Kat, Nestle-water, and Stouffers, among others.

Thirty of its brands netted more than $1 billion in earnings in the year 2010, which makes the company a vital force in the worldwide food and beverage industry.

With around 42 % of its sales being in North America, Nestle is one of the most geographically distinct companies in the food and beverage industry. It places it in a position that helps it edge over its competitors.

Its brands are well established in a considerable market share in leading economies like U.S. and Europe.

Danone and Unilever are important competitors for Nestle. These two are giants in the food and beverage industry, like Nestle.

In 2010, Unilever posted around 26% growth in yearly profits because of its accelerated sales in the food and beverage industry, especially ice cream, frozen food, tea-based beverages, and cooking products.

On the other hand, Danone stated around a 38 percent increase because of its improved share prices. In addition, a rise in its yogurt sales also enhanced the growth in earnings.

However, nestle handles positioned itself in the market by adopting a new accounting method which aided a decline in its cost of sales.

The company could also incorporate discounts, allowances, and promotions for its retailers through sales profits rather than the marketing line.

Though its sale was lesser for a year, nestle pricing strategy helped them match its peers, which in turn, made it a famous manufacturer even though the competition was so high.

Being the world’s most popular food manufacturer, nestle has intense competition with its rival company, Unilever.

Unilever has around 1,49,000 employees and operates in 160 countries, with its headquarters in London for food, home, and personal care.

The company is trying hard to beat Nestle in terms of the quality of their product, which has made Unilever the second company in the Western European ready meals market with a market share of around 8.6%, i.e., 0.3 points behind the iconic Nestle.

Nestle’s Target Audience and Products for Each Segment

The unique thing about Nestle is that it offers a wide range of products that covers audiences of different ages, from 2-year-old to working professionals.

Here’s a breakdown of Nestle’s Target Audience and the products meant for them.

  • Target Audience
  • Working Professionals
  • General Audiences
  • Koko Krunch, Caregrow, Lactogrow
  • Sunrise, Nescafe
  • Maggi, KitKat, Milkmaid

Everyone, especially coffee lovers, will know how Nescafe is a big hit among working professionals.

Nestle guarantees that Nescafe is the only coffee that would keep professionals fresh throughout the day, and who does not want to feel fresh?

Regarding kids, parents blindly trust the product “Caregrow” by Nestle. The product consists of cereals to keep young kids healthy.

However, nestle has several other products like KitKat, Milkmaid, and Maggi for the general audience.

It is how Nestle has designed something for everyone in India. In the coming section, we will dig into how Nestle has advertised itself and its products in the digital world.

Nestle’s Digital Marketing Strategies

By now, you must have understood that Nestle is the world’s largest food and beverage company in terms of revenue. So, it might be basic information for many of you.

But what if we say Nestle always tries to be one step ahead regarding marketing strategies and policies?

It has always focused on the most updated marketing ways no matter, whether it is digital marketing strategies or offline strategies.

Nestle’s marketing strategies will teach you to build marketing strategies that work and get a positive response from customers.

Let us start with Nestle’s Digital Marketing Strategies that must follow if they want to succeed as a brand.

Partner with influential celebrities

Nescafe, a product of Nestle, collaborates with celebrities to put forward their message and create more noise around their brand.

A few years ago, they announced Bollywood actress Disha Patani as their brand ambassador.

Recently, they launched a campaign with famous content creators called “Karne Se Hi Hona Hai,” which means “Only doing will make it happen.”

They created this campaign during the Covid Pandemic to inspire people and encourage them to keep working hard towards their dreams no matter their situation.

Through this campaign, they targeted the youth of India and asked them to dream, act, and achieve success.

  • Run campaigns that foster connections and bring customers together

An ordinary 37-year-old guy named Arnaud, with 1,2000 Facebook friends, was challenged by the company to catch up with his friends over a cup of coffee.

So, he filmed these meetings and turned them into a 42-minute online video documentary. During the sessions, Arnaud enjoyed a cup of Nescafe with his pals.

The documentary was a big hit on social media. It got almost 8 million views on Facebook, around 63,050 likes, 4,850 comments, and 5,550 shares. 

The Facebook Page of Nescafe saw an increase in the number of fans by 400%.

Fans were excited by the documentary and wanted to know how to turn their online friendships into real-life relationships.

As a reaction, it created the “le Defi Nescafe,” a Facebook campaign to allow winners to reinvent the same experience.

More than 26,000 people applied, around 19,000 liked it, and nearly 1,725 shared.

Instantly, Nescafe became an online sensation by marketing itself as an item that stimulates connections and friendships.

2. Localization of Products

Localization is adapting an organization’s products to the local market. Nestle has gone huge on localization in various markets where it now manages.

For example, consider Japan, where the organization’s primary foray was through coffee-flavored chocolates.

Japan is traditionally a tea-drinking country, and the company established these candies so that kids could also get to know the taste of coffee.

Later, it introduced Nescafe and KitKat, and what happened is history.

3. Content Marketing

Nestle has created many video content on every brand’s YouTube channels. The content ranges from informative “how-to” videos to cooking tips to better insights on using the right products.

For example, the “Meri Maggi” has more than 530 videos with more than 5,71,000 subscribers.

Though video content is an expanding channel in Nestle’s marketing strategy, it has recognized other avenues to share relevant information with its consumers.

4. Out-of-Home Advertising

Nestle’s brands, including Maggi, Milo, KitKat, and Nescafe, use different ways to grab customers’ attention.

Whether benches, hoardings, or banners, Nestle’s brands have made it to the limelight for their contextuality and creativity.

What are the advantages of using OOH ads? First, most people correctly receive these ads. They are worth sharing.

People can take photos online, send them to their friends or relatives, and even marketers discuss them.

In addition, with the help of OTT, they can reach many people at a low cost.

Also, Nestle’s marketing strategies are exceptional and generate some customers.

5. Co-branding

Have you ever heard about Android KitKat?

A few years back, Google and Nestle united and invented an Android KitKat operating system.

Nestle was facing a new scandal with their pet product and wanted to capitalize on the image of Google. This movie created a buzz and surpassed the crisis.

Lately, nestle signed another deal with Starbucks to kill two different birds at a time.

First, the brand entered the new product development stage-i.e., roasted beans- and improved its brand by discovering a wide range of Starbucks Nespresso Capsules.

Did you understand how co-branding helped Nestle?

Co-branding is great for stepping into a new market and widening your reach. This marketing benefits startup that wants to create brand awareness or launch a new item.

It would help if you found companies that complement your products and collaborated with them to run co-branding promotional ads.

Nestle – Challenges Faced

Undoubtedly, Maggi was the most popular instant noodles brand in India. The brand had established its presence in India’s food industry, but suddenly it became controversial.

State food regulators stated that Maggi contains Monosodium Glutamate and lead above the recommended limits, which were dangerous, especially for kids.  

When nestle encountered lab results, it said that they had a world-class quality control procedure and that their products were safe for consumption.

Ultimately, the National Food Regulator FSSAI ordered to ban on the selling of Maggi, including product recall.

Consequently, various state governments imposed a temporary ban on selling Maggi noodles in a few states. As a result, the future of the company suddenly started looking dark.

Another acquisition of Nestle by the critics was they accused that the brand discouraged mothers from breastfeeding.

They showed that their baby formula is much healthier than breastfeeding, although they didn’t have any proof to support this.

It resulted in a boycott of Maggi for the first time after its launch in 1977 in the United States and slowly spread to Europe.

Several reports have acknowledged the widespread use of child labor in Cocoa production, slavery, and child trafficking, throughout the Western African plantations on which Nestle and other important chocolate companies depend.

As per the 2010 documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, the kids working are usually 12 to 15 years old. Nestle faced criticism from The Fair Labour Association for not properly checking.

Different Campaigns by Nestle 

  • Ask Nestle Campaign

In this campaign, Nestle India launched a digital tool, NINA, which stands for Nestle India Nutrition Assistant on AskNestle, which used Artificial Intelligence to offer real-time nutritional information on the foods we consume.

In addition, it assisted Indian parents in designing a nutritious customized meal plan for their kids below 12.

This campaign by Nestle was India’s first artificially intelligent assistant that permits one to find nutritional information for kids.

So, this is how Nestle India set its foot on digital fronts and started driving organic traffic and improved overall engagement compared to competitors.

2. #WeMissYouToo Maggi Campaign

Maggi suffered a massive loss after it got banned as Maggi contained a high amount of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and lead content- more than what is allowed.

It was hard for them to hope for a comeback, but Maggi did their best and experienced huge sales. As a result, the price and volume of Maggi are now much more significant than before.

How did they do so?

They did so through their different marketing campaigns. One among them was the #WeMissYouToo campaign.

In addition, they published a few videos showing how people are kissing Maggi and how their life was better with Maggi.

Videos showed how Maggi has been a staple food for many and how its absence had affected their lives. 

In campaigns, characters addressed Maggi as “yaar” or a “close friend” who is always there for them when in need. 

Therefore, they considered Maggi’s return as a huge celebration that brought people’s life to normalcy.

3. A Campaign for kids: Poora Poshan Poori Tasalli

Nestle Caregrow started this campaign in 2019. The campaign targeted couples living in the cities who had kids between the age of 2 to 5 years.

India is where parents are very concerned about their child’s health and nutrition right from birth. Nestle kept this in mind and decided to portray this care through its campaign. 

The brand portrayed how Indian mothers worry about their kids’ proper nourishment.

The brand came up with a new product, Caregrow, which controls a child’s hunger and offers all the essential nutrients for enhancing the child’s immunity and overall development.

4. Celebrate the Breakers- KitKat campaign

Across the world, people consume around 12 billion KitKat chocolates every year.

It is one of Nestle’s most famous chocolate products available in India. The company also released “KitKat Senses, a premium “slow-whipped” chocolate.

Nestle sought to influence Instagram to support its “Celebrate the Breakers” campaign by raising awareness and message association among enthusiastic 15- to 34-year-old Instagram followers.

Nestle came up with a new worldwide advertising campaign that takes a different approach altogether with a famous slogan, “Enjoy a break, enjoy a KitKat.”

“Celebrate the Breakers” was a new idea that identified the different forms of breaks that generally “breakers” take.

The animated movies showed KitKat chocolates are the best for enjoying a break in life.

Instagram was the appropriate platform for Nestle to showcase this idea graphically.

The brand posted a series of pictures with the hashtag “# mybreak over seven weeks ,” showing how people enjoy different types of breaks, like sleeping at their workplace, enjoying a party, or listening to their favorite music.

The images of KitKat match efficiently with its customers, as Instagram is a place where people share their daily moments and experiences.

Future Plans of Nestle

Nestle planned to invest Rs. 5,000 crores in India in the coming 3 ½ years, as per Mark Schneider, the company’s CEO.

The FMCG company, which has nearly 2,000 brands across the globe, believes that this initiative will help Nestle to improve its core business in India and enjoy new growth opportunities.

It marks the brand’s most significant investment in India since the year it started manufacturing.

Nestle is renowned in food, nutrition, health, and wellness.

Its competitive strategies mainly focus on overseas direct investment in ready-to-eat, dairy, and other food businesses.

Though there is rising competition, Nestle has remained on top for a long.

It maintains its dominance by balancing sales between high-risk and low-risk nations.

Over the years, Nestle has proven itself as a leader in the food and beverage industry with product innovation and innovative marketing strategies.

It creates campaigns that are memorable, relatable, and share-worthy.

As it is moving toward developing a solid presence in the future, digital marketing will play an essential role in the future growth of Nestle.

As Nestle continues to follow its values, mission, vision, and purpose, it will continue to grow. 

marketing case study of nestle

Streamlyn Academy is a digital marketing institute that delivers Internet Marketing & Programmatic Advertising courses to industry executives, entrepreneurs, and recent graduates.

  • Digital marketing courses in Bangalore
  • #34, Koramangala 4th Block, Near Sony World Junction 80ft Road, AVS Layout, 20th L Cross Road Bengaluru, Karnataka 560034
  • +(91)-9036276981 , +(91)-9883790299

Quick Links

  • Our Courses
  • Certifications
  • Corporate Training
  • Hire From Us
  • Write for Us

Information

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Cookie Policy

Streamlyn Media

Google Publishing Partner

  • © Copyright 2015-2024 Streamlyn Academy | All rights reserved

marketing case study of nestle

Your details have been submitted successfully.

Our team will get back to you shortly., we have received your message., someone from our team will contact you soon., thank you for enquiring about our course., our student counsellor will connect with you shortly., our academic counselor will contact you to schedule a demo as per your convenient time, for downloading our free digital marketing guide, we have sent the guide to the mail id provided. please check..

Logo

How Nestlé Became The World's Largest Food Company

Table of contents.

Let’s trace the origins of Nestlé and its exceptional legacy of 150+ years that have led it to become a company with:

  • Market cap of $326.07 Billion as of Feb 9, 2023
  • Over 2000 brands worldwide
  • Monumental presence in 186 countries
  • A workforce of nearly 276,000 employees
  • Revenue of CHF 87.1 billion in 2021
  • 354 factories in 79 countries

Grab a Kit Kat or sit back with a cup of freshly brewed Nescafe, and let’s go back to 1866 , the year it all began.

{{cta('9735e049-2589-4b76-a9f6-feef96788fe5')}}

A Merger Lays The Foundation Of Nestlé’s Success

The story of Nestlé begins with Henri Nestlé of Vevey, a namesake of the company, and unsurprisingly, its founder. But it is also linked with two brothers, Charles and George Page, who were located far away in America at the time.

While the world of business was not a global village back then, perhaps it was fate, the love for milk, or sheer successful marketing strategy that brought the businesses of the two together to form the Nestlé we see today.

The creation of Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company

Charles Page was a U.S. consul who visited Switzerland and became intrigued by its Swiss cows and beautiful meadows. The country had been a primary milk production center since the 19th century due to its available resources of high-quality cows and attracted people with a passion for milk production from far and wide. 

Page was one such individual with a different aspiration: he wanted to create condensed milk. Easy to store and transport, condensed milk, according to him, was the next big thing in the entrepreneurial world. 

Therefore, with his brother George Page, he created the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company and opened the doors of the first-ever condensed milk factory in Switzerland, in the town of Cham, in 1866.

Henri experiments

Meanwhile, Henri Nestlé was a local pharmacist in Vevey who loved experimenting with anything and everything he could get his hands on. This meant creating incredible food fusions was right up his alley.

marketing case study of nestle

During the 1860s, infant mortality rates remained a grave problem in Switzerland. As a man with 13 siblings, Henri understood the woes of infants. Yet, the turning point came when he saw that premature babies faced difficulty in consuming breast milk.

Invoking his creativity, he combined available resources and his scientific knowledge to produce “ Farine Lactee ” in 1867, an infant formula made with cow’s milk, wheat flour, and sugar.

marketing case study of nestle

This proved to be a breakthrough, and soon, sales increased to 1000+ cans in 1871 and more than 2000 in 1873. Two years later, Nestlé’s products could be found worldwide, including but not limited to Indonesia, Egypt, and the U.S.

As sales increased exponentially, Henri gave his company a logo symbolizing his family name that meant “Little Nest”. The logo, therefore, contained a bird’s nest.

marketing case study of nestle

Today, the logo has been simplified but remains its original idea and charm as an ode to the founder.

A rivalry emerges

In 1875, Henri retired, and the company was led forth by three local businessmen in Vevey. However, simultaneously, the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company expanded to newer markets in Europe, and upon discovering Nestlé’s infant formula and its success, it developed a rival product and floated it into the market.

To Nestlé, this was nothing less than a declaration of industry war, and soon after, Nestlé added a new product to its portfolio: a Farine Lactee condensed milk. Fierce competition developed, followed by price wars and predatory market strategies.

As both companies competed for a greater market share and ROI on their rival products, it did not come as a surprise when both began generating lower revenues and making losses.

The price war lasted roughly for about 30 years until the death of all three – Henri, George, and Charles.

In 1905, the current directors of the companies agreed to halt their rivalry and combine their businesses for greater market share, revenues, and expanded reach over the globe.

As a result, Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co. was founded – that eventually became Nestlé.

Nestle-Anglo-Swiss-Condensed-Milk-merger-1918

Certificate for 100 shares of the Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co., issued 1. November 1918

Key takeaway 1: leave emotion out of strategy

For many years, Henri and the Page brothers went head to head in the milk industry, expanding into European markets, creating substitute rival products, adopting predatory pricing strategies, and undercutting price benchmarks. 

All this only yielded the worst for both businesses in the form of reduced revenues, higher price elasticity of demand, and a confused clientele.

Their saving grace was the strategic decision of the directors to call a truce and join forces – shared winners over lone losers. With the main competition becoming the same company, the focus was brought back to improving operations and opting for practices the business could sustain. Resultantly, the only path now was onwards and upwards.

This means foresight, strategy, and impartial business sense take priority over emotional responses, especially in the business world.

World War I, Government Contracts, & Innovative Strategies

Most companies take a few years to establish themselves in their local markets, minimizing risks. Only once they are comfortably settled and have enough brand appeal and resources to expand do they risk entering the global market.

But Nestle is not like most companies, is it?

Henri Nestle had become a big player in the Western Europe Market, and Page Brothers were leading the way in Britain. Thus, the merger already allowed Nestle to be the go-to condensed milk brand.

From there, it was always going to spread itself and capture as much of the global share as it could, and so it did. Within a decade, this newly merged company had taken its operations around the world, establishing factories in the UK, Europe, the United States, and Asia.

An unexpected opportunity

WWI broke out in 1914, and the scale of disruption around the globe was huge.  Almost every industry was affected. Some thrived and grew, but many collapsed or barely survived.

Nestle also faced an initial period of hardship where it was difficult to maintain its supplies due to severe shortages, and maintaining a smooth distribution network in Europe was near impossible. Hence, most of their supplies ran out of catering to the needs of locals.

However, the war presented a unique opportunity. The demand for milk shot up, and consequently, governments around the world sought contracts with major milk producers and distributors.

Nestle acquired several of these contracts that enabled it to not only come out of the difficult situation it was in but also rapidly expand its operations. It developed most of its factories in the US, where supply and distribution were easier, and recovery began. In fact, by the end of the war, the company had over 40 factories in the world, nearly doubling Nestlé’s overall production.

Moving forward by embracing innovation

Of course, the circumstances around WWI were unusual and worked in favor of Nestle. But it wasn’t the only reason the firm grew at such a pace. Research and innovation had defined the companies that came together to form Nestle. Hence, the same qualities were inherited and ingrained in Nestle. At a time where global infrastructure was going through a phase of transformation, Nestle was at the forefront of it utilizing it and spreading it.

For instance, railways and steamships were the new business logistics, and they became the company’s ticket into established and untapped urban markets overseas. Print media became the main face of modern marketing. Nestle cleverly capitalized on it by projecting its brand through newspapers, magazines, and billboards. The adverts focused on what made the company stand out: quality, taste, nutrition, safety, and affordability – characteristics Nestle still proudly stands by.

marketing case study of nestle

All while these advancements were being embraced, Nestle didn’t lose sight of what they were truly about: their products. Hence, as far as production is concerned, they continued to introduce more efficient methods in their factories, expanding their capacity and boosting quality.

Key takeaway 2: growth follows the ambitious

Both World Wars were make-or-break events. From a decrease in demand to a disruption in supply, Nestle faced all sorts of challenges. But Nestle, even before it merged, was always looking for opportunities to grow, and the government contracts gained during the war were essentially the result of it. If Nestle didn’t have its operations worldwide, it would never have captured the governmental radar. It may have survived the shortage; it may not have.

These contracts allowed the company to grow, which worked perfectly with its innovative strategies, such as tapping urban markets and marketing using print media to enhance the brand appeal and create brand affinity. This highlights the importance of being proactive and always looking for potential opportunities, even in challenging times. 

World Wars & Expanding The Product Portfolio

1918 , the year WWI finally ended.

The fighting did stop, but the unstable economic situation the world was in couldn’t be fixed easily. Nestle’s government contracts were up, and it found itself amongst the many companies facing the force of the crisis. To add to their difficulties, consumers that had shifted to condensed milk during the war shifted back to fresh milk as supply resumed.

The company went into a loss for the first time in 1921 .

Timely response

At that point, sales were down, and production costs were high for Nestle. Its operations needed an overhaul to reach sustainability. For this purpose, Swiss banker Louis Dapples was handed the task of reorganizing the company.

Not only was he able to match production and sales, but the move also helped Nestle clear its outstanding debt. Thereafter, the company spent a good part of the decade staying afloat and focusing on sustaining its operations.

More than a milk company

First milk, and then condensed milk; despite having a global reach, Nestle hadn’t really made an effort to expand its product portfolio.

Perhaps, till the 1920s , it had never felt the need to. It had been growing at a rapid pace and adding several countries to its customer base. Now, as growth stagnated and consumer demand shifted to fresh milk, something different had to be done.

Thus, they made a series of acquisitions that opened their doors to new industries, the most notable of which was the Kohler Swiss Chocolate company in the mid-1920s . Consequently, chocolate became the second most important product of Nestle.

‍ Nestlé buys Switzerland's largest chocolate company Peter-Cailler-Kohler

marketing case study of nestle

Alongside chocolate, the company also introduced malted milk, a powdered beverage named Milo, and powdered buttermilk for small children.

marketing case study of nestle

Malted chocolate drink Milo launches in Australia

The Nescafe revolution

The chocolate business was going well for Nestle, but they were yet to launch the product that would change the company’s future forever.

In 1930 , the Brazilian Coffee Institute approached the company with a unique problem. Brazil had a huge surplus of coffee, but there was no real demand or use at the time. Nestle spent the next 8 years researching and experimenting with products to develop from this coffee.

While the Brazilians suggested coffee cubes, Nestle had a better idea instead.

Voila, in 1938 , Nestle launched “Nescafe” an instant soluble coffee solution, the first of its kind and one of the most popular Nestle products to date. This was later followed by Nestea, another incredibly popular product that continues to drive the tastes of many across the globe today.

marketing case study of nestle

Nestlé launches NESCAFÉ in Switzerland on 1 April 1938

The USA again becomes the helping hand

There was immense potential in Nescafe, but at the same time, Nestle began to experience the severe impacts of WWII even before it broke into a worldwide conflict. The company’s revenues nosedived from $20 million in 1938 to $6 million in 1939 .

Although Switzerland remained neutral in both world wars, the situation in Europe was highly volatile, and business could not be conducted normally. Again, Nestle looked towards America by shifting its base of operations to Connecticut, far away from the conflict.

Their previous experience during WWI had allowed the company to form healthy relationships with the states, which helped them settle in. Unfortunately, the USA could not stay away from the war for too long and joined the allies in 1941 .

For Nestle, it was a complete blessing; Nescafe became a staple food for the US military as it was easily preservable, and the taste has already become a hit. Hence, without having to spend a fortune on advertisements, the coffee product penetrated worldwide, and funnily, its first brand ambassadors were allied soldiers.

Nestle sent tons and tons of Nescafe to the frontlines and managed to turn around their sales completely. From making $100 million in 1938 to reaching up to $225 million in 1945 .

Key takeaway 3: diversify and innovate

The end of WWI and the economic depression brought by it made life difficult for almost every business, including Nestle. Plus, the fact that customers preferred fresh milk instead of condensed milk meant that Nestle found it difficult to sustain its business. 

Customers’ demands and preferences, as well as the market scenarios, can change drastically over time. Nestle learned that they needed to be flexible enough to adapt and bold enough to take risks. Otherwise, they will be left with no choice but to shut up shop. 

This is when the milk company gradually began expanding by introducing new products and exploring new markets. It, in turn, allowed the company to grow despite the difficult situation.

Hence, companies should never rest on their laurels and try to improve consistently, be it by innovating, branching out, and increasing the quality and quantity of products or services they offer.

Growth Through Acquisitions and Diversification

The end of the world war had set the perfect stage for Nestle to take its business to the next level. Sales were at an all-time high, Nescafe and Nestea were making waves, and through military and government supports, the company had opened up new markets for its products.

On top of it, the world did not go into a similar depression like WWI. Instead, it marked a period of stability and peace, one which firms everywhere looked to capitalize on. Likewise, Nestle did not waste any time in getting in on the action and making some very key and monumental moves. In fact, these post-war years are often termed as the most dynamic period in the company's history!

Seasoned Maggi Soups and Broadein Food Products

As the world recovered from the war, Nestle followed an aggressive acquisition policy acquiring multiple brands worldwide. The most significant name it added to its portfolio was fellow Swiss company, Maggi.

The journey for this soup and noodles company started somewhat around the same time as that of Henri Nestle. Its founder, Julius Maggi shared the same vision of serving nutritious yet convenient foods to the public.

After the war, in 1947 , Maggi went through a number of restructurings and changes in leadership. Resultantly, the best way for the company to move forward was to join hands with Nestle. Their established factories in numerous countries introduced the Maggi brand to the world, and it became a sensation. In fact, in many Asian regions, Maggi is synonymous with instant noodles.

The Magic of Maggi

marketing case study of nestle

Following Maggi’s acquisition, Nestle took over several other firms in the food industry, including:

  • 1960 : Crosse & Blackwell, a British can and preserved food manufacturer
  • 1963 : Findus, a Swedish frozen food company
  • 1971: American fruit juices company Libby
  • 1973: Stouffer, a frozen and prepared foods brand

With these moves, Nestle extended its product range and established a stronghold in the preserved foods industry.

Developing new & improving existing “convenience” products

While Nestle spread its wings by bringing other brands under its umbrella, it did not lose sight of the products it developed itself.

For instance, the Nescafe coffee, which had been a huge success during the war, continued its astonishing path upwards. From 1950 to 1959 , its sales almost tripled, and with the development of an anti-freeze version in 1966 , its sales quadrupled in the next decade.

Simultaneously, Nestle also worked on launching new products. In 1948 , it further embedded itself in American households with Nesquik, a chocolate powder that would instantly mix in cold milk. 

Owing to the product’s success, they even introduced the Nesquik Bunny to win over both adults and children.

During the same time, Nestle rebranded its infant cereals as Cerelac while launching an extensive range of canned foods under Maggi.

Diversifying beyond the food industry

By the 1970s , Nestle had well and truly occupied a dominant position in the food industry. It was now time to step out of the comfort zone and venture into new industries.

The big break came in 1974 when Nestle made a move for a Parisian hair care company, L'Oréal. Established in 1909 , this company had gone from making hair dyes to a full range of cosmetic care products. It has also formed a loyal customer base in France.

With big plans, Nestle offered the family owners of L'Oréal a 3% stake in Nestle in return for a 50% share. The offer was too attractive to refuse, and the two companies entered into a new partnership. This merger reaped multifold returns for both parties, and by the 1980s , the brand was the leader in its industry.

The cosmetic arena wasn’t the only one Nestle aimed to capture. There was an economic slowdown and general volatility between the French and Swiss markets. The price of cocoa and coffee went up more than three times. Nestle decided to take a risk and leap into waters it had never been in before.

In 1977 , it also became the owner of the American pharmaceutical company, Alcon. This, too, was a success with the brand operating in 75+ countries and being sold more than twice that number.

Merger to remember & the future of coffee

Nestle never looked to slow down despite its numerous acquisitions and diverse brand offerings.

In 1984 , it offered a mind-blowing $3 billion to buy out the food company, Carnation. Many believe this to be one of the largest acquisitions outside the oil industry – at least at the time. The scale of the deal was such that it took a year for it to be approved and finalized.

It wasn’t just being in the same industry that sparked Nestle’s interest; it was also the fact that Carnation had a diverse portfolio, including a profitable pet food brand, Friskies, and Contadino tomato products.

Nestle also added UK confectionery company Rowntree Mackintosh to its list of acquisitions in 1988 , giving it ownership of popular chocolates, Kitkat and Smarties. In the same year, it also included Buitoni-Perugina, a major Italian pasta and confectionery company to its mix.

marketing case study of nestle

Alongside the mergers, Nestle was also actively working on making a comeback with its coffee products. Thus, in 1986 , it rolled out Nespresso, a premium version of its coffee, different from the previous freeze-dried budget version. The idea behind it was simple: present a DIY system for any person who wanted to enjoy luxury coffee.

marketing case study of nestle

Key takeaway 4: seek opportunities in both new and existing industries

Many firms that plan to diversify their portfolios lose grip on their main industry. Nestle wasn’t one of them. Its initial strategy for growth post-WWII was to cement its hold in the food industry with a series of acquisitions and new product offerings. Then, it made its move in other industries while still improving on its basic offerings of food, coffee, and chocolate-related products.

Nestle grew exponentially by tactfully merging and acquiring companies it thought would add value to its brand. This paid off handsomely and turned Nestle into a force to be reckoned with. It highlights the need for brands to enhance their value offerings, using whatever means they have at their disposal, right from diversifying to collaborating with others.

International Force - Nestle's Global Strategy

With the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, markets in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as China opened up. Trade barriers disintegrated, liberalization picked up the pace, and economic markets around the globe started to integrate well.

This proved to be quite beneficial for Nestle. There were new diverse markets to expand to and favorable policies that encouraged them – not that they needed any second invitation. 

Onwards & upwards with tactful acquisitions

From the late 1990s to the late 2000s, Nestle went on an aggressive acquisition spree and acquired the following companies:

  • San Pellegrino group , the leading Italian mineral water business, in 1998 paved the way for Nestle to launch Nestle Pure Life and lead in Europe while making a way into developing countries worldwide.
  • Spillers Petfoods in 1998 enabled Nestle to cement its position as a key player in the pet food business around the globe and Europe in particular.
  • Ralston Purina , U.S.'s pet food business, in 2002 and merged with Nestlé Friskies Petcare, creating a market leader in the pet care industry, Nestlé Purina Petcare.
  • The U.S. ice cream business merged with Dreyer's in 2002, establishing Nestle as the leader in the U.S., the world's largest ice cream market. 
  • Movenpick Ice Cream in 2003 to complement Nestle's super-premium ice cream brands portfolio in North America and Italy.
  • Delta Ice Cream in 2005 as Nestle's realized that the ice cream business was a profitable opportunity and the company could make inroad in the growing Greek and Balkans ice cream market.
  • Chef America Inc in 2002 as Nestle continued with its horizontal integration and expanded into the frozen foods market, which was growing.
  • Jenny Craig and Uncle Toby's in 2006 as Nestle wanted to stay true to its commitment to nutrition, health, and wellness and reinforce its presence in the U.S., the world's largest nutrition and weight management market.
  • Medical Nutrition division of Novartis Pharmaceutical in 2007 as it was complementary to Nestle's Healthcare Nutrition Business and enhanced Nestle's capabilities to cater to the needs of its customers with special nutritional requirements.
  • Henniez in 2007 to augment its position in the competitive Swiss bottled water market, leveraging the solid industrial capacity and distribution network of the company.
  • Gerber , the iconic U.S. baby food brand, in 2007 became the number 1 player in the U.S., the world's largest baby food market, transforming Nestle Nutrition into a global leader.

A number of other partnerships were also made, such as the one with Belgian chocolatier Pierre Marcolini , helping Nestle augment its position in the food and nutrition industry while allowing it to diversify in health, wellness, and beauty.

Now, why did Nestle do that?

The answer is to remain attuned to the changing consumer tastes and remains ahead in a market that never stays still.

Sure, continuous innovation is essential, but Nestle didn't just rely on that and continued to acquire businesses and benefit from synergies to become the undisputed leader in the business world.

All this while, Nestle has remained true to its roots and continued to delight its customers worldwide.

Realizing that with expanding its global footprint, there was bound to be an array of issues that it needed to deal with effectively, Nestle launched a Group-wide initiative called GLOBE (Global Business Excellence) .

The primary purpose behind this initiative was to harmonize and simplify business processes and empower Nestle to make the most of its competitive advantage while alleviating the risks and drawbacks.

Key takeaway 5: growth & diversification through acquisition

From San Pellegrino in 1997 to Henniez and Gerber in 2007, Nestle's relentless strategy to acquire an array of businesses in different markets, ranging from pet care and baby food to ice cream and bottled water, strengthened its overall position and breathed new life into the company.

Nestle not only wanted to expand to new product lines but also become the market leader in all of them, in different parts of the world. The fastest and most effective way to do just that was through strategic acquisitions. 

In an ever-evolving market, staying still or focusing solely on a select few activities is risky for large businesses. The key, at times, to grow is to embrace an external growth strategy by acquisitions in different industries with distinctive lines of business.

Commitment To Innovation

marketing case study of nestle

Nestle stays firmly committed to its goals of helping people, families, and pets around the globe live happier and healthier lives. From meeting the ever-evolving needs of the modern consumer to providing safe and premium-quality of food on-demand, Nestle does it all.

However, it understands that dramatic shifts are happening in the market with consumer demands dynamically changing, new entrants offering endless choices, and people living and shopping in ways never seen before.

Winning in such an environment requires disruption and a hybrid-growth model. No one understands that better than Nestle, and here’s how it is driving value from its base portfolio while embracing new ventures to scale up.

Nestle: 150-year-old start-up innovating from within

Unlike other business entities that outsource the innovation part and fail to prepare for the future, Nestle has strategically decided to combine its scale and capabilities with the mentality and speed of a start-up.

InGenius , Nestlé's employee innovation accelerator, is the ultimate platform that encourages intrapreneurship within the company. Internal start-ups within the company are launched , and employees are encouraged to think big and creatively.

Moreover, Nestle’s global R&D accelerator program brings together scientists, students, and employees, empowering them to come up with new innovative products.

Lean designs, fast prototyping, quick testing, continuous hustling, and room for big risks make the incubator program a success. The goal of the internal start-ups is to help promptly develop new product lines from scratch within 9 months, paving the way for the future of food.

What’s more is that employees are given challenges to solve, ranging from improving the quality of food to helping achieve the net-zero target. On top of this, Nestle also helps young social entrepreneurs, outside its fold, by offering them holistic support, mentorship, and access to its R&D and innovation experts by partnering up with Ashoka – an organization that identifies and supports social entrepreneurs.

Rethinking & reinventing

To better tap into today’s consumer trends, Nestle goes the extra mile to revive the brands with modern innovation.

It does this by introducing new varieties of products and adding unique flavors to attract new customers and retain existing ones. For instance, in 2017 alone, Nestle launched 1000 new products. Yes, that’s right!

From bringing in new flavors of juices and milk to launching frozen organic meals and non-dairy desserts, among others, it tries its best to exceed its customers’ expectations.

Enhancing capabilities

Fueling growth through innovation and improving operational efficiency are two key components of Nestle’s value creation model.

While innovation is considered everyone’s job at Nestle , increasing operational efficiency is also stressed.

Each and every aspect of the business, be it hiring people, using data analytics to make decisions based on logic, optimizing supply chains, or deploying manufacturing solutions, is reviewed and revamped to increase efficiency and deliver desired business outcomes.

Future of food

Nestle, together with Swiss academic and industrial partners such as ETH Zurich, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and companies Bühler and Givaudan, announced a joint research program, Future of Food , that will help develop nutritious, tasty, sustainable, and trendy food and beverage products.

It's just another example of Nestle leveraging innovation and partnerships to move forward. Plus, it highlights Nestle’s commitment to providing healthy food while doing right by the environment.

The future is healthy, sustainable, and personalized

Nestle is actively working on providing healthier diets to people worldwide. It's even reformulating its popular products such as Kit Kat and Maggi, among others, to reduce the sugar, salt, and saturated fat in them while also transitioning its brands towards organic.

In addition to this, it is actively working towards ensuring its supply chains have zero environmental impact and reducing its carbon footprint by changing its plastic packaging.

Nestle has announced that it will phase out all packaging that’s not recyclable by 2025 and ensure the packaging it uses is eco-friendly.

Last but not least, Nestle, in its quest to stand out and scale, is emphasizing the need to please customers in every way possible. It aims to do that by delivering customers exactly what they want, how they want it, and in the taste, and shape they want it.

Meeting the needs of consumers on an individual level, according to Nestle will make all the difference. Hence, it is investing in it. Nestle acquired a start-up in UK, Tails.com, which provides tailored diets to dogs on a monthly basis based on age, breed, and weight among other factors.

Key takeaway 6: innovate, innovate, and innovate

Ascending to the top is one thing, but remaining at the top is the real challenge. Nestle’s strategy of launching incubators, experimenting with products, enhancing capabilities, and thinking ahead to create a new future highlights the importance the company places on innovation.

Nestle never hesitates to be bold and go out of its way to innovate to accelerate its growth and achieve scale. It realizes the value that can be derived from innovation and hence, leaves no stone unturned in thinking out of the box and putting its money where its mouth is.  More than anything else, this fundamental strategy has helped the company dominate and remain a customer favorite.

Nestle In The New Normal

Nestle: the multi-national company that adapts

A vital company in the challenging times of Covid-19, Nestle made many changes in its processing and manufacturing processes to continue supplying good food. As supply chain challenges intensified, Nestle focused its efforts on streamlining the supply chain end-to-end, from sourcing supplies to logistics. 

Nestle had 8.1% organic growth in the first half of its fiscal year 2022.

Nestle: the best employer

Making the health and safety of its employees a priority, Nestle implemented enhanced safety measures on and off its premises, including factories, distribution centers, labs, and offices.

Nestle responded to Covid-19 effectively and made sure its employees are protected and motivated by:

  • Allowing working from home 
  • Restricting travel and exposure to the virus
  • Introducing the best hygiene practices
  • Implementing effective social distancing measures
  • Giving a special 14-day COVID-19 leave
  • Offering financial support in the form of loans

Nestle: the company that gives back to the community

Nestle extended a helping hand to those in need in the crisis. It provided holistic support to medical institutions, food banks, food delivery organizations, and relief organizations in the local communities who are on the frontline. 

Not only did Nestle donate essentials such as food and bottled water but also money. Nestle joined forced with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and donated  CHF 10 million . Plus, in order to speed up the vaccination and ensure fair distribution of vaccines, it partnered up with COVAX and donated  CHF 2 million. 

Key takeaway 7: stay resilient 

There’s no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the global markets and adversely impacted Nestle in ways more than one. However, Nestle managed to survive and thrive by continuously adapting, being proactive, and striving to do right by the people and the communities it served, as evident from its increased market share and growth during the period.

Nestle in a nutshell

Nestle products are recognized, consumed, and valued in all corners of the world. It is a company that has ingrained itself in the day-to-day life of people and continues to raise the bar higher. From innovation, people management, and a long-term strategic approach to the quality of products and services, social responsibility, and competitiveness, Nestle ticks all the boxes.

Here are the four main lessons derived from the growth of Nestle from a relatively small Swiss-based company established in 1866 to one of the most successful, admired, and profitable multinational companies in the world:

Key takeaway 1: globalize but also localize

A company as big as Nestle, which operates in almost all countries worldwide, has achieved success by localizing its offerings and catering to the needs of each individual market.

Sure, it could have made generalized global strategies and campaigns, but it took the difficult path by localizing everything from sourcing, product planning, production, marketing, and even its brand strategy.

It highlights the importance of being customer-centric regardless of who you are as a company and where you operate.

Key takeaway 2: innovate – change is an opportunity

Whether it be changing consumer demands, the evolving marketplace, or crisis situations, Nestle has never stopped innovating. Sure, it has paid the price of a few campaigns gone wrong, but one thing that it has been relentless at is continuing to strive to be a step ahead.

Nestle does it all, from committing to sustainability to coming up with new creative ways of providing more value to all stakeholders. It serves as a lesson for brands in this modern digital age. You can only survive and succeed if you innovate. Period.

Key takeaway 3: grow through acquisitions

Nestle has over 2000 brands. Yes, that’s right. Nestle has rapidly grown, gained a competitive advantage, increased its market share, achieved synergies, and enhanced efficiency in its business by acquiring companies.

It actively looks for potential acquisition opportunities and doesn’t hesitate to take risks. This showcases that if you want to grow as a company, you need to broaden your horizons and partner up with others. Foresight, strategic decisions, and impartial business sense are critical - now more than ever. 

The external growth strategy has worked wonders for Nestle by allowing it to expand into new industries and distinctive production lines - all of which have contributed immensely to its growth over the years. Simply put, if you can’t beat them, just join them, or well, in Nestle’s case, buy them.

Key takeaway 4: importance of brand & values

As a company, your values are bigger than your revenue. If you truly focus on and stick to your values, you can attract consumers and scale your company. Nestle has done just that by not only saying but becoming the “Good food, Good Life” company.

It firmly abides by its core principles of “ Unlocking the power of food to enhance the quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come .”

Every decision that is made, every product that is launched, every customer that is served, is served to shape a better and healthier world. No wonder Nestle has become a global icon from a local favorite.

Table of Contents

Learnings from nestle marketing strategies , 10 key takeaways from the nestle marketing strategy.

10 Key Takeaways From the Nestle Marketing Strategy

The mother bird feeds its two young nestlings, and below comes the 'Good Food, Good Life' slogan. With a US $303 billion value, the leading health, nutrition, and wellness company– Nestle, stands out in the market with strong customer loyalty. It is the world's 22nd most valuable company by market cap. The well-crafted and consistently implemented Nestle marketing strategy has helped the brand cater to the needs of its consumers and their families worldwide, helping them live healthier lifestyles. Learn the Nestle marketing strategy and carve a distinguished presence in the market.

Discover 10 important marketing tactics by exploring the Nestle marketing strategy. 

1. Appeal to Every Consumer with Multiple Price Strategies 

With an aim to be affordable for the masses, the Nestle marketing strategy incorporates multiple pricing tactics. 

Nestle_Marketing_Strategy_1

Nestle KitKat Sizes with Different Prices

If you go through any of Nestle's products, say KitKat or Maggie, you will realize that they offer several packaging options. Thus, targeting different income groups, Nestle appeals to all. Its mini packs are loved by people living alone and those with a low income. Nestle's statistics reveal that a chunk of its revenues comes from its beverages—particularly premium Nescafe.

Key Takeaway: Opt for a multiple-price strategy to capture a wider audience and be available for all. With set market prices, you generate high sales with low earning margins. However, with premium products, you get high returns, but the low sales risk stays attached. Strike a balance between value-based and competitive pricing strategies to stay afloat.

Become a Certified Digital Marketer Today

Become a Certified Digital Marketer Today

2. Having a Multifarious Portfolio Lowers Risk 

Thriving the tough competition is a challenge, especially in the FMCG industry. Nestle has been wisely using product diversification to survive with successful results.

Nestle_Marketing_Strategy_2

Nestle Products

For instance, on the detection of a harmful ingredient, Maggie was banned in India. Nestle chose to go for a diversification spree; they revamped Maggie and added several more products to its portfolio. The company smartly introduces horizontal product diversification whenever it hits a wall. 

Nestle_Marketing_Strategy_3

Maggi Products

From coffee to milkshakes to other beverages, breakfast cereals, seasonings, infant foods, soups, chocolates, refrigerated foods, and pet foods, Nestle offers a wide range of products. 

Key Takeaway: With a diverse portfolio, you can lower risks and enhance revenues. 

3. Product Mix Strategy Attracts Cost-Conscious Prospects

Nestle benefits from its large product line by employing a product mix strategy . It often releases buy-one-get-one price promotions, special offers, discounts, deals, and giveaways. 

Bundle deals are perfect for introducing a product or marketing unpopular items. The Nestle marketing strategy adopts bundle deals from time to time, often during festive seasons.

Key Takeaway: A product mix strategy allows you to increase the visibility of your low-growth products and make the premium ones appear affordable. It also helps you sell low-demand stock.

4. Set Consistent Goals 

With a clear vision, Nestle has been able to create a special space for itself for over 150+ years. The company doesn’t deviate from its original mission– Good Food, Food Life. Back in the 19th century, when Henri Nestlé studied the rise in infant deaths, he introduced nutrition-boosting baby formula. 

When women entered the workplace, Nestle launched instant meals. Even today, the brand targets everyday kitchen challenges and strives to improve the quality of life. 

Key Takeaways: A strong commitment to goals gives you a competitive advantage in the market. Being consistent in your message while solving the grievances of the people can help you gain brand loyalty.  

5. Try Product-Driven Advertising When You Have a Large Product Line

Although many brands prefer a customer-centric strategy, the Nestle marketing strategy is largely product-based as it has an extensive product line. 

For instance, Nestle’s KitKat advertisements are not limited to any age group. The brand presents the product as a light snack and rarely uses demographics to personalize the advertisements.

Key Takeaways: Brands belonging to the FMCG industry must opt for product-driven advertising to increase the visibility of their diverse product line.

Become a Certified Marketing Expert in 8 Months

Become a Certified Marketing Expert in 8 Months

6. Localize Your Products 

Nestle efficiently adapts its products to the local market. For instance, in Japan, the company markets coffee-flavored candies. Since Japan is traditionally a tea-drinking nation, Nestle introduced these candies so that kids could develop a taste for coffee. Later it introduced Nescafe and KitKat, and they were widely accepted. Today, Japan has 300+ KitKat flavors. 

Nestle also localizes its products for Indians by introducing Maggi Atta Noodles, Maggi noodles without garlic and onion, and the Maggi Special Masala. 

Nestle_Marketing_Strategy_4

Nestle Localized Products

Key Takeaways: Localization is a crucial part of business strategy that ensures the satisfaction of a wider customer base. 

7. Maintain Brand Equity With Consistent Brand Image

The more recognizable the name of a brand, the higher your brand value. Nestle has exceptionally strong brand equity as it focuses on its product quality and consistent brand image in its packaging.

The color red has been associated with KitKat for ages. Although the company once tried to change the color to blue in the 1990s, it didn’t work. They changed it to the classic red. 

Key Takeaways: Brand equity helps you earn customer loyalty and creates your unique identity, giving you a competitive advantage.

8. Co-Branding Comes With Profit

Haven’t you come across Android KitKat and Nespresso Capsules? The Nestle marketing strategy also incorporates co-branding as and when needed.

Nestle collaborated with Google and launched an operating system named Android KitKat. The brand was facing a pet product scandal, and this move overshadowed the crisis.

Recently, Nestle joined hands with Starbucks and entered the new product development phase. Together they launched Starbucks Nespresso Capsules.

Key Takeaways: If your brand reaches a stagnant position, hunt for companies that complement your products and opt for co-branding promotions. It is an excellent strategy to broaden your reach. 

9. Promote Sustainability To Create a Mark 

The Nestle marketing strategy constitutes special efforts for sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint.

Recently, Nestle announced its aim to use food-grade recycled plastics. It also plans to invest over 700 million in Nescafe’s sustainable coffee production. It took the initiative to fight against deforestation.

Nestle_Marketing_Strategy_5

Nestle Climate Change Efforts

Thus, consistent efforts have made Nestle a globally recognized sustainable brand. It was recognized by UN Global Compact for its efforts.  

Key Takeaways: Sustainability imprints a positive impact on your brand. The efforts help you take on a fair share of ethical responsibility while subtly shifting environment-conscious people’s minds toward your brand.

10. Digital Marketing is a World of Success

Nestle posts quality content on each of its brands’ YouTube channels. It has informative ‘how-to’ videos, cooking tips, product insights, and more.  

Its ‘Meri Maggi’ page gained up to 571,000 subscribers. The Nestle marketing strategy relies heavily on video content. It also has other established avenues for sharing information, such as the search engine optimized Nestle child nutrition website.

It serves as a comprehensive guide on nutrition for mothers. It also features a community aspect in addition to the expert advice section. 

Nestle_Marketing_Strategy_6

Nestle Child Nutrition Website Content

Nestle also employs consistent efforts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It runs campaigns and posts eye-catching images and videos while also benefiting from the influencer community.

Key Takeaways: Leverage the power of digital platforms for marketing your business. It is a great way to engage your customers and help them beyond selling products.

The Nestle marketing strategy has enough in store for startups and established brands to learn from. Want to learn more? Enroll in our Digital Marketing Program and secure exciting digital marketing jobs in top tech companies.

Our Digital Marketing Courses Duration And Fees

Digital Marketing Courses typically range from a few weeks to several months, with fees varying based on program and institution.

Program NameDurationFees

Cohort Starts:

8 Months€ 1,699

Cohort Starts:

8 Months€ 999

Recommended Reads

Digital Marketing Career Guide: A Playbook to Becoming a Digital Marketing Specialist

A Case Study on Netflix Marketing Strategy

12 Powerful Instagram Marketing Strategies To Follow in 2021

Introductory Digital Marketing Guide

A Case Study on Apple Marketing Strategy

What is Digital Marketing and How Does It Work?

Get Affiliated Certifications with Live Class programs

Imt ghaziabad digital marketing program.

  • Digital Marketing certificate from IMT Ghaziabad
  • IMT Ghaziabad Associate Alumni status

IIIT Tiruchirappalli

Post Graduate Program in Digital Marketing & Analytics

  • Post Graduate Program Certificate and Alumni Association membership from IIIT Tiruchirappalli
  • Harvard Business Case studies, Capstone from 5 domains and 25+ hands-on course end projects
  • PMP, PMI, PMBOK, CAPM, PgMP, PfMP, ACP, PBA, RMP, SP, and OPM3 are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
  • All agencies in USA
  • Los Angeles
  • San Francisco
  • Philadelphia
  • All services in USA
  • AI Marketing
  • Digital Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • All industries in USA
  • Travel & Tourism
  • Real Estate
  • Fashion & Retail
  • Media & Entertainment
  • Food & Beverage
  • Agency of the Month

marketing case study of nestle

  • All agencies in the UK
  • Bournemouth
  • All services in the UK
  • All industries in the UK

marketing case study of nestle

  • All agencies in Canada
  • All services in Canada
  • Influencer Marketing
  • All industries in Canada
  • Travel Tourism

massive-digital-agency

  • All agencies in Australia
  • All services in Australia
  • PPC Marketing
  • All industries in Australia
  • Beauty & Cosmetics
  • Hospitality

marketing case study of nestle

  • All agencies in Europe
  • All services in Europe
  • Web Development
  • All industries in Europe
  • IT & Technology

marketing case study of nestle

  • All agencies in Asia
  • All services in Asia
  • B2B Marketing
  • All industries in Asia

digital-business-lab

  • Agency News
  • Marketing Resources
  • Industry News

crowd-gazes-into-the-future-top-marketing-predictions-for-2024

  • Digital Ad Campaigns
  • Case Studies
  • Social Media Campaigns

marketing case study of nestle

  • Marketing Blog
  • Advertising
  • Ecommerce Marketing

marketing case study of nestle

  • Industrial Blog
  • Fashion Marketing
  • Sports Marketing
  • Luxury Marketing
  • Legal Marketing
  • Healthcare Marketing

pride-month-marketing-strategies-digital-campaign-examples

  • Digital Marketing Tools
  • Marketing Reporting Tools
  • Digital Marketing Analytics Tools
  • Email Marketing Tools
  • Other Tools
  • Social Media Management Tools
  • Social Media Marketing Tools
  • Social Media Analytics Tools
  • Social Media Monitoring Tools
  • Influencer Marketing Platforms
  • Web Design Tools
  • Landing Page Builders
  • UI / UX Design Tools
  • Website Builder Software
  • Front End Development Tools
  • Team Management Softw...
  • Project Management Tools
  • Agency Management Software
  • Productivity Management Software
  • Time Tracking Tools
  • Sales Tools
  • Sales Automation Tools
  • Product Feed Management Tools
  • Sales Enablement Tools
  • AI Design Tools
  • AI Content Tools
  • AI Analytics Tools
  • AI Marketing Tools
  • Performance & Software
  • Website Optimization Tools
  • Content Delivery Network Tools
  • Cybersecurity Software
  • Web Accessibility Tools

Market your SaaS Tools and reach digital agencies & marketing professionals worldwide.

  • All Categories in USA
  • Artificial Intelligence Events
  • Design & Development Events
  • Digital Marketing Conferences
  • Social Media Events

uk-content-awards-2024

UK Content Awards 2024

2024-july-ecommerce-forum

Ecommerce Forum 2024

Submit your exclusive marketing event today.

Submit your event to reach a wider audience! Whether it's digital marketing, AI, or any related theme, we would love to help spread the word out!

  • All Categories in UK
  • All Categories in Canada
  • All Categories in Australia
  • All Categories in Europe
  • All Categories in Asia

successful-marketing-strategies-of-nestle-for-your-inspiration

Successful Marketing Strategies of Nestle (With Campaign Examples)

Nestle’s marketing strategy complements its tagline, “Good Food, Good Life,” with campaigns that convert. 

From Nestle’s social media strategy to its in-store promotional banners, the brand’s marketing strategy is a testament to Nestle’s mission of harnessing the power of food to raise people’s standard of living. 

Nestle holds a 34.9 percent regional share of worldwide sales. Understanding Nestle’s branding strategy, therefore, is no less than a masterclass on consumer engagement and brand loyalty. 

So, what makes Nestle the brand that it is today? 

Let’s take a nose-dive into the marketing mix strategy of Nestle to begin with.

Nestle’s Marketing Mix Strategy

We’ll look closely at Nestle’s marketing strategy through campaigns to understand what works for the brand and why. 

However, learning about the 4Ps of Nestle’s marketing mix is a mandatory prior step. It explains its product, place, promotion, and pricing strategy, which will give you an overview.

Let’s go through each marketing mix strategy of Nestle one by one:

Nestle’s Product Strategy

When we think of Nestle, it’s almost impossible to pinpoint a specific product that stands out because the brand has so much to offer!  

Yes, Nescafe and Maggie collectively pop up in our heads, but the brand offers products from over 8,000 categories . (What!)

The primary product categories include: 

  • Packaged meals,
  • Cooking aids,
  • Milk-based products, cereals, baby food,
  • Coffee (Nescafe),
  • Liquid and powdered products such as coffee powder, milk powder, etc. 

Diversity is the word that explains Nestle’s product strategy, and diverse products for diverse audiences. Basically, Nestle’s marketing mix and its product variety have everything—well, for everyone! Plus, the brand doesn’t shy away from acquiring sectors that align with its core values, making Nestle’s acquisition strategy a core driver of its growth. 

Nestle’s Pricing Strategy

Following the cost-based product strategy, Nestle eventually paved its way to bundle pricing, which is a key player in Nestle’s marketing mix.

The brand discovered customers don’t buy their groceries daily but prefer buying in bulk, resulting in a bundle pricing strategy for products such as Maggie. 

Two different approaches are taken in Nestle’s pricing strategy: 

  • It offers price discounts and promotions for fast-moving consumer goods. 
  • It keeps the price high for premium products such as gourmet chocolates to keep its brand image intact. 

The pricing strategy of Nestle increases consumer friendliness while maintaining a solid brand image.

Nestle’s Place Strategy

Simply put, Nestle ensures each consumer gets the product when they enter a store. The brand makes this possible by spreading its presence in over 187 countries.

Apart from a global presence and leveraging a vast network of subsidiaries and distributors, Nestle,

  • Focuses on optimizing its supply chain to reduce costs and enhance product delivery times,
  • Has a designated distribution channel for medical nutrition or pet care products,
  • Adheres to manufacturing policies that fulfill food safety, quality standards, and regulations,
  • Cares about zero waste.

So, how does Nestle make sure that a KitKat in Japan tastes just right for the local crowd, or that a bowl of Maggi noodles hits the spot in India? Well, it’s all about Nestle’s localization strategy. They always integrate their products into different cultures in a way the locals love. They dive deep into local cultures, work hand-in-hand with the community, and even source locally to make sure everything from the taste to the packaging feels like it’s made just for you.

Nestle’s Promotion Strategy

Like any other FMCG brand, Nestle persuades its customers to buy their products. However, instead of only offering discount coupons and offers, Nestle’s promotion strategies focus on emotional connections, health, and quality of lifestyle.

  • Nestle leaves no stone untouched when advertising on multiple platforms, including social media, television, print, and websites.
  • The brand posts valuable content on nutrition, lifestyle, recipes, etc., to educate its customers. 
  • It collaborates with chefs and nutritionists to promote its products. 
  • It encourages impulse purchases with eye-catching in-store displays.  

Some of its best promotional strategy examples are those of Maggi and Kitkat. Consumers know that Maggi is that “made in two minutes” snack, while “Have a break, Have a KitKat!” is a tagline that stays with them.

With a perfect blend of online and offline marketing, Nestle’s advertising strategy makes it challenging for consumers to unsee its products! 

Now that all the P’s and the marketing mix of Nestle are done, it’s time to take a step further!

Digital Marketing Strategies of Nestle Explained with Campaigns

Nestle’s digital marketing strategy starts and ends with people. All their campaigns have an authentic connection with their audience. Looking closely at all its marketing campaigns, we find that they bring people together and sell products through them.

How exactly does it manage to do so? Let’s find out through diving deep into Nestle’s marketing world! 

Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing – “Generation Regeneration” Campaign

This marketing campaign by Nestle focuses on the two P’s: people and planet. At the heart of Nestle’s strategy is its commitment to sustainability and ethical sourcing, making the “Generation Regeneration” campaign a prime example of how the company integrates these values into its marketing efforts.

The campaign “Generation Regeneration” embodies Nestle’s firm belief in restoring our planet’s resources, making this campaign a transformative change. While Nestle’s Nescafe holds a special place in the hearts of its consumers, it leaves an even more solid mark in the digital landscape for implementing sustainable practices to grow coffee. 

Nestle’s “Generation Regeneration” Campaign 

“We are generation regeneration. And so are you!”

The brand launched a video in 2020 with this message as a part of the marketing strategy of Nestle, of course. The video has people of varying ages, ethnicities, professions, and demographics proudly pronouncing that they’re all part of a generation that believes in regenerating.

Intending to renew, restore, and protect our environment, it focuses on improving farmers’ livelihoods, eventually enhancing the well-being of communities and consumers. Through the Nestle plan for farmers, 

  • Nestle supports farmers by co-investing with them in terms of loans for equipment. 
  • It applies state-of-the-art technology to develop higher-yielding coffee with minimal environmental impact. 
  • It pays premiums for raw materials produced during regenerative agriculture practices.  

The campaign, or rather, a movement, isn’t just words. Aiming to implement regenerative practices spread over half a decade, Nestle works closely with 30 dairy farms in 12 countries to enforce zero greenhouse emissions. 

Nestle’s website has articles on regenerative system implementations and how they help communities and the environment.

Nestle’s marketing strategy

The campaign recently earned the first spot in the Coffee Barometer’s 2023 Coffee Brew Index for sustainable coffee! 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nestlé (@nestle)

A campaign such as this works since it sparked regenerative agriculture across the brand’s supply chain, eventually enhancing their consumers’ health! This reflects Nestle’s digital marketing strategy of leveraging environmental responsibility to foster deeper connections with consumers.

You can reach out to reputed FMCG marketing companies if you want to devise such a memorable campaign! 

Wellness and Nutrition Promotion – “Healthy Kids” Campaign

marketing case study of nestle

With yet another fun and creative social media campaign, Nestle launched “Healthier Kids” with the intent to ensure healthy eating habits from a young age. This initiative is part of Nestle’s strategy to promote wellness and nutrition, illustrating the company’s dedication to public health as a cornerstone of its marketing approach.

The campaign supports parents and caregivers to inspire children aged 3 to 12 to live healthier lives. How? 

Well, spewing advice about healthy eating habits is one thing, and becoming a partner and a mentor throughout the journey is another. Nestle chooses to be the latter for parents. Under this campaign, the brand aims to help 50 million children lead healthier lives by 2030.

The brand already follows regenerative practices for healthier product development; however, it urges equal efforts from parents to raise healthy kids through this campaign.  

What all comes under the campaign? 

  • Nutrition education with school programs, 
  • Everyday tips and healthy recipes,  
  • Lessons and worksheets, 
  • Educational videos, 

To foster health and nutrition, any FMCG brand can focus on the following:

Inspiring kids to eat healthy 

Offering healthy products  

Nestle does both. In an attempt to inspire kids to eat healthy, it launched cooking workshops and emphasized involving kids in cooking. 

The video showcases kids preparing a healthy meal for their parents, followed by parents getting involved in cooking a healthy meal. After children participate in the program from 84 countries, Nestle rightfully believes that involving kids in cooking develops healthy eating habits.

The website also has healthy and tasty recipes to cook with the kids!

Nestle's digital marketing strategies - Find healthy and tasty recipes to cook with your kids

The campaign spreads awareness about the need to ensure children get proper nutrients to grow, successfully targeting the two primary audiences: caregivers and kids!  This aligns with Nestle’s overarching strategy of engaging with families through educational content and interactive experiences to promote a healthier future.

Diversity and Inclusion Effort – “Empowering Women” Campaign

What if we told you that you don’t need your consumers to go all gaga over your brand with outstanding campaigns? 

It’s easy to subscribe to the notion that campaigns are always consumer-centric. While the inherent focus is to generate brand awareness among consumers, it’s not the sole intention. Nestle keeps breaking the stereotype time and again, whether by disrupting its supply chain or implementing gender neutrality at its workplace. 

Nestle’s dedication to gender equality and empowerment forms a critical component of its corporate social responsibility strategy, which is seamlessly integrated into its marketing narrative through the “Empowering Women” campaign.

Through the “Empowering Women” campaign, the brand focuses on empowering women within its workforce. It stresses the importance of education through tailored agricultural training programs, improving women and broader communities. 

For example, with the Nestle cocoa plan, women of the Ivory Coast earn their living by growing coffee and cocoa. 

One of the cooperative farmers in the video says, “Nestle has provided them with a nursery for free to grow cocoa and they’re happy working!”

Along with women’s empowerment, the campaign promotes: 

  • Diversion, 
  • Inclusion, 
  • Sustainable supply chain. 

The brand also launched a video on International Women’s Day this year discussing the importance of finding a woman’s authentic self in the workplace. Nestle’s social media strategy conveys the message of enhancing gender balance in the workforce through gender-neutral internal policies. 

This campaign works as it addresses the ongoing frustrations of societal values and fosters community engagement, creating a change cycle for its workforce and society. 

By highlighting its commitment to empowering women, Nestle leverages this campaign to further its brand values of diversity and inclusion, demonstrating how its digital marketing strategies are intricately linked to its corporate values and social responsibilities.

Nestle’s Social Media & Advertising Campaigns

The world of Nestle is about the stories they tell and the hearts they touch. 

Let’s see the magic of their campaigns, where creativity meets coffee cups and chocolate breaks, and see how they’ve turned everyday moments into something truly memorable.

KitKat’s “Celebrate the Breakers” Campaign Redefines Breaks

Through the “Celebrate the Breakers” campaign, KitKat transforms the simple act of taking a break into an engaging narrative. Employing animated stories and captivating social media content, KitKat reasserts its position not merely as a chocolate brand but as an integral part of life’s memorable moments.

Nescafe’s “Mean Girls Limited Edition” Post Generates Nostalgia

Coffee Mate’s Instagram post employs a lighthearted approach to promote their limited-edition “Mean Girls Pink Frosting Flavored Creamer.” 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Coffee mate (@coffeemate)

They leverage nostalgia for the film by referencing Regina George’s iconic line and repurposing a humorous “burn book” tweet. The post highlights the absurdity of judging coffee preferences while subtly suggesting that embracing the pink creamer embodies the movie’s message of individuality. 

Nescafe’s “Open Up” Chronicles Invite Meaningful Conversations

Nescafe encourages a moment of pause to foster connections. This campaign effectively highlights how Nescafe serves as a catalyst for meaningful conversations, demonstrating the brand’s commitment to creating genuine moments of connection over a cup of coffee.

Nespresso and George Clooney’s Partnership Goes Beyond Coffee 

Featuring George Clooney , Nespresso’s campaign extends beyond the allure of premium coffee to emphasize sustainability and responsible choices. This collaboration not only enhances the brand’s appeal but also aligns Nespresso with important social and environmental values.

A Day of a Purina Pup Shows What Is Pawdorable

Purina’s Instagram has recently treated us to some heartwarming content, giving us a glimpse into the daily life of the “pawfficial” pup, Bambi, and her devoted human, Dan, who also happens to work as a strategist at Purina. Instead of the typical office settings, this charming video takes us on a journey through their everyday adventures, showcasing Bambi’s remarkable focus as she actively participates in meetings.

Bu gönderiyi Instagram'da gör Purina (@purina)'in paylaştığı bir gönderi

“Really Friends?” Explores the Essence of Friendship with Nescafe

Through a compelling documentary, Nescafe delves into the true meaning of friendship in the digital era. This initiative effectively demonstrated the brand’s understanding of contemporary social dynamics, using coffee as a means to transform digital connections into real-world interactions.

There are plenty more where they came from: Check out our blog post about Nescafe’s marketing strategy and campaigns !

In Summary 

As observed in the article, all campaigns revolve around people, be it through sustainability or educational programs to teach healthy eating habits or promote gender equality in the workforce. The brand successfully connects people regardless of their age or background, making it one of the top five FMCG companies in the world! 

As an FMCG brand, your aim should be to make the consumers’ lives simpler and healthier, and it’s always the right time to determine whether your brand falls heavier on one side than both! To learn more about this niche, including how to craft your 4Ps that resonate with your audience as effectively as Nestlé’s marketing mix, check out our FMCG marketing articles !

Share this post

marketing case study of nestle

Related Posts

nescafe-digital-marketing-strategy

Subscribe to keep up with fresh news and exciting updates. We promise not to spam you!

This website uses cookies. Continued use of this website indicates that you have read and agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

StartupTalky

Nestle Marketing Strategy: Building Trust, Boosting Sales

Archana Karthikeyan

Archana Karthikeyan , Apoorva Bajj

Nestle is one of the world's largest food and beverage companies, with a rich history dating back over 150 years. Founded in Switzerland in 1866 by Henri Nestle, the company began as a producer of infant formula but soon expanded into chocolate and other food products. Today, Nestle has a presence in 188 countries and employs over 270,000 people worldwide.

The company's sales have grown steadily, with net sales of CHF 93 billion in 2023. Nestle is also consistently ranked among the top food and beverage companies in the world, with a strong brand reputation and a diverse portfolio of products.

Nestle has also made significant contributions to society and the environment. The company has set ambitious sustainability goals, including achieving zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and using 100% recyclable or reusable packaging by 2025.

Nestle, the leading health, nutrition, and wellness company, has been catering to the needs of consumers and their families worldwide for over a century. With a market cap of $266.16 billion (May 2024) and ranking as the world's 37th most valuable company by market cap, Nestle has established strong customer loyalty by consistently delivering high-quality products that enhance the lives of its consumers.

The brand's mission of " Good Food, Good Life " is not just a catchy slogan, but a commitment to providing nutritious and delicious products that promote a healthier lifestyle. From infant formula to pet food, Nestle has an extensive portfolio of brands that cater to the diverse needs of consumers across the globe. The company's well-crafted and consistently implemented marketing strategy has helped Nestle stand out in the market and carve a distinguished presence.

Nestlé Group's Sales Worldwide from 2013 to 2023

Nestle - Target Market Nestle - Marketing Mix

Nestle Product Strategy

Nestle pricing strategy, nestle place strategy, nestle promotion strategy.

Nestle - Marketing Strategy Nestle - Marketing Campaigns

Nestle - Target Market

Nestle’s extensive portfolio of products caters to a diverse range of consumers across the globe. Nestle's target market can be divided into several segments based on demographic, geographic, and psychographic factors.

Demographically, Nestle’s target audience includes individuals of all ages, from infants to seniors. The brand’s infant formula products cater to new mothers, while its chocolate and confectionery products appeal to children and young adults. Nestle’s range of coffee and tea products targets adults, while its health and wellness products cater to seniors.

Geographically, Nestle has a global presence, with its products available in 188 countries. The brand’s target market includes individuals from different cultures and backgrounds, and Nestle has adapted its marketing strategies to cater to local preferences and tastes.

Psychographically, target audience of Nestle includes health-conscious individuals who are looking for nutritious and wholesome products that enhance their overall well-being. The brand’s focus on health and wellness has made it a popular choice among consumers who are looking to lead a healthier lifestyle.

In addition to the above factors, Nestle’s target market also includes pet owners, as the brand has a range of pet food products.

Nestle’s target market is also diverse in terms of income level, with products available at various price points to cater to different budgets. The brand's target audience includes individuals from all walks of life who are looking for high-quality, nutritious, and delicious products that enhance their overall well-being.

Nestle - Marketing Mix

Nestle’s success can be attributed to its well-crafted marketing mix . The brand has been able to meet the diverse needs of its consumers by creating a product portfolio that caters to different segments of the market. Nestle’s marketing mix comprises the four Ps - product, price, place, and promotion - which the brand has consistently implemented to establish a strong presence in the market.

Let’s take a closer look at Nestle’s marketing mix and explore how the brand has been able to maintain its competitive edge in the highly competitive food and beverage industry.

Nestle offers a diverse range of products, including food, beverages, pet food, and health and wellness products. The brand's product portfolio caters to different segments of the market and includes well-known brands such as Nescafe, KitKat, and Purina . Nestle's products are of high quality and cater to consumers' diverse tastes and preferences.

Nestle's Wide Range of Products

Nestle’s pricing strategy varies depending on the product category and target market. The brand’s premium products, such as gourmet coffee, are priced higher, while its everyday products, such as instant coffee, are priced lower to appeal to budget-conscious consumers. Nestle’s pricing strategy is also influenced by local market conditions and competition.

Nestle has a global presence, with its products available in 188 countries. The brand’s distribution channels include supermarkets, convenience stores, online platforms, and direct-to-consumer channels. Nestle’s distribution strategy is aimed at maximizing reach and accessibility to consumers across the globe.

Nestle’s promotion strategy includes advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling. The brand’s advertising campaigns , such as the “ Good Food, Good Life ” campaign, focus on promoting the health and wellness benefits of its products. Nestle also uses sales promotions, such as discounts and coupons, to incentivize consumers to try its products. The brand’s public relations efforts focus on building brand reputation and engaging with consumers through social media and other channels.

Nestle’s marketing mix has been instrumental in the brand’s success in the highly competitive food and beverage industry. The brand’s focus on creating high-quality products that cater to diverse consumer needs, coupled with a well-crafted pricing, distribution, and promotion strategy has helped Nestle maintain its position as a leading player in the market.

marketing case study of nestle

Nestle - Marketing Strategy

Nestle is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world, with a presence in more than 190 countries. The company's success can be attributed to its innovative marketing strategies . Let's have a look at the top marketing strategies of Nestle that helped it to gain success.

Product Innovation

Nestle has been known for its product innovation . The company has a dedicated research and development team that is always working on new product ideas. Nestle's products are often the first of their kind in the market, and they are designed to meet the changing needs of consumers.

Nestle Products List

Targeted Marketing

Nestle uses targeted marketing to reach specific groups of consumers and it is one of the top marketing strategy of Nestle. The company understands that different groups of consumers have different needs and preferences, and it creates marketing campaigns that speak to those needs.

Celebrity Endorsements

Nestle has employed the use of celebrity endorsements to promote its products. For example, the company has used celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone to promote its products in India.

NESCAFÉ Cold Coffee Full Ad

Social Media Marketing

Nestle has a strong presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. The company uses these platforms to engage with consumers, promote its products, and build brand awareness. Nestle's social media marketing strategy focuses on engaging content and customer interaction. It also actively responds to customer queries and feedback, building a community around its brands. This marketing strategy of Nestle helps to increase its brand awareness and maintain meaningful connections with consumers.

Co-Branding

Nestle has used co-branding to promote its products. Under this marketing strategy, Nestle has partnered with Starbucks to launch a range of coffee products under the Nescafe brand.

Sampling Programs

Nestle has used sampling programs to introduce its products to consumers. The company offers free samples of its products to consumers, which helps to increase product awareness and generate word-of-mouth publicity.

Nestle Sampling Programs

Strategic Partnerships

Nestle has formed strategic partnerships with other companies to promote its products. For example, the company has partnered with Coca-Cola to launch a range of iced tea products under the Nestea brand .

Cause-Related Marketing

Nestle has used cause-related marketing to promote its products. The company has partnered with organizations like UNICEF to support various causes, and it has used these partnerships to promote its products.

SEO Strategy

Search Engine Optimization plays an important role in improving the visibility of a website's position in search results. It helps to get traffic from organic, free, and natural search results. Nestle understands the value of all kinds of marketing strategies and effectively optimizes its website .

According to UberSuggest, as of May 2024, Nestle's website has around 271,043 organic keywords and more than 2,123,794 monthly organic visitors. These impressive numbers show Nestle's commitment to utilizing SEO to maximize its online visibility and reach.

Event Sponsorship

Nestle has sponsored various events to promote its products. The company has sponsored events like the Nestle Good Food, and Good Life Festival , which promotes healthy eating habits.

Digital Marketing

Nestle has used digital marketing to reach consumers. The company has created digital campaigns that are engaging and interactive, and it uses digital channels to promote its products and engage with consumers. This marketing strategy of Nestle has brought increased brand visibility, enhanced consumer engagement, and significant growth in online sales and brand loyalty.

Nestle's marketing strategy has helped the company appeal to every consumer, have a multifarious portfolio, attract cost-conscious prospects, set consistent goals, try product-driven advertising, localize products, maintain brand equity, co-branding, promote sustainability, and use digital marketing. These strategies have helped Nestle to maintain its position as a global brand and remain competitive in the food and beverage industry. Nestle's marketing strategies have been effective in driving sales, building brand equity, and maintaining a positive brand image.

Nestle - Marketing Campaigns

Nestle is a household name, and its marketing campaigns have played a significant role in making it a global brand. Over the years, Nestle has launched numerous successful campaigns, but some have stood out from the rest. Let's take a look at Nestle's most successful campaigns that have captured the hearts of millions.

Nescafe “Open Up” Campaign

The Nescafe “ Open Up ” campaign is one of the most successful campaigns by Nestle. The campaign aimed to encourage people to connect with each other over a cup of coffee. The ad featured people from different walks of life sharing their stories over a cup of coffee. The ad struck a chord with people, and it became an instant hit.

Open up - Nescafe

KitKat “Take a Break” Campaign

The KitKat “ Take a Break ” campaign is one of Nestle's most iconic campaigns. The campaign featured the famous “Have a Break, Have a KitKat” tagline. The ad portrayed people taking a break from their busy lives and enjoying a KitKat. The catchy jingle and the memorable tagline made the ad an instant hit.

KitKat Have a break Have a KitKat

Maggi “2-Minute Noodles” Campaign

The Maggi “ 2-Minute Noodles ” campaign is one of Nestle’s most successful campaigns in India. The campaign aimed to target busy moms who wanted to prepare a quick and tasty meal for their kids. The ad featured a young boy who came home from school and asked his mom to prepare Maggi noodles. The ad’s catchy jingle, “ Maggi, Maggi, Maggi ”, became a household name in India.

OLD INDIAN ADs -Maggi

Nestle's “Good Food, Good Life” Campaign

The Nestle “ Good Food, Good Life ” campaign is one of Nestle’s most ambitious campaigns. The campaign aimed to promote a healthy lifestyle and encourage people to make healthier food choices. The ad featured people from different cultures enjoying Nestle's products as part of a healthy lifestyle.

Nestlé Good Food, Good Life

Nestle’s marketing campaigns have been highly successful, and they have played a significant role in making it a global brand. These campaigns have bold, told compelling stories that have resonated with people across the globe.

Nestle's "Generation Regeneration" Campaign

Generation Regeneration is Nestlé's sustainability initiative , emphasizing its dedication to environmental and social responsibility. Through sustainable sourcing and reducing environmental footprint, Nestlé aims to create a positive impact while ensuring a sustainable future. This campaign aligns with Nestlé's long-term vision of becoming a sustainable and trusted leader in the food and beverage industry .

Generation Regeneration | Nestlé's Sustainability Promise

For marketers and start-ups looking to learn from Nestle's success, it is important to understand the value of having a diversified portfolio, setting consistent goals, and tailoring products and marketing campaigns to local tastes and preferences. Digital marketing is a powerful tool that should not be overlooked, as it allows brands to engage with consumers across multiple platforms and target specific consumer segments with personalized messaging.

Nestle's marketing strategies serve as a valuable case study for businesses looking to build a strong brand and maintain a competitive edge in today's crowded marketplace. By taking a holistic approach to marketing, focusing on product quality, sustainability, and consumer engagement, businesses can create a lasting impact and drive growth for years to come. So, don't hesitate to take a cue from Nestle and implement these strategies in your own business.

What is the target market of Nestle?

Nestle’s target market includes individuals of all ages, from infants to seniors. The brand’s infant formula products cater to new mothers, while its chocolate and confectionery products appeal to children and young adults. Nestle’s range of coffee and tea products targets adults, while its health and wellness products cater to seniors.

What is Nestle's iconic tagline?

The iconic tagline of Nestle is "Good Food, Good Life".

What are the top marketing strategies of Nestle that helped to maintain its position as a global brand?

Here are the top marketing strategies of Nestle -

Product InnovationTargeted MarketingCelebrity EndorsementsSocial Media MarketingCo-BrandingSampling ProgramsStrategic PartnershipsCause-Related MarketingEvent SponsorshipDigital Marketing

How does nestle promote their products?

Nestle promotes its products through various digital channels, including social media and online advertising. They also utilize traditional marketing methods such as TV commercials, print ads, and in-store promotions to reach consumers.

Must have tools for startups - Recommended by StartupTalky

  • Manage your business smoothly- Google Workspace

2024 T20 World Cup: How Does the ICC Make Money?

The location and often poor quality of the cricket stadiums used for the Twenty20 Men's World Cup 2024, particularly in the United States, have already drawn criticism. The International Cricket Council (ICC) planned the Twenty20 World Cup 2024 in the United States and the West Indies to boost cricket in

'Crafting Bharat - A Podcast Series,' Premieres Its First Episode With Vinayak Bhavnani, Co-Founder and CTO of Chalo

Vinayak Bhavnani, co-founder and CTO of Chalo discusses his entrepreneurial journey, building bus transport technology and trends in the Mobility industry with host Gautum Srinivasan. India has emerged as the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem over the last decade. Startups play an active role in surging innovation and job creation

Top Companies Showcasing Creativity in T20 World Cup 2024 Commercial Ads

Cricket is now much more than a game played with a ball and bat. A lot of major corporations have been interested in being involved with this sport because of how powerful it has become as a commercial entity. Many corporations have showcased their creative side in their commercial efforts

How B2C Businesses Make Customer Experiences Smooth and Effortless: Owners Share Insights

Customer experiences in the B2C business model are centered around creating seamless interactions, from initial contact to post-purchase support, aiming to enhance satisfaction and foster loyalty. In tune with this, StartupTalky connected with some amazing B2C business owners to understand what steps they take in their businesses to make the

Mix With Marketing

Nestle Marketing Strategy: A Case Study

' src=

Nestle is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies with a presence in 191 countries . The company has a diverse product portfolio that ranges from pet food to baby food, and from coffee to confectionery. Nestle’s marketing strategy has played a crucial role in the company’s success over the years . In this article, we will take a closer look at Nestle’s marketing strategy and how it has contributed to the company’s growth.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The introduction will give an overview of Nestle and its products.

Nestle is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company that was founded in 1866 by Henri Nestle. Today, Nestle has a presence in 191 countries and employs over 300,000 people . Nestle’s product portfolio includes pet food, baby food, coffee, confectionery, and many other products.

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is a crucial element of Nestle’s marketing strategy. The company targets different segments of the market with different products.

Geographic Segmentation

Nestle operates in 191 countries, and the company tailors its products to meet the needs and preferences of customers in each country.

Demographic Segmentation

Nestle’s products are designed to cater to different age groups and genders. For example, the company’s baby food products are designed for infants, while its confectionery products are designed for adults.

Psychographic Segmentation

nestle psychographic segmentation

Nestle’s marketing strategy also targets customers based on their lifestyle and personality. For example, the company’s premium coffee products are targeted at customers who value quality and are willing to pay a premium price for it.

Product Mix

Nestle’s product mix is diverse and includes different types of products, including food, beverage, and pet care products. The company has a large number of brands in its product portfolio.

Product Line Extension

Nestle uses product line extensions to expand its product portfolio. For example, the company has launched different flavors of its KitKat chocolate bar in different countries.

Product Innovation

Nestle invests heavily in product innovation to meet the changing needs and preferences of customers. For example, the company has launched plant-based meat products under its Garden Gourmet brand.

Pricing Strategy

Nestle’s pricing strategy is designed to cater to different segments of the market. The company uses different pricing strategies for different products.

Value-Based Pricing

Nestle uses value-based pricing for its premium products, such as its Nespresso coffee machines. The company sets a premium price for these products to reflect their quality and value.

Penetration Pricing

Nestle uses penetration pricing for some of its products, such as its instant coffee products. The company sets a low price for these products to penetrate the market and gain market share.

Promotion Strategy

Nestle’s promotion strategy is designed to create brand awareness and increase sales.

Advertising

Nestle Brand Segmentation

Nestle uses different types of advertising, including TV, print, and online advertising, to reach its target audience .

Sales Promotion

Nestle uses sales promotions, such as discounts and free samples, to encourage customers to try its products.

Public Relations

Nestle uses public relations to enhance its corporate image and build brand trust. For example, the company has launched initiatives to support sustainable agriculture.

Distribution Strategy

Nestle’s distribution strategy is designed to ensure that its products are available to customers in different parts of the world.

Direct Distribution

Nestle uses direct distribution for some of its products, such as its Nespresso coffee capsules. The company sells these products directly to customers through its online store.

Indirect Distribution

Nestle also uses indirect distribution channels, such as supermarkets and convenience. stores, to reach a wider customer base. The company partners with distributors and retailers to ensure that its products are available in different parts of the world.

Digital Marketing

In recent years, Nestle has increased its focus on digital marketing to reach its target audience.

Social Media Marketing

Nestle uses social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to promote its products and engage with customers.

Content Marketing

Nestle uses content marketing to provide customers with information about its products and educate them about their benefits.

Nestle’s marketing strategy has played a crucial role in the company’s success over the years. The company’s market segmentation, product mix, pricing strategy, promotion strategy, and distribution strategy are all designed to cater to the needs and preferences of its target audience. Additionally, Nestle’s focus on digital marketing has helped the company reach a wider audience and engage with customers in new ways.

What is Nestle’s marketing strategy?

Nestle’s marketing strategy is designed to cater to the needs and preferences of its target audience through market segmentation, product mix, pricing strategy, promotion strategy, and distribution strategy.

How does Nestle use market segmentation in its marketing strategy?

Nestle targets different segments of the market based on geographic, demographic, and psychographic factors.

What is Nestle’s product mix?

Nestle’s product mix includes food, beverage, and pet care products, among others.

What pricing strategies does Nestle use?

Nestle uses value-based pricing for premium products and penetration pricing for some of its other products.

How does Nestle use digital marketing in its marketing strategy?

Nestle uses social media marketing and content marketing to reach its target audience and engage with customers in new ways.

Other Reads

Adidas Marketing Strategy The Case Study (Impossible is Nothing)

Puma Marketing Strategy: The Case Study

Pepsi Marketing Strategy: The Case Study

McDonald’s marketing strategy: A benchmark in the fast food industry

Nike Marketing Strategy: The Case Study (Just Do It)

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

You May Also Like

Influencer marketing trend 2022

What Is Influencer Marketing And What Are Strategies Related To It?

' src=

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) & What is the formula to calculate Customer Lifetime Value?

' src=

Understanding CTR | Click-Through Rate

' src=

Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity - subscribe now and start enjoying all the benefits!!!

No thanks, I’m not interested!

Newsletter Subscribe

Get the Latest Posts & Articles in Your Email

We Promise Not to Send Spam:)

marketing case study of nestle

Nestlé Marketing Strategy: The Ingredients for Sweet Success

In today's highly competitive business landscape, companies are constantly striving to create effective marketing strategies that can help them stand out from the crowd and reach their target audience effectively.

One such company that has successfully implemented a comprehensive marketing strategy is Nestle. With a rich history and a strong global presence, Nestle has continually evolved its marketing approach to stay ahead of the curve and maintain its position as a market leader. In this article, we will take a closer look at Nestle's marketing strategy, understand its core principles, explore the role of innovation in its approach, analyze its impact on the global market, delve into the role of digital marketing, examine its consumer-centric approach, and discuss its plans for the future.

Understanding Nestle's Marketing Strategy

Nestle's marketing strategy is built on a solid foundation of core principles that guide its every move. These principles revolve around delivering high-quality products, nurturing strong relationships with customers, maintaining a focus on long-term sustainability, and constantly innovating to meet evolving consumer needs.

The Core Principles of Nestle's Marketing

At the heart of Nestle's marketing strategy lies a commitment to providing high-quality products that meet the expectations of consumers. Nestle strives to offer products that not only taste great but also offer nutritional value and contribute to a healthy lifestyle. This commitment is evident across its vast product portfolio, which spans categories such as beverages, confectionery, dairy, and pet care.

In addition to product quality, Nestle places great emphasis on building strong relationships with its customers. The company aims to understand their needs and preferences to create products and experiences that resonate with them on a personal level. This customer-centric approach helps Nestle establish a bond of trust and loyalty with its target audience.

Another key principle that drives Nestle's marketing strategy is its focus on sustainability. The company recognizes the importance of responsible sourcing, minimizing its environmental impact, and contributing to the communities in which it operates. Nestle's commitment to sustainability not only aligns with consumer expectations but also helps build a positive brand image.

Furthermore, Nestle firmly believes in the power of innovation. The company constantly invests in research and development to bring new and exciting products to market. By staying ahead of consumer trends and technological advancements, Nestle ensures that its marketing strategy remains relevant and effective in capturing the attention of its target audience.

Related: Liquid Death Marketing Strategy Case Study: Slaying the Beverage Industry with Killer Branding and Marketing

The Role of Innovation in Nestle's Marketing Approach

When it comes to innovation, Nestle has always been at the forefront. The company's marketing approach is driven by a deep understanding of consumer needs and preferences, combined with the latest technological advancements. Nestle constantly explores new ideas and concepts to create products that not only meet but exceed consumer expectations.

One such example of Nestle's innovative marketing approach is its focus on personalized nutrition. Through the use of advanced technology, Nestle has developed solutions that allow individuals to tailor their nutritional needs based on their unique requirements. This approach not only enhances customer satisfaction but also helps Nestle establish itself as a pioneer in the industry.

Besides product innovation, Nestle also leverages technology to enhance its marketing efforts. The company employs data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to gain insights into consumer behavior and preferences. These insights enable Nestle to deliver targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with its target audience, resulting in increased brand engagement and sales.

Moreover, Nestle's commitment to innovation extends beyond product development. The company also focuses on enhancing the overall customer experience through technological advancements. For instance, Nestle has implemented interactive mobile applications that allow consumers to engage with their favorite brands in a more immersive and personalized way. These applications provide valuable information, recipes, and even virtual experiences, creating a deeper connection between Nestle and its customers.

Innovation is not limited to the digital realm for Nestle. The company also explores new packaging solutions that are more sustainable and environmentally friendly. By incorporating renewable materials and reducing waste, Nestle aims to minimize its ecological footprint and contribute to a greener future.

Furthermore, Nestle's innovative marketing approach extends to its collaborations and partnerships. The company actively seeks out opportunities to collaborate with other industry leaders, startups, and research institutions to foster innovation and drive positive change. These collaborations enable Nestle to tap into new ideas, technologies, and expertise, further enhancing its marketing strategy.

In conclusion, Nestle's marketing strategy is built on a strong foundation of core principles, including product quality, customer relationships, sustainability, and innovation. Through its commitment to these principles, Nestle continues to deliver high-quality products, engage with its customers on a personal level, contribute to a sustainable future, and stay at the forefront of industry trends through continuous innovation.

The Impact of Nestle's Marketing Strategy on Its Global Presence

Being a global powerhouse, Nestle's marketing strategy plays a crucial role in expanding its reach and maintaining its position as a market leader. Through a combination of market penetration strategies, effective branding, and positioning, Nestle has successfully established a strong foothold in various markets around the world.

Nestle's Market Penetration Strategies

Nestle employs a targeted approach to penetrate new markets. The company conducts thorough market research to understand local preferences, cultural nuances, and competition. Armed with this knowledge, Nestle adapts its products and marketing tactics to cater to the unique needs of each market.

For example, when entering the Asian market, Nestle recognized the importance of tea in the region's culture and adjusted its product offerings accordingly. It introduced tea-flavored variants of its popular chocolate bars and incorporated traditional tea ingredients into its beverage range. This careful adaptation allowed Nestle to resonate with Asian consumers and gain a competitive edge.

In addition to adapting to local preferences, Nestle also focuses on building strong distribution networks in new markets. By partnering with local retailers, the company ensures its products are readily available to consumers, thereby increasing its market share and brand visibility.

For instance, when expanding into Africa, Nestle formed strategic partnerships with local grocery stores and supermarkets. This collaboration not only facilitated the distribution of Nestle products but also provided employment opportunities for the local workforce. By establishing a strong distribution network, Nestle was able to penetrate the African market effectively.

Nestle's Branding and Positioning in Different Markets

Branding plays a pivotal role in Nestle's marketing strategy. The company has successfully positioned itself as a trusted and reliable brand across different markets. Nestle's branding efforts focus on creating a strong emotional connection with consumers by emphasizing product quality, nutrition, and sustainability.

In the European market, Nestle has positioned itself as a brand that values sustainability and environmental responsibility. The company actively promotes its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, use sustainable packaging materials, and support local farmers. By aligning its brand with consumers' growing concern for the environment, Nestle has gained a loyal customer base in Europe.

In some markets, Nestle has adopted a premium positioning strategy, targeting consumers who value high-quality products and are willing to pay a premium for them. For instance, in the luxury-oriented Middle Eastern market, Nestle introduced a range of premium chocolates made with exotic ingredients and packaged in elegant designs. This positioning strategy allowed Nestle to tap into the region's affluent consumer segment and establish itself as a symbol of indulgence and sophistication.

In contrast, in emerging markets, Nestle focuses on affordability without compromising on product quality, making its offerings accessible to a wider consumer base. For example, in countries like India and Brazil, Nestle offers smaller pack sizes and affordable pricing to cater to the price-sensitive consumers. This approach has helped Nestle penetrate these markets and gain a significant market share.

Overall, Nestle's marketing strategy, encompassing market penetration, branding, and positioning, has been instrumental in its global success. By understanding and adapting to local markets, Nestle has been able to build a strong presence worldwide and cater to the diverse needs and preferences of consumers.

The Role of Digital Marketing in Nestle's Strategy

In today's digital age, Nestle recognizes the importance of having a strong online presence. The company leverages various digital marketing tactics to engage with its target audience, drive brand awareness, and generate sales.

Nestle's Social Media Marketing Tactics

Social media platforms have become an integral part of Nestle's marketing strategy. The company actively maintains profiles on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Through engaging content, Nestle seeks to foster a sense of community, share product news and updates, and provide customer support.

Nestle also collaborates with influencers and brand advocates to amplify its social media presence. By partnering with individuals who align with its brand values, Nestle extends its reach to a wider audience and benefits from the credibility and trust that influencers bring.

The Impact of SEO and Content Marketing on Nestle's Online Presence

Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are key drivers of Nestle's online visibility. Through strategic keyword targeting, Nestle ensures that its website and content rank highly in search engine results, increasing organic traffic and brand visibility.

Content marketing plays a crucial role in educating and engaging consumers. Nestle creates valuable and informative content that not only showcases its products but also provides useful tips, recipes, and insights. By establishing itself as a reliable source of information, Nestle builds trust with its audience and strengthens its brand presence.

Nestle's Consumer-Centric Marketing Approach

At the core of Nestle's marketing strategy is a relentless focus on the needs and preferences of its target audience . By understanding its consumers on a deep level, Nestle ensures that its marketing efforts are tailored to their desires, resulting in increased brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Understanding Nestle's Target Audience

Nestle recognizes that its target audience varies across different markets and product categories. The company invests significant resources in market research to gain insights into consumer demographics, behaviors, and preferences. Armed with this information, Nestle creates marketing campaigns that resonate with its target audience and drive favorable brand perceptions.

Nestle's Approach to Customer Engagement and Retention

Customer engagement and retention are critical aspects of Nestle's marketing strategy. The company employs various tactics to foster a strong bond with its customers and keep them coming back for more. Nestle actively seeks feedback from its customers, allowing them to feel heard and valued. The company also rewards customer loyalty through loyalty programs, personalized offers, and exclusive experiences.

Furthermore, Nestle goes beyond traditional marketing methods to connect with its consumers. The company engages in cause-related marketing , partnering with nonprofit organizations and supporting initiatives that align with its brand values. By associating itself with meaningful causes, Nestle deepens its connection with consumers and reinforces its position as a socially responsible brand.

The Future of Nestle's Marketing Strategy

As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, Nestle remains committed to staying ahead of the curve and adapting to emerging trends. The company has identified several key areas that will shape its future marketing strategy.

Predicted Marketing Trends and Their Potential Impact on Nestle

Nestle recognizes the growing importance of sustainability and ethical consumption. The company understands that consumers are increasingly conscious of the environmental and social impact of the products they consume. In response, Nestle plans to further strengthen its sustainability efforts and communicate its initiatives transparently to consumers.

Additionally, Nestle acknowledges the rising influence of e-commerce and the need to provide seamless online shopping experiences . The company will continue to invest in digital platforms, optimize its e-commerce capabilities, and explore new technologies such as augmented reality to enhance the online shopping journey for its customers.

Nestle's Plans for Adapting to Future Marketing Challenges

Looking ahead, Nestle aims to leverage big data and advanced analytics to gain deeper insights into consumer behavior and preferences. By harnessing the power of data, Nestle can develop personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with individual consumers, further strengthening its market position.

Nestle also plans to expand its presence in emerging markets, where significant growth opportunities exist. The company will adapt its marketing strategy to cater to the unique needs and preferences of consumers in these markets, establishing strong brand loyalty and driving sales.

Final Thoughts on Nestlé's Marketing Strategy

Nestle's effective marketing strategy is a result of its commitment to core principles , focus on innovation , global market presence, digital marketing initiatives, consumer-centric approach, and future-oriented plans. By continuously evolving and adapting to changing consumer behavior, Nestle maintains its position as a market leader and sets a benchmark for other companies to follow.

About the Author

marketing case study of nestle

Hi, I'm Justin and I write Brand Credential. I started Brand Credential as a resource to help share expertise from my 10-year brand building journey. ‍ I currently serve as the VP of Marketing for a tech company where I oversee all go-to-market functions. Throughout my career I've helped companies scale revenue to millions of dollars, helped executives build personal brands, and created hundreds of pieces of content since starting to write online in 2012.

As always, thank you so much for reading. If you’d like more personal branding and marketing tips, here are more ways I can help in the meantime:

  • Connect with me on Instagram , TikTok , and LinkedIn .
  • Get my Personal Brand 101 Course
  • Sign up for my Brand Credential newsletter
  • Check out my latest Medium articles
  • Read my free book, “ The Personal Brand Blueprint: A No-Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding in the Age of the Creator ”

More From Brand Credential:

Feeling Burned Out on Your Personal Brand? Here's What to Do

Discover effective strategies to overcome burnout and reignite your personal brand.

Creating a Winning B2B Inbound Marketing Strategy

Discover the secrets to developing a successful B2B inbound marketing strategy that will skyrocket your business growth.

7 Effective Marketing Strategies to Increase School Enrollment

Discover 7 innovative marketing strategies that will help your school stand out from the crowd and attract more students.

The Ultimate Guide to Google Marketing Strategy

Learn how to harness the power of Google marketing with our comprehensive guide.

The Distinct Atlassian Brand Personality

Discover the unique and captivating brand personality of Atlassian in this insightful article.

Exploring Sony's Innovative Marketing Strategy

Discover the secrets behind Sony's groundbreaking marketing strategy that has revolutionized the industry.

Nestlé: Branded active benefits

Part of a case series on marketing innovation, the Nestle Branded Active Ingredients describes how Nestle developed its strategy of marketing key functional ingredients for some of its leading food brands across different markets. The underlying concept behind this idea was to build brand sustainability and translate complex scientific arguments into simple messages that consumers could understand. This approach was similar to the ingredient marketing strategy of non-food brands such as Gore-Tex or Intel. After overcoming internal doubts and resistance, the project team went on to develop one of the most innovative marketing strategies for the food business and helped some of Nestlé’s existing brands become unrivalled market leaders in their categories.

This case can be used to 1) show how innovative ideas can be “borrowed” from totally different product categories; 2) highlight how scientific arguments when translated into benefits that consumers understand can become a powerful reason to buy; 3) show why marketing teams need to develop effective internal communication to win support for their ideas 4) demonstrate how an innovative idea can change and mature in its many iterations before reaching the market. The case can be used alone or in with one or more of the other cases in the series on marketing innovation.

The Case Centre

Cranfield University

Wharley End Beds MK43 0JR, UK Tel +44 (0)1234 750903 Email  [email protected]

Harvard Business School Publishing

60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163, USA Tel (800) 545-7685 Tel (617)-783-7600 Fax (617) 783-7666 Email  [email protected]

Asia Pacific Case Center

NUCB Business School

1-3-1 Nishiki Naka Nagoya Aichi, Japan 460-0003 Tel +81 52 20 38 111 Email  [email protected]

IMD retains all proprietary interests in its case studies and notes. Without prior written permission, IMD cases and notes may not be reproduced, used, translated, included in books or other publications, distributed in any form or by any means, stored in a database or in other retrieval systems. For additional copyright information related to case studies, please contact Case Services .

Research Information & Knowledge Hub  for additional information on IMD publications

marketing case study of nestle

Leading Chinese companies are preparing to take advantage of exposure and opportunities as top sponsors and suppliers to the UEFA EURO 2024 Men’s S...

marketing case study of nestle

Marketing campaigns for sustainable offerings often fail, leaving businesses with products that do not sell. How can companies reach customers more...

Nespresso, the global leading brand in portioned coffee, is facing an existential threat. The company’s current market base, which consists primari...

marketing case study of nestle

Chris Tung is President of Strategic Development at Chinese e-commerce multinational Alibaba Group. He tells Amit Joshi how the company is integrat...

Many companies overestimate customers’ appetite for sustainable products, flooding the market with offerings that don’t sell. The reality is, socia...

The case explores the efforts of Hamilton Mann, Group VP, Global Digital Marketing & Digital Transformation at Thales, to build a sales enablement ...

The CEO of Revier Cattle Company, Tom Revier, had been an innovator in sustainable farming and humane livestock practices for over two decades. He ...

The (C) case describes the customer’s after-sales experience. The participants need to identify what went wrong again and how the brand might save ...

The (B) case describes the same customer’s follow-up experience in the same exclusive retail outlet. The case invites the participants to further i...

A short (A) describes the experience of a wealthy Chinese customer going to buy an exclusive watch in the retail outlet of a famous Swiss luxury br...

The Brand Hopper

All Brand Stories At One Place

Nestle: A Look at the Marketing Strategies and Global Presence

Nestle Marketing | The Brand Hopper

Nestle: A Look at the Marketing Strategies and Global Presence 15 min read

Nestlé is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland . It is the largest food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics. Nestlé has over 2000 brands ranging from global icons to local favorites, and it is present in 191 countries around the world.

Nestlé was founded in 1866 by Henri Nestlé , a Swiss chemist and pharmacist. Nestlé’s first product was a baby food called Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, which was designed to help infants who were unable to breastfeed. The company quickly grew and expanded its product line, and by the early 20th century, Nestlé was one of the largest food companies in the world.

Nestlé continued to grow and expand throughout the 20th century. The company acquired a number of other food and drink companies, and it also expanded into new markets. In the 1980s, Nestlé began to focus on developing healthier and more nutritious products. The company also began to invest in sustainable agriculture and water management practices.

Today, Nestlé is a leading provider of food and drink products around the world. The company’s products are sold in over 190 countries , and Nestlé employs over 339,000 people . Nestlé is committed to providing its customers with high-quality, nutritious products that are affordable and accessible. The company is also committed to sustainable business practices that protect the environment and promote social responsibility.

Here are some of Nestlé’s most popular brands:

  • San Pellegrino
  • Häagen-Dazs
  • Lean Cuisine

Nestlé is a global leader in the food and drink industry. The company is committed to providing its customers with high-quality, nutritious products that are affordable and accessible. Nestlé is also committed to sustainable business practices that protect the environment and promote social responsibility.

Table of Contents

History of Nestle – Making of a food giant

The story of Nestle begins in Switzerland in the mid-19th century. In 1866, Henri Nestle , a pharmacist, developed a nutritious and easy-to-digest infant food known as Farine Lactée . The product was a lifesaver for mothers who were unable to breastfeed their infants and quickly gained popularity throughout Europe.

Nestle’s infant food was so successful that in 1874, he formed a company with a group of investors to expand production and distribution. The new company, known as Société Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé , was headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, and began exporting its products to other parts of Europe, as well as to the United States and Asia.

In the years that followed, Nestle continued to innovate and expand its product offerings. In 1905, the company launched Nescafe, an instant coffee that quickly became a global sensation. Over the next few decades, Nestle expanded into new product categories, including chocolate, dairy products, and pet food, and established a presence in markets around the world.

During World War II, Nestle faced significant challenges as the global conflict disrupted supply chains and created food shortages. Nevertheless, the company persevered and continued to innovate, launching new products such as Nesquik, a chocolate powder for making milkshakes, in 1948.

In the post-war years, Nestle continued to expand its global presence through a series of acquisitions and partnerships. In 1974, the company merged with the Swiss-based food company, Alimentana, to become Nestle Alimentana SA . The merger brought together two of Switzerland’s largest food companies and helped to solidify Nestle’s position as a global leader in the food and beverage industry.

Today, Nestle is one of the largest and most recognizable consumer goods companies in the world, with a presence in nearly every country on the planet. Despite its size and scale, the company remains committed to the principles of quality, sustainability, and social responsibility that have guided its success for over 150 years.

Brand Portfolio of Nestle – something for everyone

Nestle is a global food and beverage company with over 2,000 brands in its portfolio. Here are some of the most well-known brands:

  • Nescafé:  Nescafé is the world’s largest coffee brand, with over 200 different varieties of coffee sold in over 180 countries. Nescafé was created in 1938 by Nestlé in Switzerland. The name is a portmanteau of the words “Nestlé” and “café”. Nescafé is available in a variety of forms, including instant coffee, ground coffee, and coffee pods.
  • Nespresso:  Nespresso is a premium coffee brand that sells single-serve coffee capsules. Nespresso was created in 1986 by Nestlé in Switzerland. The name is a combination of the words “espresso” and “capsule”. Nespresso coffee capsules are made from high-quality coffee beans and are compatible with Nespresso coffee machines.
  • Maggi:  Maggi is a global brand of seasonings, soups, and noodles. Maggi was created in 1872 by Julius Maggi in Switzerland. The name is derived from the German word “Mager”, which means “lean”. Maggi products are sold in over 100 countries and are known for their high quality and affordable prices.
  • Kit Kat:  Kit Kat is a popular chocolate bar that is sold in over 100 countries. Kit Kat was created in 1935 by Rowntree’s of York, England. The name is a combination of the words “Kit” and “Kat”, which were the names of two popular cats in the United Kingdom at the time. Kit Kat bars are made with milk chocolate and wafers and are available in a variety of flavors, including original, dark chocolate, and mint.
  • Nesquick:  Nesquick is a chocolate powder that is used to make milk shakes and other drinks. Nesquick was created in 1948 by Nestlé in Switzerland. The name is a combination of the words “Nestlé” and “quick”, as Nesquick is a quick and easy way to make a delicious chocolate drink. Nesquick is available in a variety of flavors, including original, strawberry, and chocolate hazelnut.
  • Gerber:  Gerber is a brand of baby food that is sold in over 80 countries. Gerber was created in 1928 by Daniel Gerber in Fremont, Michigan, United States. The name is derived from the name of Daniel Gerber’s wife, Dorothy Gerber. Gerber baby food is known for its high quality and nutritious ingredients.
  • Purina:  Purina is a brand of pet food that is sold in over 50 countries. Purina was created in 1902 by William H. Danforth in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The name is derived from the Latin word “purus”, which means “pure”. Purina pet food is known for its high quality and nutritious ingredients.
  • San Pellegrino:  San Pellegrino is a brand of sparkling water that is sold in over 150 countries. San Pellegrino was created in 1899 in San Pellegrino Terme, Italy. The name is derived from the name of the town where it is produced. San Pellegrino sparkling water is known for its high quality and refreshing taste.
  • Häagen-Dazs:  Häagen-Dazs is a brand of ice cream that is sold in over 50 countries. Häagen-Dazs was created in 1961 in New York City, United States. The name is a made-up name that is intended to sound Scandinavian. Häagen-Dazs ice cream is known for its high quality and rich flavor.
  • DiGiorno:  DiGiorno is a brand of frozen pizza that is sold in over 30 countries. DiGiorno was created in 1995 by Nestlé in the United States. The name is a combination of the words “Dig” and “Giorno”, which means “day” in Italian. DiGiorno frozen pizza is known for its high quality and authentic taste.
  • Lean Cuisine:  Lean Cuisine is a brand of frozen meals that is sold in over 20 countries. Lean Cuisine was created in 1981 by Stouffer’s in the United States. The name is a combination of the words “lean” and “cuisine”. Lean Cuisine frozen meals are known for their low calorie and fat content and their convenient packaging.

Brand Portfolio of Nestle | The Brand Hopper

These are just a few of Nestlé’s many brands. The company has a wide range of products that are sold in over 190 countries. Nestlé is committed to providing its customers with high-quality, nutritious products that are affordable and accessible. The company is also committed to sustainable business practices that protect the environment and promote social responsibility.

Strategy of Nestle in different markets around the world

Nestle is a global food and beverage company that operates in over 190 countries around the world. Its presence in each market varies depending on factors such as consumer preferences, cultural norms, and regulatory environments . However, Nestle’s strategy in each market is to adapt to local tastes and customs, while also leveraging its global scale and resources.

One way that Nestle adapts to local markets is by developing products that are tailored to local tastes and preferences. For example, in India, Nestle offers a range of products that cater to local culinary traditions, such as Maggi noodles that are flavored with spices and herbs popular in Indian cuisine. Similarly, in China, Nestle offers a range of products that incorporate traditional Chinese ingredients and flavors, such as congee and tea-flavored milk drinks .

Nestle also adapts to local markets by developing marketing campaigns that resonate with local consumers. For example, in Brazil, Nestle has a longstanding partnership with the country’s national soccer team, and has sponsored a number of initiatives aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles among Brazilian children. In Japan, Nestle has launched a number of marketing campaigns that appeal to the country’s obsession with cute and whimsical characters, such as its “KitKat Chocolatory” stores that offer limited edition flavors and packaging .

In addition to adapting its products and marketing to local markets, Nestle also works closely with local suppliers and distributors to ensure that its products are available and affordable in each market. This includes partnering with local farmers to source raw materials, as well as investing in local manufacturing and distribution infrastructure.

However, Nestle’s efforts to adapt to local markets have not always been successful. In some cases, the company has faced backlash from consumers and regulators who feel that its products are not in line with local tastes and customs. For example, in India, Nestle faced a major controversy in 2015 when its popular Maggi noodles were found to contain excess levels of lead and MSG, leading to a nationwide ban on the product. The incident highlighted the challenges of adapting to local markets while also maintaining quality and safety standards.

Despite these challenges, Nestle’s global presence and commitment to adapting to local markets have enabled it to maintain a leading position in the global food and beverage industry. By leveraging its scale and resources, while also working closely with local partners, Nestle is well-positioned to continue growing and innovating in markets around the world.

Financial Growth of Nestle

A brief overview of Nestlé’s financial growth over the years:

Revenue:  Nestlé’s revenue has grown steadily over the years, from CHF 59.2 billion in 2010 to CHF 92.4 billion in 2022 .

Profit:  Nestlé’s profit has also grown steadily over the years, from CHF 9.4 billion in 2010 to CHF 15.4 billion in 2022.

Earnings per share:  Nestlé’s earnings per share have also grown steadily over the years, from CHF 2.00 in 2010 to CHF 3.00 in 2022.

Dividends:  Nestlé has paid a dividend every year since 1875. The dividend has grown steadily over the years, from CHF 0.10 per share in 2010 to CHF 0.25 per share in 2022.

Nestlé’s financial growth is due to a number of factors, including:

A strong global brand:  Nestlé is one of the most recognized brands in the world. This gives the company a significant advantage in the global marketplace.

A diversified product portfolio:  Nestlé has a wide range of products, which helps to insulate the company from economic downturns in any particular market.

A strong focus on innovation:  Nestlé is constantly investing in new products and technologies, which helps to keep the company ahead of the competition.

A commitment to sustainability:  Nestlé is committed to sustainable business practices, which helps to reduce the company’s environmental impact and improve its long-term profitability.

Nestlé is a well-managed company with a strong track record of financial growth. The company is well-positioned to continue to grow in the years to come.

Marketing Strategies of Nestle

Nestle is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies and has a range of marketing strategies to promote its many brands and products. Here are some of the key marketing strategies that Nestle employs:

Branding : Nestle’s marketing strategy relies heavily on the strength of its brands. Many of Nestle’s products are household names, such as Nescafe, KitKat, and Gerber, and the company invests heavily in brand recognition through advertising campaigns, sponsorships, and product placements.

Social media : Nestle uses social media platforms to engage with consumers and promote its products. The company has a presence on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where it shares product updates, promotions, and other content. Nestle also uses social media to gather feedback from customers and respond to customer inquiries and complaints.

Influencer marketing : Nestle also employs influencer marketing to reach new audiences and promote its products. The company partners with influencers in different markets to create content that showcases its products and engages with consumers.

Digital marketing : Nestle uses a range of digital marketing strategies, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and email marketing, to reach consumers online. The company also uses data analytics to track consumer behavior and tailor its marketing efforts to specific audiences.

Experiential marketing : Nestle also employs experiential marketing to create memorable experiences for consumers. This includes events such as pop-up stores, tasting events, and interactive displays that allow consumers to try Nestle’s products and learn more about the company.

Sponsorships : Nestle also sponsors a range of events and organizations, such as sports teams and music festivals, to increase brand awareness and promote its products. For example, Nestle has a longstanding partnership with the International Olympic Committee and is a major sponsor of the Olympic Games.

Health and wellness : Nestle also emphasizes health and wellness in its marketing strategy, particularly in markets where consumers are increasingly concerned about the nutritional value of the foods they consume. The company promotes its products as healthy and nutritious, and invests in research and development to create new products that meet consumer demand for healthier options.

Overall, Nestle’s marketing strategy is focused on building brand awareness, engaging with consumers through social media and influencer marketing, and creating memorable experiences that promote its products. The company also adapts its marketing strategy to local markets, tailoring its approach to specific cultural and regulatory environments.

Social Media Strategy of Nestle

Nestlé uses social media to connect with consumers, build relationships, and drive sales. The company has a presence on a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Nestlé’s social media strategy is focused on the following key areas:

Content creation:  Nestlé creates high-quality content that is relevant to its target audience. The company’s content is informative, engaging, and visually appealing.

Engagement:  Nestlé encourages engagement with its social media followers. The company responds to comments and questions, and it runs contests and promotions.

Listening:  Nestlé listens to what its social media followers are saying. The company uses this feedback to improve its products and services.

Measurement:  Nestlé measures the results of its social media campaigns. The company tracks website traffic, social media engagement, and sales.

Nestlé’s social media strategy is successful because it is focused on creating high-quality content, engaging with followers, and listening to feedback. The company’s social media campaigns have helped it to connect with consumers, build relationships, and drive sales.

Here are some specific examples of how Nestlé uses social media:

  • Nestlé uses Facebook to share recipes, tips, and information about its products.  The company also runs contests and promotions on Facebook.
  • Nestlé uses Twitter to share news and updates about the company.  The company also responds to customer questions and comments on Twitter.
  • Nestlé uses Instagram to share photos and videos of its products.  The company also runs contests and promotions on Instagram.
  • Nestlé uses YouTube to share videos about its products and company.  The company also runs contests and promotions on YouTube.

Nestlé’s social media strategy is a key part of the company’s overall marketing strategy. The company uses social media to connect with consumers, build relationships, and drive sales.

Also Read: Exploring the Brand Architecture of HUL

Controversies around Nestle

Nestle, being a global food and beverage company, has faced several controversies over the years. Here are some of the most notable controversies around Nestle:

Infant formula : In the 1970s, Nestle faced criticism over its promotion of infant formula in developing countries. The company was accused of encouraging mothers to use formula instead of breastfeeding, which led to health problems and even death for some infants. Nestle faced a boycott and protests, and eventually changed its marketing practices.

Child labor : Nestle has faced allegations of using child labor in its supply chain. In 2015, the company admitted to finding instances of child labor in its cocoa supply chain in Ivory Coast, and pledged to take steps to eliminate the practice.

Environmental impact : Nestle has also faced criticism over its impact on the environment. In 2018, the company was named one of the top plastic polluters in the world, with its products accounting for a significant amount of plastic waste in the oceans. Nestle has pledged to increase its use of recycled plastic and reduce its plastic packaging.

Water rights : Nestle has also been criticized for its water extraction practices. The company has faced protests and legal challenges in several countries over its use of groundwater for bottled water production. Critics argue that Nestle is depleting local water resources and undermining access to water for local communities.

Palm oil sourcing : Nestle has faced criticism over its sourcing of palm oil, which is associated with deforestation and habitat destruction. The company has pledged to eliminate deforestation from its supply chain and source sustainable palm oil.

Health claims : Nestle has faced criticism over health claims made for some of its products. For example, in 2019, the company was sued over its use of the term “no added sugars” on its Milo chocolate drink in Australia. The lawsuit alleged that the product contained added sugars and was therefore misleading to consumers.

Overall, Nestle has faced criticism over a range of issues, including its marketing practices, supply chain management, environmental impact, and health claims. The company has taken steps to address some of these issues, but continues to face scrutiny from critics and activists.

To read more content like this, subscribe to our newsletter

marketing case study of nestle

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Related Posts

Panerai Marketing

A Deep Dive into Marketing Strategy of Panerai

Mitsubishi Marketing

A Deep Dive into the Marketing Strategies of Mitsubishi Motors

List of brands owned by fast retailing.

Terms and Conditions

  • Platform Analysis & Benchmarking Measure the metrics that matter and compare your performance against your competitors AI Instagram Listening Use AI Instagram listening insights to power any decision Analysis & Benchmarking Measure the metrics that matter and compare your performance against your competitors Competitive Analysis & Benchmarking Gain competitive advantage and compare your performance on social media to your competitors Social Media Analytics & Reporting Measure the social media metrics that matter and optimize your strategy with data Social Media Campaigns Analysis Identify your best-performing content segments and replicate them AI Instagram Listening Use AI Instagram listening insights to power any decision AI Instagram Listening Back up any Instagram campaign hashtag with AI listening insights Influencers Identification Find the right partners to drive brand awareness and customer engagement Social Media Data Integration Expand your business line with the help of social media API integration Networks TikTok Facebook Instagram Twitter Linkedin Youtube Networks TikTok Instagram Linkedin Facebook Twitter Youtube Competitive Analysis & Benchmarking Gain competitive advantage and compare your performance on social media to your competitors Social Media Analytics & Reporting Measure the social media metrics that matter and optimize your strategy with data Social Media Campaigns Analysis Identify your best-performing content segments and replicate them AI Instagram Listening Back up any Instagram campaign hashtag with AI listening insights Influencers Identification Find the right partners to drive brand awareness and customer engagement Watch Product Demo Learn how to get started with Socialinsider Watch Demo const navigationSelections = document.querySelectorAll( ".navigation-selection" ); const networks = document.querySelectorAll(".networks"); const navigationResults = document.querySelectorAll( ".navigation-results-container" ); const navigationSolutionDropdown = document.getElementById( "navigation-solution-dropdown" ); const navigationResultsContainer = document.getElementById( "navigation-results-container" ); const grayBackground = document.getElementById("gray-background"); function removeActiveClassFromAllElements() { networks.forEach((network) => { network.classList.remove("selected"); }); navigationResults.forEach((navigationResult) => { navigationResult.classList.remove("selected"); }); navigationSelections.forEach((navigationSelection) => { navigationSelection.classList.remove("selected"); }); grayBackground.classList.remove("selected"); } document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { navigationSelections.forEach((navigationSelection) => { navigationSelection.addEventListener("click", function () { let windowWidth = window.innerWidth || document.documentElement.clientWidth || document.body.clientWidth; if (windowWidth { if (navigationSelection.contains(event.target)) { isClickInside = true; } }); // check is dropdown is visible by checking display property if ( navigationSolutionDropdown.style.visibility != "hidden" && !isClickInside ) { removeActiveClassFromAllElements(); networks.forEach((network) => { network.classList.add("selected"); }); } }); navigationSolutionDropdown.addEventListener("mouseleave", function (event) { let windowWidth = window.innerWidth || document.documentElement.clientWidth || document.body.clientWidth; if (windowWidth { network.classList.add("selected"); }); });
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Brand Analysis
  • Analytics & Reporting
  • Campaigns Analysis
  • Social Listening
  • Data & Studies Social Media Studies What Data Says Social Media Industry Reports Social Media Stats
  • Platforms Facebook Analytics Instagram Analytics Twitter Analytics LinkedIn Analytics YouTube Analytics
  • Start 14-Day Free Trial

Socialinsider Blog

[Brand Analysis] Nestlé's Social Media Strategy - Learn from the World's Largest Food Company

[Brand Analysis] Nestlé's Social Media Strategy - Learn from the World's Largest Food Company

Nestlé has a unified social media strategy and a strong brand positioning. Read this case study to discover the brand's marketing approach.

Elena Cucu

Nestlé has been around for a long time - for so long that it is over 150 years old.

The Swiss multinational conglomerate is probably one of the oldest and most famous brands of our time.

Over the years, Nestlé positioned itself as a brand leader in terms of approaching the digital era. What started as a manufacturer of milk-based products, today owns 10,000 different products across 2,000 different brands .

In today's case study, we'll go over Nestlé's social media strategy and discover how the brand managed to maintain a unique brand image through innovative campaigns and marketing strategies .

And because case studies and podcasts complete each other, we talked with Alexandra Reay , global social media and community manager at Nestlé, to see the marketing strategy behind this brand's success.

Let's get started! 🙌

Nestlé's Social Media Strategy

Get to know the brand identity behind Nestlé

Nestlé's social media channels

Nestlé on Facebook

Nestlé on instagram, nestlé on twitter.

Nestlé's social media campaigns

Nestlé turns a social media backlash into brand innovation

Benchmark Nestlé against its competitors with Socialinsider

1. Get to know the brand identity behind Nestlé

Nestlé is a multinational food and drink processing corporation that is based in Switzerland. It is the biggest food company in the world, measured by revenue.

According to its LinkedIn profile, the company has around 273,000 employees and factories or operations in almost every country in the world.

Its main products include baby food, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee, teas, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods, and snacks. Its most well-known brands are Nespresso, Nescafe, KitKat, Smarty's, Nesquick, Stouffers, Vittel, and Maggi.

As the world's largest food and beverage company, Nestlé's marketing strateg y has always been one step ahead. And they understood that the key behind digital success is creating value for customers.

This is Nestlé's logo.

However, the brand had its ups and downs.

In 2010, Nestlé went through a PR and social media catastrophe that was on everyone's lips at the time.

But they didn't give up. They worked so hard on their social media strategy , that the brand remained a major player in the food and beverage industry.

They managed to do that through a unified marketing strategy and a strong brand positioning. A significant role in this plays the logo and the slogan, which are easily recognizable.

2. Nestlé's social media channels

Nestlé has a solid presence on all social media platforms, but it's most active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The brand uses social media sites to engage with its consumers and enhance its brand identity.

The food conglomerate created regional social media profiles to connect with its customers globally for its wide range of products.

Nestlé uses social media to drive marketing, innovation, and leadership potential. To do that, the brand creates different content tailored to every platform's specifics, as Alexandra told us during our podcast episode.

Alexandra Reay, social media manager at Nestlé, talks about social media strategy.

According to Unmetric , Nestlé has 95 social media profiles, among which 36 are on Facebook, 21 on Twitter, and six on Instagram.

To better understand Nestlé's social media strategy, I used Socialinsider, a social media analytics , benchmarking, and reporting tool.

With the tool's help, I discovered that Nestlé has over 11 million followers on Facebook, more than 306K on Instagram, and over 276K on Twitter, which sums up to more than 12 million brand followers.

Measure Nestlé's social media strategy with Socialinsider.

Now that you have a sense of Nestlé's social media presence, let's go even deeper and understand how and what the brand does on every social platform.

With ​​11,624,391 followers, Facebook is by far the biggest social channel of Nestlé. One of the brand's objectives as part of their social media strategy was to improve their social channels, especially Facebook. And they succeeded!  

Nestlé shares posts related to what the brand is currently up to, its ongoing campaigns , and new product releases on this social platform.

This is an example of Nestlé's Facebook post.

The brand also uses this channel to talk about its corporate social responsibility measures.

Using an analytics tool like Socialinsider , you can evaluate a brand's performance on each social media channel.

For instance, you can see the brand's top-performing posts over the past six months in the image below.

These are Nestlé's top performing Facebook posts

Nestlé has 306,741 followers on Instagram and an engagement of 12K. The brand gained 3,011 new followers in the past six months, indicating that this platform's social media strategy pays off.

Like Facebook, Nestlé's Instagram page is designed to announce campaigns , new products, or even competitions.

This is an example of Nestlé's Instagram posts.

Having separate social media profiles is very smart because it can help a brand organize its marketing campaigns more effectively and target the right audiences.

This is a quote of Alexandra Reay, the social media manager at Nestlé.

Interestingly, even though Nestlé has many more followers on Facebook, the average engagement rate per post on Instagram was 0.169% in the past six months, compared to Facebook, where the average engagement rate per post was zero.

So if you needed another confirmation, there you have it - people tend to engage more with a brand on Instagram than on Facebook.

On Twitter, Nestlé has 276,807 followers and a pretty good overall performance.

Nestlé gained 2,456 new followers in the past six months and has an average engagement rate per tweet of 0.009%, according to Socialinsider's Twitter analytics tool .

Check Nestlé's Twitter overview with Socialinsider.

Even though its Twitter profile doesn't differ much in terms of content compared to Facebook or Instagram, it's worth mentioning that Nestlé seems to maintain Twitter as a medium of communication between the company and its audience.

This is an example of Nestlé's Twitter posting.

3. Nestlé's social media campaigns

Who doesn't love great social media campaigns?

Nestlé certainly does, as it managed to design clever campaigns to get closer to people and ultimately achieve essential business goals over the past years.

Social media campaigns represent the perfect funnel to connect and collaborate with your community. These are meant to have strong concepts with meaningful messages that can strengthen the brand's identity.

One of Nestlé's social media campaigns that has left a lasting impression on its audience is the one called "Generation Regeneration."  

This is an Instagram post of the "Generation Regeneration" Nestle campaign.

According to Nestlé , this campaign is built around the environmental threats of climate change. As a big corporation, the brand is committed to the cause, declaring to take actions in regeneration and thus helping the environment.

With 48 posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in the past six months for this campaign, Nestlé advocates for the benefits of having a plant-based diet or at least a flexitarian one.

This marketing campaign was the most successful on Instagram, with an engagement rate of 0.145%.

This is the overview of the campaign called "Generation Regeneration" of Nestlé.

Another fun and creative social media campaign of Nestlé is called "Healthier Kids" and is designed with a simple concept: ensuring healthy eating habits from a young age.

This is an Instagram post of Nestlé's "Healthier Kids" campaign.

And last but not least, Nestlé's "Empowering Women" social media campaign is pretty self-explanatory. Its message is to enhance gender balance in the workforce and to empower women through gender-neutral internal policies that defy stereotypes.

This is Nestlé's "Empowering Women" social media campaign.

4. Nestlé turns a social media backlash into brand innovation

In 2010, Nestlé went through a social media crisis when Greenpeace linked the food manufacturer with mass deforestation, criticizing its methods for acquiring palm oil.

This issue generated a massive buzz on social media. An analysis made on Twitter showed over 215,000 tweets on the topic only from 13th March to 22nd March 2010.

Nestlé not only became a trending topic on Twitter and basically every social platform, but it gained so much attention that it soon was picked up by traditional media, causing significant damage to the brand image.

So how did Nestlé handle this social media backlash?

The brand first suspended its sourcing from Sinar Mas, which was the first step to gaining its consumers' trust.

In terms of marketing strategy , Nestlé hired a new global head of digital and social media, who created the "digital acceleration team."

The DAT monitors social media sentiment 24 hours a day, communicating any issues observed in the social media sphere.

More than 10 years later, Nestlé tries to maintain the same marketing and communication strategy through its various sustainability campaigns.

Not only that, but they believe that the key to having a good relationship with your consumers is communication and honesty.

Alexandra-Reay-social-media-manager-at-Nestle-talks-about-communication-strategy

As Alexandra told us during one of our podcast episodes, she believes that the worst thing you can do as a social media manager when the brand receives negative comments is to stay silent.

Find out more about Alexandra's insights regarding Nestlé's marketing strategy in Insider Insights' podcast episode:

5. Benchmark Nestlé against its competitors with Socialinsider

After all is set and done, the real success behind a long-lasting social media strategy is dictated by data.

Apart from its solo social media performance, to see where a brand stands in today's crowded digital space, you must benchmark its performance against its competitors as well.

And to bring data to the game, I used Socialinsider, an analytics, benchmarking, and reporting tool .

In this case, I added Nestlé's biggest competitors (Mondelez, Unilever, Danone, Mars, and Heinz) in Socialinsider's benchmark tool and got in-depth insights regarding the brand's performance.

The profiles analyzed were the brands' Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles in the past six months.

For example, on Facebook, Nestlé has the most followers and the highest fan evolution, but Mondelez had the highest average engagement rate per post in the past six months, which is 0.332%.

See how Nestlé's Facebook performance stands against its competitors.

This indicates that even though Nestlé attracts new followers each month, they don't engage that much with its content despite posting 111 Facebook posts in the analyzed time range.

On Instagram, Mondelez posted the most content, on average, in the past six months, but Unilever was the one with the highest average engagement per day, followed closely by Nestlé with an average engagement rate per day of 367.43.

See how Nestlé's Instagram page performs against its competitors.

What's cool about Socialinsider is that you can compare any Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter page with an industry of your choice.

In the example below, I compared Nestlé's Twitter page within the FMCG food industry with Twitter profiles worldwide that have between 100K - 500K followers.

Compare Nestlé's performance with the industry.

According to our database, the engagement rate per profile, on average, in the FMCG food industry for profiles with 100K - 500K followers is 39.164%, which is 19.6 times higher than Nestlé's engagement rate per profile.

See where Nestlé's Twitter profile stands within the food indutry.

Since the brand only posted 213 tweets in the past six months and the average number of tweets for this industry is 696.7, Nestlé could improve their Twitter performance by posting more.

Final thoughts

Nestlé's social media campaigns have always been short and sweet. They rely heavily on organic content, knowing how to promote inventive ideas and place content to the most appropriate viewers.

But a successful social media strategy isn't all about that.

It's also essential to engage in honest conversations, solve issues, and use social media to listen and inspire your consumers.

Hopefully, this case study gave you a glimpse of Nestlé's social media strategy's different facets. And don't forget that these tactics can be applied to every marketing strategy in any industry.

Elena Cucu

Content Manager @ Socialinsider

Content & SEO Manager @ Socialinsider with 8 years of experience in marketing. I like to describe myself as a social butterfly with a curious mind, passionate about dancing and psychology.

You might also like

Brand Reputation Management: Strategies for Building Trust With Customers

Brand Reputation Management: Strategies for Building Trust With Customers

Sabina Varga

The Super Bowl Social Media Experience: Which Brands Won the Big Game in 2024

Andreea Udescu

[Brand Analysis] Innocent Drinks' Marketing Strategy: How Authenticity Defines Their Social Success

Elena Cucu

Improve your social media strategy with Socialinsider!

Use in-depth data to measure your social accounts’ performance, analyze competitors, and gain insights to improve your strategy.

marketing case study of nestle

Nestle PESTEL Analysis

marketing case study of nestle

Before we dive deep into the PESTEL analysis, let’s get the business overview of Nestle. Nestlé S.A. is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company considered one of the largest in the world. Here is a brief overview of their business:

Foundation and History:  Nestlé was founded in 1866 by Henri Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland. Initially, the company specialized in selling infant cereal, but over the years, it expanded its product portfolio through a series of acquisitions and brand developments.

Product Portfolio:  Nestlé has a diverse product range covering various categories such as dairy products, beverages, processed food, confectionery, infant nutrition, health science, and pet care. The company owns several well-known brands, including Nescafé, Kit Kat, Smarties, Nespresso, Stouffer’s, Gerber, Purina, and Maggi, among others.

Operations:  Nestlé operates in nearly every country globally, with over 400 factories across different continents. This vast presence enables the company to cater to various consumer tastes and preferences.

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility:  Nestlé has committed to several sustainability initiatives, such as aiming for zero environmental impact in their operations by 2030 and using more recyclable packaging. The company also invests in various corporate social responsibility initiatives in nutrition, water, rural development, and responsible sourcing.

Future Direction:  The company continuously invests in research and development to create new products and improve existing ones. As consumer preferences shift towards healthier and more sustainable products, Nestlé is focusing on improving the nutritional value of its products and reducing its environmental footprint.

Financial Performance 2023 : Total reported sales were CHF 93.0 billion, a decrease of 1.5% (FY-2022: CHF 94.4 billion).

Good food, Good growth: Nestle’s way of doing business!

Here is the PESTEL analysis of Nestle

A PESTEL analysis is a strategic management framework used to examine the external macro-environmental factors that can impact an organization or industry. The acronym PESTEL stands for:

  • Political factors: Relate to government policies, regulations, political stability, and other political forces that may impact the business environment. 
  • Economic factors: Deal with economic conditions and trends affecting an organization’s operations, profitability, and growth. 
  • Sociocultural factors: Relate to social and cultural aspects that may influence consumer preferences, lifestyles, demographics, and market trends.
  • Technological factors: Deal with developing and applying new technologies, innovations, and trends that can impact an industry or organization. 
  • Environmental factors: Relate to ecological and environmental concerns that may affect an organization’s operations and decision-making.
  • Legal factors: Refer to the laws and regulations that govern businesses and industries. 

In this article, we will do a PESTEL Analysis of Nestle.

PESTEL Analysis Framework: Explained with Examples

  • Regulatory Compliance:  Given its global presence, Nestlé must comply with various food safety, labeling, and product regulations across different countries. Any changes in these regulations can significantly impact Nestlé’s operations, costs, and strategies.
  • Political Stability:  Political stability in a country or region can significantly impact Nestlé’s operations. Political instability or conflicts can disrupt supply chains, production, or market access. Conversely, political stability can offer a conducive environment for business operations and growth.
  • Trade Policies:  Tariffs, import/export restrictions, and other trade policies can impact Nestlé’s business. For instance, changes in international trade agreements could impact the costs of raw materials or finished products, affecting the company’s profit margins.
  • Tax Policies:  Changes in corporate tax policies in the countries where Nestlé operates can impact its financial performance. For example, increased corporate tax rates could reduce the company’s net profits.
  • Government Initiatives:  Government initiatives can either positively or negatively affect Nestlé. For instance, government programs promoting healthy eating could impact the demand for some of Nestlé’s products. Conversely, subsidies or incentives in agriculture could lower costs for some raw materials.
  • Geopolitical Issues:  These could also have an impact on Nestlé’s operations. This includes Brexit, international relations, and other geopolitical shifts that could affect the company’s access to certain markets or its supply chain.
  • Global and Regional Economies:  The overall health of the global economy and specific regional economies can significantly impact Nestlé. Economic downturns or recessions may reduce consumer spending, affecting demand for Nestlé’s products. Conversely, economic growth can increase demand.
  • Exchange Rates:  As a multinational company operating in numerous countries, Nestlé deals in multiple currencies. Fluctuations in exchange rates can affect the company’s revenues, costs, and profits. For example, a strong Swiss Franc (Nestlé’s reporting currency) can reduce the value of sales and profits made in other currencies.
  • Inflation Rates:  Changes in inflation rates can affect both the cost of raw materials and consumers’ purchasing power. High inflation can increase costs and reduce demand if consumers cannot afford products.
  • Interest Rates:  Interest rates can impact Nestlé’s cost of capital. For instance, high-interest rates can increase the cost of borrowing for capital investments, while low-interest rates can make borrowing cheaper.
  • Unemployment Rates:  High unemployment rates can reduce consumer spending power, which may affect the demand for Nestlé’s products. Conversely, low unemployment rates might increase consumer spending, potentially boosting sales.
  • Consumer Confidence:  This measures how optimistic consumers are about their financial future. When consumer confidence is high, consumers are more likely to spend on non-essential goods, potentially benefiting companies like Nestlé.
  • Nestle’s Marketing Strategy of Expertise in Nutrition
  • Nestle SWOT Analysis

Sociocultural

  • Changing Consumer Preferences:  Consumer tastes and preferences are constantly changing. Trends such as health consciousness, organic products, and plant-based diets could impact the demand for various Nestlé products. Nestlé must anticipate and adapt to these changes to stay relevant.
  • Demographics and Lifestyle:  Age distribution, income levels, and lifestyle changes can influence the demand for Nestlé’s products. For example, an aging population might boost the demand for health and wellness products, while rising income levels could increase the demand for premium products.
  • Cultural Sensitivities:  As a global company, Nestlé operates in diverse cultures. Understanding cultural sensitivities, local customs, and tastes is crucial for product development, marketing, and overall business strategy.
  • Social Awareness and Ethics:  Consumers are increasingly concerned about ethical issues such as sustainability, fair trade, and animal welfare. Nestlé’s practices regarding these issues can affect its brand image and consumer loyalty.
  • Consumer Health Consciousness:  There’s a growing trend of health consciousness among consumers globally. People are becoming more aware of nutritional value and are often willing to pay premium prices for healthier alternatives. This trend influences the demand for Nestlé’s healthier and ‘better-for-you’ product ranges.
  • Attitudes towards Foreign Companies:  In some markets, consumers may prefer local brands or negatively perceive foreign companies. This can affect Nestlé’s market share and performance in these regions.

Technological

  • Production Technology:  Technological advances can improve efficiency, cost savings, and quality control in Nestlé’s manufacturing processes. This includes things like automation, AI, and other advanced manufacturing technologies.
  • Supply Chain and Logistics Technology:  Technology can significantly enhance supply chain and logistics management, leading to cost savings, better inventory management, and improved efficiency. Technologies such as IoT, blockchain, AI, and machine learning can significantly improve these areas.
  • Digital Marketing:  The rise of digital marketing and social media has transformed how companies interact with customers. Nestlé can leverage these platforms for advertising, customer engagement, brand awareness, and market research.
  • E-commerce:  The growth of online retail has created new sales channels for Nestlé’s products. This could affect Nestlé’s sales strategies and distribution channels.
  • Research and Development:  Technological advancements can support Nestlé’s research and development activities, leading to the development of new products or improvements to existing ones. This could be crucial for staying competitive and meeting changing consumer needs.
  • Data Analysis and Forecasting:  Technology has improved companies’ ability to collect, analyze, and use data. This can help Nestlé better understand market trends, consumer behavior, and operational performance, aiding in strategic decision-making.
  • Sustainability Technology:  Technological innovations can also contribute to sustainability efforts, an area of increasing importance for businesses. This could include technologies for reducing energy usage, waste, and emissions in production processes or creating more sustainable packaging.

Environmental

  • Climate Change:  Climate changes can affect the availability and cost of key raw materials for Nestlé, such as cocoa, coffee beans, and milk. This could impact the company’s supply chain and product costs.
  • Sustainability:  There’s a growing expectation from consumers, governments, and investors for businesses to operate sustainably. Nestlé’s strategies around waste management, energy use, water conservation, and sustainable sourcing can impact its brand reputation and compliance with regulations.
  • Packaging:  Nestlé, like other food and beverage companies, uses a lot of packaging for its products. The environmental impact of packaging is a significant concern, leading to regulations and consumer demand for more sustainable packaging solutions.
  • Regulations:  Environmental regulations can affect various aspects of Nestlé’s operations. This could include regulations around emissions, waste disposal, water use, and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in products.
  • Biodiversity:  Companies are increasingly expected to consider their impact on biodiversity. For Nestlé, this could relate to the sourcing of raw materials and the impact of its operations on local ecosystems.
  • Natural Disasters:  Natural disasters, which may be exacerbated by climate change, can disrupt Nestlé’s operations, including production facilities and supply chains.
  • Food Safety Regulations:  As a food and beverage company, Nestlé must comply with stringent food safety regulations in all its countries. These regulations cover product quality, ingredients, labeling, and packaging. Non-compliance can lead to fines, recalls, or damage to the company’s reputation.
  • Employment Laws:  Employment laws vary significantly across countries. These laws cover wages, working conditions, diversity, and employee rights. Nestlé must adhere to these laws to avoid legal issues and maintain a positive corporate image.
  • Environmental Laws:  Nestlé must comply with environmental laws related to waste disposal, emissions, energy use, etc. These laws can influence Nestlé’s production processes, costs, and sustainability initiatives.
  • Trade Regulations:  International trade regulations affect how Nestlé imports and exports goods across borders. Changes in tariffs, customs regulations, and trade agreements can impact Nestlé’s supply chain and profitability.
  • Advertising Laws:  There are laws and regulations governing how products can be marketed and advertised, which Nestlé must follow. Non-compliance could lead to legal consequences and harm the company’s reputation.
  • Intellectual Property Laws:  Nestlé, like any company, must manage its intellectual property rights, such as trademarks, patents, and copyrights. It must also ensure it does not infringe on the intellectual property rights of others.

Check out the PESTEL Analysis of Global Businesses

Related posts.

marketing case study of nestle

PESTEL Analysis of the construction industry in the UK

marketing case study of nestle

PESTEL Analysis of the healthcare industry in the US

marketing case study of nestle

PESTEL Analysis of the retail industry in the US

marketing case study of nestle

Siemens PESTEL Analysis

marketing case study of nestle

Lush Cosmetics PESTEL Analysis

marketing case study of nestle

AstraZeneca PESTEL Analysis

marketing case study of nestle

Carrefour PESTEL Analysis

marketing case study of nestle

Jaguar Land Rover PESTEL Analysis

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Return to frontpage

  • Case studies

07 December 2021 12:28:14 IST

Nestlé powers on with a rural revamp and innovation

marketing case study of nestle

I n March 2021, Suresh Narayanan, Chairman and Managing director of FMCG major Nestlé announced that the company is set to reach more than 1.2 lakh villages, each with over 5,000 people, in rural India by 2024. To cater to the needs of rural consumers, Nestlé is changing its product portfolio by renovating some products. Suresh Narayanan said, “Rural is an important dimension of the next phase for Nestlé.”

Nestlé has always been associated with the urban market, and young city dwellers in India too typically take a liking to its product portfolio in India. After the Maggi fiasco in 2015, Nestlé wanted to reduce its dependence on a few products and widen its reach. Nestlé India Ltd (NIL) launched nearly 35 products within a span of just six months in 2016. At that time, it had a presence in just 6,000 villages across the country.

Fierce competition

Nestlé is a late entrant. Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) was one of the first in India to develop a strong rural distribution network in the 1940s and gain a wide reach. Later, in the 1990s, HUL expanded its distribution network through Project Shakti, which helped women become entrepreneurs by selling HUL goods. The project helped HUL cover almost 50 per cent of all the 6,00,000+ Indian villages.

Other FMCG companies are not far behind — ITC catered to nearly 1,00,000 villages in 2021. P&G is strengthening its network to reach more rural areas. Marico has increased its number of stockists to 6,200, up by 30 per cent. Dabur, with over 6.7 million outlets in both urban and rural areas, attributed 46 per cent of its total sales to rural alone.

Initially, Nestlé’s focus was on tier 1 and tier 2 cities from where it was witnessing high demand. It then expanded its focus to smaller towns with 10,000 to 15,000 people. To improve reach, the company started researching customers’ needs and shopping habits in different geographies. This helped the company to come up with strategies specific to each market and tailor its products accordingly.

Product diversification

Nestlé had always relied on a few flagship products, such as Maggi and Nescafé. Once it started catering to rural markets, it started putting out tailor-made products in different packages. Between 2016 and 2018, Nestlé launched 39 new products. These included Masala Fusion dairy whitener, Greek Yogurt Grekeyo, and Nestlé Everyday Chai in three varieties.

It launched Nestlé a+ Banglar Misthi Dai, and Ceregrow organic cereals, Lactgrow for toddlers, and products in the weight management category like OPTIFAST. Under the Maggi range, it launched new variants of sauces, soups, pasta, and poha . New flavours of Maggi — Yummy Capsica and Chatpata Tomato — were launched along with atta spinach noodles. To cater to growing demand from towns and tier 2 and tier 3 cities, Nestlé launched Maggi fried rice masala, Paneer masala mix, and Nestlé Ceremeal Daliya.

Related content

At the same time, Nestlé also withdrew some products which were not garnering enough sales. These included health drink, Milo, as it had failed to gather enough momentum in spite of its long-lasting presence. Other products that Nestlé decided to remove from the shelves included Nestlé Chocostik, butter, and Nestlé Choo. With the rural push, Nestlé had covered 89,000 villages by 2019.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, growth in the urban areas tanked, but the rural markets showed accelerated growth. In the quarter ending December 2020, while Nestlé’s overall sales grew by 10 per cent, urban sales grew by just 6 per cent. Narayanan was of the view that the main reason for the falling demand from urban markets was the reverse migration that took place in the wake of the lockdown imposed to prevent the spread of the virus.

At the same time, semi-urban and rural India were experiencing growth. For example, Maggi had found several takers in rural markets, pushed by advertisements in local languages and smaller packs priced at ₹5.

As of early 2021, rural areas accounted for 25 per cent of Nestlé’s revenue, and the company announced that it would continue to concentrate on the rural markets due to growing demand. However, Nestlé was still behind the other FMCG companies, which had an average revenue of 35 per cent from the rural areas. In order to reach 120,000 villages, Narayanan looked at introducing customised products, and different packages and distribution channels.

Narayanan was also positive about the demand for packaged products growing further, owing to the bottom of the pyramid shrinking and the estimated 140 million households expected to move into the affluent class by 2030. In the rural areas, Nestlé was in competition with players such as Unilever, ITC, Dabur, and so on, in a highly-penetrated market. These companies offer a wider range of products that enjoy immediate recall among rural consumers. For Nestlé, only Maggi has mass appeal.

To capture the rural markets, it is important for companies to reach customers through direct channels, experts said. Most FMCG companies reached more than 60 per cent of their outlets through direct channels. But Nestlé reached only 1.5 million outlets directly of the total 4.5 million outlets, and much of this reach was in the urban region.

Another issue that Nestlé needed to address was the high price of its products. Except for Maggi, and some varieties of chocolate, the rest of its products were not available at low price points.

India has the world’s largest rural population. According to the 2011 census, rural markets comprise more than 6,40,000 villages with 850 million people. Despite increasing urbanisation, over half of India’s population still lives in the rural areas. Around 15 per cent of the rural population lived in poverty as of 2020. The average size of the rural household is 4.7. The rural FMCG market in India accounts for 40 per cent of the overall FMCG market in India.

The people in villages account for half of the country’s GDP and their consumption patterns are changing gradually. They demand high-quality products, just like their urban counterparts. The consumer goods market in India’s rural areas, which stood at $12 billion in 2019, is expected to rise to $100 billion by 2025.

The rural population is turning tech-savvy and, with the growing penetration of smartphones and the internet, rural consumers are aware and knowledgeable about brands and products. These consumers demand high-quality products that help them live on a par with their urban counterparts. According to Kearney India Retail Index, with the increasing use of mobile phones and availability of the internet, the rural markets have been uplifted.

4As of rural marketing

The 4Ps of marketing are a standard for marketing strategy. But rural marketing needs something different — these are the 4As — acceptability, affordability, availability, and awareness. For any company to be successful in rural India, an adequate mix of the 4As is necessary.

Acceptability

Products designed for urban consumers may not be suitable for rural customers. It is important to ensure acceptability. Rural customers demand products with high utility value and convenience to use. In smaller villages, the demand is for products that help save money and effort. Godrej Consumer Products, for example, created acceptability for their range by showcasing the products at rural haats , melas , and religious gatherings.

Nestlé introduced several products specific to rural India to gain acceptability among customers. These include Maggi Fried rice masalas, paneer masala mix, and Nestlé Ceremeal Daliya.

Affordability

When the income of average Indians is considered, people in the rural areas earn less than half their urban counterparts do. In 2019, the government’s estimates of per capita income in terms of Net Value showed that urban per capita income was ₹98,435, whereas in the rural areas it was ₹40,925.

It is the foremost requirement that all products and services designed for rural areas are affordable. At the same time, the rural population needs products of high quality, so it is necessary to design products that are value-adding for rural consumers. They prefer smaller packs as they are more affordable.

This has led to the proliferation of sachet packaging in India. Coca-Cola introduced 200 ml PET bottles priced at ₹5 to push the beverage into the market. Nestlé too has been bringing in some products like Maggi and a few types of chocolate in smaller quantities priced low, to make them affordable.

Availability

India has over six lakh villages, spread out across the country. Over a quarter of these villages are not connected through all-weather roads. It is important for FMCG companies to make their products available in the hinterland if they want to take advantage of the demand there. The last-mile distribution is, however, a challenge in India. FMCG major HUL addressed it through its ‘Project Shakti’. Nestlé is available in nearly 90,000 villages, which still left a lot of villages uncovered.

The company could consider replicating the highly popular até Você door-to-door micro-distribution system that it has successfully used in Brazil. In this system, distributors and resellers from the local community sell Nestlé products in their neighbourhoods. Though Nestlé used this system in the urban markets of Brazil, a similar programme can be envisaged to reach the rural population in India.

While literacy levels are lower in rural areas than in urban areas, growing internet adoption has made it easy to reach people and create awareness. At the same time, marketers may find it difficult to cater to the rural population as most of the advertisements in the country are urban-centric. The fact that languages and dialects change every few miles makes it important for FMCG companies like Nestlé to come up with specific programmes for the rural population.

One unique awareness-building programme started by HUL to reach consumers in the rural hinterland was a free mobile radio service called ‘Kan Khajura Tesan’. This mobile-based, on-demand entertainment initiative was launched in Bihar. Through this service, customers could listen to songs, dialogues from popular movies, jokes and poetry in Hindi and Bhojpuri by calling a particular number. These programmes were interlaced with advertisements for HUL products.

(Faria Zafar is Associate Consultant, and Indu Perepu is Research Faculty, at IBS Case Research Center, Hyderabad.)

Case Study of Nestle

In this article you will learn about Nestle case study which includes different types of Pricing Strategies that Nestle has used.

→ How did Nestle manage to make that much money?

Table of Contents

Nestle case study

Products offered by nestle.

Breakfast cereals, beverages, dairy, chocolates, nutritious foods and food services are all offered by Nestle.

Products Nestle Case Study Marketing

They do, however, believe that what works now might not tomorrow.

The brand focuses on increasing consumer satisfaction and enjoyment, enabling better health, and making the greatest nutrition accessible to everyone.

Competitors of Nestle: A Case Study

The corporation is a major player in the global food and beverage market because thirty of its brands had earnings of more than $1 billion in 2010.

Nestle faces significant competition from Danone and Unilever. Like Nestle, these two are industry titans in the food and beverage sector.

Nestle Handles, on the other hand, positioned itself in the market by implementing a new accounting technique that helped to drive down its cost of sales.

Nestle, the most well-known food maker in the world, competes fiercely with Unilever.

Target Market of Nestle

The distinctive feature of Nestle is that it provides a broad selection of products that cater to audiences of all ages, from 2-year-olds to working adults.

KidsKoko Krunch, Caregrow, Lactogrow
Working ProfessionalsSunrise, Nescafe
General AudiencesMaggi, KitKat, Milkmaid

→Working Professionals

Who doesn’t want to feel fresh?

→General Audiences

For the broader public, Nestle offers a number of additional items like KitKat, Milkmaid, and Maggi.

Nestle’s strategies for Digital Marketing

Regardless of whether they are offline or online, it has always concentrated on the most modern marketing techniques strategies.

Nestle: Partner with influential celebrities

Nescafe, a Nestle product, works with celebrities to promote their message and raise awareness of their brand.

Also, they developed this campaign during the Covid Pandemic to motivate individuals and inspire them to keep striving for their goals regardless of their circumstances.

Nestle: Product localization

Take Japan as an example, where the company’s main entry point was through chocolates infused with coffee.

Nestle: Co-branding

Do you know anything about Android KitKat?

Nestle has signed another agreement with Starbucks to accomplish two goals simultaneously.

Co-branding is a fantastic way to expand your reach and enter a new market. Startups looking to build their brand or introduce a new product can profit from this marketing.

Nestle: Content Marketing 

As an illustration, the “Meri Maggi” channel has more than 530 videos and 5,71,000 subscribers.

Nestle: Out-of-Home Advertising

Whether on benches, hoardings, or banners, Nestle’s brands have gained attention for their originality and contextual relevance.

Additionally, they can inexpensively reach a large number of individuals with the aid of OTT.

Nestle: Run marketing strategies that encourage connections and unite customers

He therefore recorded these meetings and produced a 42-minute web video documentary from them. Arnaud and his friends had a cup of Nescafe throughout the sessions.

The video generated excitement among viewers, who were eager to learn how to develop genuine relationships from their online friendships.

Nescafe quickly rose to fame online by positioning itself as a product that fosters relationships and friendships.

Nestle’s Social Media Marketing Strategy

Nestle’s social media presence.

About 23.3K people follow page for Nestle has 11 million likes.Nestle has roughly 21K followers.YouTube channel has about 95K subscribers

Nestle’s Facebook

Nestle India has designed its Facebook. It shares posts related to what Nestle India is currently up to. It also announces its new launches, talks about its corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures, etc.

Nestle’s Instagram

Nestle’s twitter.

Nestle India has been maintaining its Twitter profile as a medium of communication between the company and its audience. It also solves queries related to its products by replying to every comment and mentions done by the general public on the platform.

Nestle’s YouTube

Nestle’s pricing strategy.

The moment you make a mistake in pricing, you’re eating into your reputation or your profits.” Katharine Paine.

Nestle’s revenue is steadily increasing, which shows that its products were successfully identified and positioned in the market. In general, Nestle’s products are more expensive than those of the retailing brand.

1- Price Skimming: Nestle

When using price skimming as a pricing strategy, a business sets its price high at first then gradually reduces it.

2-Inexpensive Pricing Strategy: Nestle

Nestle has a large number of brands and a variety of products, many of which are priced fairly. Market segmentation is used to determine pricing. Target audiences are typically included in market segmentation.

In the instance of Nestle’s Maggi noodles, this took place. Compared to other Nestle products, it is regarded as being reasonably priced. However, Maggi may appear to be a little expensive when compared to other noodle brands on a global scale. Bundle price strategy.

3- Penetration Pricing Strategy: Nestle

Offering new items at lower prices than competitors in an effort to attract more customers away from them is known as penetration pricing.

4- Psychological pricing strategy: Nestle

Instead of costing £9, Nestle Aero bliss was marketed for £8.99. This pricing strategy will influence the consumer’s psychology favorably and encourage them to purchase the product.

5- Stock Keeping Units: Nestle

As a result, it began providing tiny pouches for everyday use. This has made the pouches far less expensive than larger packs, enabling various customer segments to purchase Nestle’s products.

6- Discounts offered: Nestle

7- competitive pricing strategy: nestle.

Analyzing the pricing policies strategies of its competitors is another broad strategy that Nestle employs. Nestle has a number of brands, and each brand has a distinct department that analyses the pricing tactics of its competitors.

Global pricing strategies of Nestle

Nestle has developed into one of the top parent companies with prosperous branches operating under its umbrella. Nestle has been successful with consumers because it adapts to various price tactics based on the places it sells in and the products it offers.

Nestle Company’s pricing strategy- Key Insights

✔Nestle was initially developed by Heinrich for the purpose of supplying milk formula for infants. He discovered that it could be made from powdered milk, sugar, and other natural foods.

Upcoming plans of Nestle

Other articles, related posts, difference between competitive advantage and comparative advantage, types of competitive advantage | why it is important, marketing mix of walmart | marketing 7p’s, 11 price skimming examples, 16 examples of penetration pricing, advantages and disadvantages of price skimming: when to use price skimming, advantages and disadvantages of penetration pricing strategy | examples, apple: integrated marketing communication (imc), how to create a digital marketing strategy, difference between 4ps and 7ps of marketing.

  • Business Essentials
  • Leadership & Management

Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)

  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Digital Transformation
  • Finance & Accounting
  • Business in Society
  • For Organizations
  • Support Portal
  • Media Coverage
  • Founding Donors
  • Leadership Team
  • Harvard Business School →
  • HBS Online →

marketing case study of nestle

Digital Marketing Strategy

Key concepts, who will benefit, marketing professionals, non-marketing professionals, entrepreneurs.

marketing case study of nestle

What You Earn

Certificate of Completion

Certificate of Completion

Boost your resume with a Certificate of Completion from HBS Online

Earn by: completing this course

Marketing in the Digital Era

marketing case study of nestle

  • DTC Brands: Fad or Disruption?
  • DTC Brands: Innovations and Challenges, Part I
  • DTC Brands: Innovations and Challenges, Part II
  • Incumbent Responses

Featured Exercises

Crafting a digital marketing plan.

marketing case study of nestle

  • Setting Objectives
  • Defining Target Audience
  • Determining Value Proposition
  • Identifying Metrics

Acquiring Customers, Part 1: Paid Media

marketing case study of nestle

  • The Challenges of Reaching and Acquiring Customers Online
  • Search Advertising
  • Display Advertising
  • Utilizing Paid Media Channels
  • Measuring Paid Media

Acquiring Customers, Part II: Owned and Earned Media

marketing case study of nestle

  • Owned Media
  • Earned Media
  • Influencer Marketing

Engaging Customers

marketing case study of nestle

  • Personalization
  • From Storytelling to Story-Making
  • Connecting Customers and Building Community

Allocating Budget and Measuring Success

marketing case study of nestle

  • Budget Allocation
  • Customer Lifetime Value
  • Adobe Simulation
  • The Future of Marketing

marketing case study of nestle

How to Formulate a Successful Business Strategy

Our difference, about the professor.

marketing case study of nestle

Sunil Gupta Digital Marketing Strategy

Dates & eligibility.

No current course offerings for this selection.

All applicants must be at least 18 years of age, proficient in English, and committed to learning and engaging with fellow participants throughout the course.

Learn about bringing this course to your organization .

Learner Stories

marketing case study of nestle

Digital Marketing Strategy FAQs

What are the learning requirements in order to successfully complete the course, and how are grades assigned.

Participants in Digital Marketing Strategy are eligible for a Certificate of Completion from Harvard Business School Online.

Participants are expected to fully complete all coursework in a thoughtful and timely manner. This will mean meeting each week’s course module deadlines and fully answering questions posed therein. This helps ensure your cohort proceeds through the course at a similar pace and can take full advantage of social learning opportunities. In addition to module and assignment completion, we expect participation in the social learning elements of the course by offering feedback on others’ reflections and contributing to conversations on the platform. Participants who fail to complete the course requirements will not receive a certificate and will not be eligible to retake the course.

More detailed information on course requirements, including the Adobe Data Driven Operating Model Simulation (one of the assignments), will be communicated at the start of the course. No grades are assigned for Digital Marketing Strategy. Participants will either be evaluated as complete or not complete.

Can you tell me a little more about the budget allocation simulation?

The budget allocation simulation (Adobe Data Driven Operating Model Simulation) will be part of module 6 of the course. It is similar to a mini capstone experience, in that it encourages participants to draw on their knowledge from the rest of the course to make investment decisions in the simulation. It is the very same simulation included in the MBA program's required curriculum marketing course, and, while designed to be challenging, it is ungraded and assessed based on completion. We recommend budgeting approximately 1.5 hours to complete the simulation. Full instructions for how to complete the simulation will be provided to course registrants.

What materials will I have access to after completing Digital Marketing Strategy?

You will have access to the materials in every prior module as you progress through the program. Access to course materials and the course platform ends 60 days after the final deadline in the program.

How should I list my certificate on my resume?

Once you've earned your Certificate of Completion, list it on your resume along with the date of completion:

Harvard Business School Online Certificate in Digital Marketing Strategy [Cohort Start Month and Year]

List your certificate on your LinkedIn profile under "Education" with the language from the Credential Verification page:

School: Harvard Business School Online Dates Attended: [The year you participated in the program] Degree: Other; Certificate in Digital Marketing Strategy Field of Study: Leave blank Grade: "Complete" Activities and Societies: Leave blank

Description:

Digital Marketing Strategy is a 7-week, 35-40 hour online certificate program from Harvard Business School. Digital Marketing Strategy equips professionals with the tools, mindset, and trends to make decisions about digital marketing strategy and tactics, including how to position a product or service for success, acquire and engage customers, and measure both performance of near-term campaigns and longer-term customer value.

Related Program

marketing case study of nestle

CLIMB enables new and experienced leaders to ignite their careers with a combination of vital and forward-looking business skills, self-reflection, and an immersive cohort-based learning experience with a diverse global network.

Nestlé, the baby food pioneer, wants to cash in on the world’s aging population problem

Mark Schneider sitting on a stage

There’s no running away from the demographic change. A large chunk of the global population will hit their senior years in the coming decades, with the number of people aged 60 years and above doubling between 2020 and 2050.  

As alarming as population aging may be for economic growth and public finances, it presents an opportunity for Swiss food and nutrition conglomerate Nestlé. 

The company, whose founder invented the first form of infant formula, is now prioritizing products for the elderly.      

“The 50+ age group in most countries around the world is going to increase significantly over the next 10 to 20 years,” Nestlé’s CEO Mark Schneider told the Financial Times . “With that, and with the specific nutritional needs of that age group, there is an opportunity for us.” 

Advancements in science and technology, along with economic development taking billions out of poverty, are leading to longer life expectancy across most of the world. At the same time, many developed countries are suffering from staggeringly low birth rates—Italy’s births have dropped for 15 consecutive years now, while Finland’s aging population has been growing rapidly.  

To keep up with these parallel trends, Nestlé’s Health Science division wants to offer more supplements that cater to the different consumption patterns of older people, including the need to age healthily, for example by maintaining their weight or curbing blood sugar levels. 

Keeping up with the population

Shifting demographic trends have already begun to impact Nestlé’s business. For instance, the company closed one of its baby formula plants in China last year , citing plunging birth rates hurting demand for infant nutrition products.

Baby food is still big business for Nestlé—the company has a long and complex history in this segment, which accounted for roughly 15% of its profits in 2023—but such occurrences are only likely to become more common as the number of babies declines in more and more countries.

Nonetheless, Schneider said the company’s growing interest in the elderly does not come at the expense of its baby food arm.

“We’re not walking away from what we got started on, which is infant nutrition,” he said. 

“But we do see that in most economies around the world, the bigger demographic opportunity is among the middle-aged and elderly.”

Nestlé has been affected by emerging trends beyond demographics, such as the meteoric rise of weight-loss drugs. To help it ride the tide, Nestlé recently launched a new line of packed foods called Vital Pursuit , which it says can support the needs of those taking appetite-suppressing medication through portion control and better nutritional balance.

That’s a case of having to adapt to a suddenly different reality, which can be a dangerous time for established businesses. A gradually aging population, on the other hand—while alarming for economists—at least gives companies like Nestlé plenty of advance warning. No matter what happens in the next few years, you can be pretty sure the world isn’t getting any younger.

Latest in Lifestyle

A superyacht moored, with a blue sky

The climate economics of the world’s 6,000 superyachts: ‘It’s not an entirely rational decision’

Jessica Gunning and Richard Gadd attend SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations "Baby Reindeer" at SAG-AFTRA Foundation Robin Williams Center

‘Real-life Martha’ from ‘Baby Reindeer’ sues Netflix for $170 million over ‘biggest lie in television history’

Usher posing with a bottle in his hand

As Rémy Cointreau profits slump 30% and fine tequila becomes more popular, will American rap fans help French cognac rebound?

The best restaurant in the world right now is Barcelona’s Disfrutar.

Nearly half of the world’s top 50 restaurants are in Europe—and Barcelona has grabbed the top spot

a group of people holding up a banner at a teachers' strike

U.K. teachers, who feel like they’re ‘severely underpaid,’ are spending their own money to help students, study finds

MADRID, SPAIN - MAY 29: EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO BOOK COVERS Taylor Swift performs on stage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium on May 29, 2024 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Xavi Torrent/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )

London’s luxury hotels unveil ‘gig-tripping packages’ with karaoke and glittery welcome drinks—ahead of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour

Most popular.

marketing case study of nestle

Cold Stone Creamery is facing a legal battle after a New York woman discovered that her ‘pistachio’ ice cream contained no real pistachios

marketing case study of nestle

It really might be different this time as the Fed puzzles over why high rates aren’t hitting the economy harder

marketing case study of nestle

After 12 ‘shocking’ months of broken heat records, scientists say Earth is 4 years away from crossing 1.5 degrees of heating

marketing case study of nestle

Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO, says Steve Jobs ‘screamed in his face’ telling him to fire his entire leadership team—and he was right

marketing case study of nestle

He taught at MIT, worked at Morgan Stanley, and convinced Bill Ackman and Galaxy to back his $200 million crypto fund by his early 30s. His future is now in jeopardy

marketing case study of nestle

Traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage? Some retirees aren’t allowed to choose

  • Customer Stories

Nestle smarties candy boxes

Nestlé S.A.: Achieving a global cloud transformation

Explore nestlé’s journey with sap.

With sales of more than one billion products a day, Nestlé S.A. is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies. And with over 2,000 brands in 188 countries, the company’s operations are as large as they are complex. Nestlé’s journey with SAP began 20 years ago when it standardized its global ERP systems. Today, cloud solutions from SAP help support the digitization of everything from advanced analytics, customer experience, sustainability tracking to workforce and talent management. 

Employees worldwide have a single point-of-entry to all SAP applications.

Increased system availability with a simplified global it infrastructure., terabytes of data moved to the cloud., the challenge, strengthen the core: building an it infrastructure fit for global scale and complexity.

To stay in the hearts and minds of consumers for 156 years as Nestlé has, you need to embrace change. But when your company sells more than a billion products each day and employs more than 275,000 people who manage over 2,000 brands in 188 countries, that’s easier said than done. 

Nestlé’s business models and routes to market are changing as constantly as the world around us. Consumer expectations have shifted, and digital commerce is accelerating quickly. Supporting a future ready workforce with great employee experiences and efficiency at scale.  

Nestlé knew that at the core of every successful company is a solid IT infrastructure built to utilize data and provide the business insights that guide decision-making. And so it began its digital transformation journey.

The Solution

Transforming with a seamless journey to the cloud.

To ensure a smooth, disruption-free transition to a more dynamic, reliable, and scalable infrastructure, Nestlé selected the RISE with SAP solution—a complete offering of ERP software, industry practices and outcome-driven services designed to help companies take advantage of cloud computing in their mission-critical, core systems. With its global cloud transformation, Nestlé is now able to automate business processes across its operations, create innovative business models at global scale and achieve greater agility and resilience. 

All of Nestlé’s cloud solutions are integrated and feed into its analytics tools allowing 275,000 employees worldwide to have a single point-of-entry to all SAP applications. This is a major game-changer, reducing the time and effort to manage IT systems. 

With help from SAP Services and Support , including SAP MaxAttention services and the SAP Solution Delivery Center group, Nestlé shut down nine data centers and more than 10,000 servers. This enabled the company to migrate thousands of applications, 300 instances of SAP software, and a total of 1,200 terabytes of data to the cloud. Despite the size and complexity of the project, it was delivered on time, on budget, and without disruption to the business.  

“What we have between the Nestlé IT teams and the SAP Services and Support team is a true partnership that delivered on an ambitious transformation program—one that’s critical to Nestlé’s future success in the marketplace,” Chris Wright, CIO. 

Optimizing recruitment to retirement processes

One of the first areas of Nestlé’s digital transformation was the transformation of HR systems. The company used SAP SuccessFactors to standardize and automate HR processes that support everything from recruitment to retirement. Nestlé also uses SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to develop custom extensions of SAP SuccessFactors for situations such as high-volume hiring during seasonal surges.  

By creating a hiring application that allows for batch handling and validation of employment data, Nestlé sped up the hiring process and made it much less cumbersome. Additionally, Nestlé now has a chatbot that speaks over 20 languages and answers simple and common questions from thousands of candidates each week without input (interactions) from HR professionals, providing a more seamless experience to the candidates and allowing the Nestlé team to focus on other work.

Giancarlo Pala Head of IT HR / Nestlé S.A. 

Transforming Customer Experience with One-Stop Shop

Nestlé is enhancing the customer experience for its business customers by streamlining the ordering, tracking, and invoicing processes. The existing approach relied on frequent telephone contact, resulting in time-consuming processes and potential errors. To overcome these challenges and adapt to the "Consumerization of Commerce," Nestlé implemented a global platform based on SAP Commerce Cloud. This platform eliminates the need for telephone contact by providing real-time insights into orders, invoices, and delivery information.

By offering a digital self-service portal, Nestlé improves the ordering and payment process, making it easier, quicker, and more efficient for retailers, wholesalers, supermarkets, and distributors. The unified one-stop shop built on SAP Commerce Cloud has revolutionized the previous customer service approach, reducing waiting times, enhancing flexibility, and ensuring transparency. This transition aligns with Nestlé's recognition of the importance of offering a seamless digital customer experience to stay competitive and meet evolving consumer expectations. The implementation of the platform not only benefits customers but also optimizes internal processes, increases flexibility, and supports Nestlé's sustainability efforts through paperless invoicing and better insights into orders, deliveries, and transportation.

Pablo Nill  Sr. Product Group Manager Customer Service Information Technology / Nestlé S.A. 

Better IT infrastructure means better business efficiency and agility

Nestlé has seen a range of benefits from its implementation of RISE with SAP, which has enabled a rapid and cost-effective cloud transformation, reducing costs, and improving the security and compliance of its applications. In simplifying its global IT infrastructure, the company has increased systems availability to 99.97% with outage times reduced from six hours to seven minutes. With SAP BTP, the company can now deploy digital assets 10 times faster than before, increasing business agility and reducing time spent managing IT. 

Business units such as human resources have seen improvements in their operations, too. Not only do they benefit from innovative applications like the multilingual chatbot, but increased automation has helped streamline and automate processes. Nestlé has also standardized the annual bonus and salary review processes across the company. Instead of taking a different approach in each country, 15,000 managers in more than 100 countries now use one common solution that has automated 95% of review processes.  

The transition to a customer-oriented approach and improved customer experience has yielded significant benefits. The reliance on the internal ERP system has diminished with the implementation of SAP Commerce Cloud, enabling easier connections and freeing the company from IT system constraints. This enhanced flexibility has led to smoother processes and better visibility of ongoing activities. Customers can now manage orders and inquiries independently, allowing the customer service team to focus on more complex customer questions or provide additional support to the sales force teams. 

Nestlé has strong commitments when it comes to sustainability and is using the information architecture of SAP to understand how its processes, supply chain, and manufacturing practices can be optimized to achieve these. 

Future Plans

Improving the consumer experience.

With Nestlé’s direct-to-consumer business increasing by more than 14% in the last year, the company is piloting SAP Commerce Cloud-based applications and portals to ensure that the customer has the same shopping experience buying directly from Nestlé as they do from a retailer.  

Nestlé plans to continue its journey to migrate its entire business operations to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition , with finance and procurement already live. 

Nestlé’s digital transformation with SAP is helping to achieve their mission to unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone. And with SAP cloud solutions at the core, there is nothing stopping the company from fulfilling its purpose to be a force for good. 

SAP helps Nestlé S.A. run better

Key business outcomes and benefits.

  • Reduced time spent on IT, allowing the company to quickly adjust business models and enter new markets
  • Increased reliability, resilience, and performance of the platform
  • Enhanced visibility and transparency
  • 70% of hiring tasks now automated, improving data quality and cutting processing time by up to 90% in some markets

Featured solutions and services

  • RISE with SAP can transition your current ERP data and processes to the cloud with less risk and without compromise. The bundle of tailor-made ERP software, transformation services, business analytics, and partner expertise guides you along a personalized path to the cloud. 
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition is a ready-to-run cloud ERP that delivers the latest industry best practices and continuous innovation. 
  • SAP Business Technology Platform is a unified, business-centric platform that helps companies decide confidently, act with integrity, connect processes, data, and experiences, and achieve continued business innovation
  • SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite offers individualized experiences and strategic solutions – with mobile self-services available anytime, anywhere that empower employees to reach their full potential. 
  • SAP MaxAttention can help you realize the full potential of your intelligent enterprise vision with on-site, premium access to trusted SAP experts, tools, and methodologies that can help deliver your expected outcomes successfully with SAP solutions.
  • SAP Commerce Cloud solution provides a trusted e-commerce platform to help you innovate at scale and tap enterprise-wide data to boost profits and customer satisfaction.  

About Nestlé S.A.

Nestlé S.A. is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since 2014. 

IndustryRegionCompany Size
Consumer ProductsEMEA275,000

Explore more customer stories

  • Find customer stories relevant to your business
  • Deutschland
  • Asia, Australia & New Zealand
  • Europe, Middle East & Africa
  • United States & Canada
  • Latinoamérica

Nestlé’s CMO shares her strategy for accelerating digital transformation at scale

Digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. While every journey will be different, we can learn from leading brands as they advance their digital maturity. Here, Nestlé’s Global CMO, Aude Gandon, takes us through the company’s approach to global digital marketing.

Staying relevant in today’s dynamic environment requires embracing constant change. And as Nestlé’s global chief marketing officer, my mission is to accelerate our marketing digital transformation across the entire organisation.

As a 156-year-old company with more than 2,000 brands — including icons like Kit Kat, Nespresso, and Purina — we believe that data and technology, along with our organisation’s ability to adopt and activate quickly, are key to maintaining a competitive advantage.

Part of Nestlé’s success lies in how we’re able to attribute our digital investments to our top and bottom lines. We recently updated our investors on our digital transformation journey by explaining how we’re using data to reach and resonate with consumers at scale, and how that powers growth across our portfolio.

In particular, we’ve identified three key areas that are critical to our success and that we’ll continue to invest in: privacy-preserving fundamentals, valuable consumer connections, and ongoing experimentation. Here’s how we approach each one.

Privacy-preserving fundamentals

The first key to our success is a sharp focus on privacy-preserving fundamentals. A critical part of my role as global CMO is to help Nestlé navigate the changing advertising landscape , especially as third-party data collection phases out. By treating data protection and privacy as paramount, we've accelerated the use of privacy-preserving technologies across our organisation, ensuring that our first-party strategy is future-proof. This means our brands can access high-quality data and continue to deliver personalised experiences online.

To drive our privacy strategy, we’ve developed and delivered a global advertising-technology roadmap across all our markets and brands. Doing so has helped us take advantage of privacy features, like consent mode within Google Analytics 4 (GA4), through which we can communicate users’ cookie- and app-identifier consent status to Google. Tags will then automatically adjust behaviour and respect users’ choices. In turn, we’re able to safely improve our understanding of consumers across platforms and deliver richer experiences online.

Lastly, we recognise that staying up-to-date on new privacy capabilities requires us to invest in upskilling programmes for our talented teams of brand builders around the world. By empowering our marketers to deeply understand the impact and value a technology unlocks, we can accelerate our transformation and put our company on the path to competitive advantage.

Valuable consumer connections

Our second key focus is on building and fostering valuable consumer connections. In particular, our goal is to reach 400 million consumers with our first-party database by 2025. Having direct access to our first-party data — and turning this data into actionable insight — is a critical competitive advantage with immediate value for our brands.

By moving toward a first-party, data-driven approach and leveraging Google’s privacy-preserving advertising and analytics tools, we’ve increased our ability to offer personalised solutions in real time, track ROI, and improve sales performance. This ultimately helps us make smarter investments, especially amid economic uncertainty, when it is more critical than ever to understand the value of media spend.

Our “Cloud-in-a-Box” programme gives our brands scalable blueprints to unlock the value of machine learning and other predictive technology.

One powerful example of this is our food brand Maggi’s use of first-party data to inform dynamic ad creative and better connect with consumers in the Middle East during seasonal moments and other special occasions. By taking this approach, the Maggi team improved its return on ad spend by 25%.

Another example is how we leverage new audience capabilities to derive value from our first-party data. Solutions such as Google’s advanced look-alike modelling, currently available in beta, gives us more transparency and control when building audience segments by combining our first-party data with Google’s consumer intent signals. Already, this technology has improved our media efficiency and helped drive a 25% uplift in ad recall for one of our pet care brands in the U.K.

Ongoing experimentation

Our final key focus is on experimentation and fostering a culture of experimentation across our marketing teams. To do this, we lean heavily on cloud capabilities that give us the flexibility to try new technologies while strengthening consumer privacy and growing our first-party data. Our “Cloud-in-a-Box” programme, for example, gives our brands scalable blueprints to unlock the value of machine learning and other predictive technology.

Here’s what this looks like in practice for our market-leading Nescafé coffee brand in Thailand. Using Cloud-in-a-Box, the Nescafé team routed large volumes of past campaign data to Google Cloud, then used machine learning to predict which creative messages paired with which audiences to deliver the best results on YouTube.

By taking this approach, Nescafé improved its cost per view by 17% and invested the money it saved to reach additional audiences, all while boosting ad recall 12%. Most importantly, the team saw up to 90% accuracy in the model’s predictions, when compared with outcomes from the actual campaign.

Achieving long-term goals

Building brands that consumers love remains our core marketing ambition. Our continued investment in digital transformation focuses us on understanding and using the power of data and technology to fuel growth potential for tomorrow.

By driving a consistent global marketing strategy across the organisation, our team has been able to drive change at scale, embracing data and technology to build competitiveness. Our strategic priorities are helping us build resilience through uncertainty, positioning Nestlé to achieve long-term growth.

Others are viewing

Marketers who view this are also viewing

Research: Delivering meaningful moments with data driven transformation

Top digital marketing trends and predictions for 2023, the performance max playbook: tips to inform your creative, about think with google, how people decide what to buy lies in the “messy middle” of the purchase journey, you need a privacy-centric organisation. here’s how to build it, aude gandon, others are viewing looking for something else, complete login.

To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account.

You're visiting our Europe, Middle East & Africa website.

Based on your location, we recommend you check out this version of the page instead:

Content Marketing Institute

How Technology Marketers Lead the Way in AI Experimentation [New Research]

marketing case study of nestle

  • by Robert Rose
  • | Published: February 21, 2024
  • | Trends and Research

In a 20-minute demo, the sales engineer deftly clicked through the interface, configured a new image set, assigned the metadata, and set the rights-management properties. He logged in as different users to demonstrate a sophisticated workflow. Then, he published an asset and showed how the system presented it in channel-specific formats.

No fewer than five times, he mentioned how “easy” it was for the business user to do what once only experts could do.

I interrupted him. “Here’s the thing,” I said, “That isn’t easy for someone who doesn’t understand what you’re doing.”  

As technology marketers, what you offer to the world seems simple from the outside. You provide a new tool to help your customers do something they couldn’t before acquiring it. But the more amazing the thing they can now do, the more skilled they usually need to be at using it.

Said another way, a chainsaw in the hands of a lumberjack is a simple tool. But in my hands? It’s an ER trip waiting to happen.  

Today, businesses work with some of the most sophisticated digital technology and interfaces in any industry. But that doesn’t make technology easier to market. It still involves a complex and difficult journey made more challenging by how quickly things change.

We looked at the answers of 272 technology marketers who responded to CMI’s July 2023 survey to find out. (For more information about the full study of 1,084 marketers, see B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends .)

One not-too-surprising finding: Tech content marketers outpace their marketing peers in AI use. More than two-thirds (79%) of tech marketers say they use AI compared with 72% of B2B marketers as a whole and only 58% of enterprise marketers. 

What else to expect this year? Technology marketers say they’ll focus on these things in 2024:

  • Increasing traffic, leads, and sales
  • Nurturing existing clients
  • Leveraging AI for content creation while ensuring authentic, quality content
  • Enhancing content creation processes and systems
  • Focusing on thought leadership
  • Measuring content performance and value.

The most common trends mentioned center around:

  • AI proliferation in content creation — with concerns about authenticity and oversaturation.
  • Authenticity and uniqueness — valuing human-created content that stands out from AI-generated noise, prioritizing quality over quantity.
  • AI’s impact on SEO and content ranking — changes in SEO strategies to accommodate AI algorithms, emphasizing FAQ-oriented and thought leadership content.
  • Increased personalization — hyper-personalized content delivery using AI-driven tools to cater to individual personas or niche segments.

Let’s look deeper into the research sponsored by Foundry , an IDG, Inc. company .

Table of contents

Team structure

Content marketing challenges

Use of content types, distribution channels, and paid channels

Social media use

Content management and operations

Measurement and goals

Success factors

Budgets and spending

Action steps

Methodology

Ai use: 79% of technology marketers use generative tools.

Many respondents predicted a rise in the use of AI to generate content . In fact, 79% say they already use AI for content-related tasks. How?

More than half (53%) use generative AI to brainstorm new topics. Around half use the tools to write drafts (48%) and research headlines and keywords (43%). Fewer said they use AI to outline assignments (29%), proofread (19%), generate graphics/images (10%), and create videos (7%) and audio (7%).

marketing case study of nestle

Most don’t pay for generative AI tools (yet)

Of those using generative AI tools, 88% use free tools (e.g., ChatGPT ). Thirty-seven percent use tools embedded in their content creation/management systems, and 30% pay for tools like Writer and Jasper .

AI in content remains mostly ungoverned

When asked if their organizations have guidelines for using generative AI tools, 26% said yes, 63% said no, and 11% were unsure.

marketing case study of nestle

“Change, especially rapid change, is not something most organizations adapt to quickly,” says Yadin Porter de León , global content marketing executive. “The capabilities of generative AI tools currently represent a form of rapid change that very few people can even grasp. So, it’s no surprise that very few companies have created or communicated guidelines for its use … because they don’t know how.” 

Yadin says marketers should:

  • Educate your team members so that they can be, at the very least, AI-literate.
  • Establish an AI council to organize activities across the organization.
  • Establish clear policies and guidelines for using AI.
  • Identify use cases for the business and run pilot projects guided by those principles.

How AI is changing SEO

In the open-ended responses, several respondents predicted AI’s significant impact on SEO. How will AI’s integration in search engines shift technology marketers’ SEO strategy? Here’s what we found:

Twenty-seven percent say they’re not doing any of those things, while 29% say they’re unsure, suggesting that many may be doing little to nothing.

Now is the time to act.

Ryan Brock , chief solution officer at DemandJump, says, “The days of building a keyword list based on metrics like search volume are over … at least for now. Until the dust settles and we collectively figure out what kinds of answers we trust Bard (now known as Gemini) with and which ones will always require a more thoughtful comparison of sources to find, we’ve got to use topical authority as the North Star for our tactical content decisions.”

Ryan thinks of it this way: “I’m still going to be working to answer basic questions as part of my pillar content strategy, but I also acknowledge that answering them works more to build a foundation of topical authority than to drive immediate, convertible traffic.

“Those traffic and conversion-driving queries will become harder to come by than they’ve ever been, so when I find one I need to rank well for, I should be able to do so quickly and efficiently. Competing on a query-by-query level just doesn’t work when every business in a sector sees the same dwindling number of targets.

“Building interconnected, ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ style networks of pillar content is the best way to lay the proper topical authority foundation so you can rank fast when you find a term that’s ripe for true thought leadership.”

Team structure: How does the work get done?

Generative AI isn’t the only issue affecting content marketing these days. We also asked marketers about how they organize their teams .

Among larger technology companies (100-plus employees), more than half (54%) say content requests go through a centralized content team. Others say each department/brand produces its own content (22%), and the departments/brand/products share responsibility (20%). Three percent indicate other, while 1% say they outsource it.

marketing case study of nestle

Content strategies integrate with marketing, comms, and sales

Seventy percent say their organizations integrate content strategy into the overall marketing sales/communication/strategy, and 2% say it’s integrated into another strategy. Fourteen percent say content in marketing is a stand-alone strategy, and 4% say it’s a stand-alone strategy for all content produced by the company. Eight percent say they don’t have a content strategy. The remaining 2% say other or are unsure.

Employee churn means new teammates; content teams experience enlightened leadership

Thirty-three percent of technology marketers say team members resigned in the last year, 28% say team members were laid off, and about half (51%) say they had new team members acclimating to their ways of working.

While team members come and go, the understanding of content doesn’t. Fifty percent strongly agree, and 30% somewhat agree that the leader to whom their content team reports understands the work they do. Only 14% disagree. The remaining 6% neither agree nor disagree.

And remote work seems well-tolerated: Only 21% say collaboration is challenging due to remote or hybrid work.

Content marketing challenges: The right content, lack of resources

Most technology marketers (61%) cite creating the right content for their audience as a challenge.

Other content creation challenges include differentiating content (58%), creating content consistently (49%), creating quality content (43%), optimizing for SEO (43%), creating enough content to keep up with internal demand (40%), and creating content that requires technical skills (36%). One in four (25%) say they are challenged to create enough content to keep up with external demand.

marketing case study of nestle

Other hurdles

The most frequently cited non-creation challenge, by far, is a lack of resources (66%), followed by aligning content efforts across sales and marketing (52%) and aligning content with the buyer’s journey (52%). Forty-five percent say they have difficulty accessing subject matter experts, and 44% say they are challenged with workflow issues/content approval processes. Only 28% cite keeping up with new technologies as a challenge, 27% pick a lack of strategy, 12% say keeping up with privacy rules, and 13% point to tech integration issues.

marketing case study of nestle

Use of content types, distribution channels, and paid channels: Staying at the top

We asked technology marketers about the types of content they produce, their distribution channels , and paid content promotion. We also asked which formats and channels produce the best results.

Popular content types and formats

As in the previous year, the three most popular content types are short articles/posts (96%), case studies/customer stories (93%), and videos (90%). Eighty-two percent use thought leadership e-books/white papers, 81% use long articles/posts, 63% use data visualizations/visual content, 62% use product/technical data sheets, and 56% use research reports. Less than half of technology marketers use brochures (45%), interactive content (35%), livestreaming content (34%), and audio content (31%).

marketing case study of nestle

Effective content types and formats

Which formats are most effective?

Fifty-nine percent say case studies/customer stories deliver some of the best results. Almost as many (57%) name thought leadership e-books/white papers. Slightly more than half say research reports (53%) and videos (51%).

marketing case study of nestle

Popular content distribution channels

Regarding the channels used to distribute content, 90% use blogs and social media platforms (organic), followed by webinars (79%), email newsletters (78%), and email (74%). Sixty-four percent use in-person events, and 58% use digital events.

Less frequently used channels include:

  • Microsites (40%)
  • Podcasts (30%)
  • Hybrid events (24%)
  • Branded online communities (23%)
  • Digital magazines (21%)
  • Direct mail (19%)
  • Online learning platform (18%)
  • Print magazines (12%)
  • Mobile apps (7%)
  • Separate content brands (3%).

marketing case study of nestle

Effective content distribution channels

Which channels perform the best? Most surveyed tech marketers point to webinars (56%) and in-person events (53%). Forty-four percent say blogs, 43% pick email, and 37% say social media platforms (organic).

marketing case study of nestle

Popular paid content channels

When technology marketers pay to promote content , which channels do they invest in? Ninety-three percent use paid content distribution channels.

Of those, 77% use social media advertising/promoted posts, 71% use sponsorships, 70% use search engine marketing/pay-per-click, and 66% use digital display advertising. Around one in three use native advertising (38%) and partner emails (33%). Far fewer invest in print display advertising (11%).

marketing case study of nestle

Effective paid content channels

Search engine marketing and pay-per-click produce good results, according to 61% of tech marketers. Fifty-three percent say sponsorships deliver good results, followed by social media advertising/promoted posts (43%) and partner emails (34%).

marketing case study of nestle

Social media use: One platform rises way above

When asked which organic social media platforms deliver the best value for their organization, technology marketers (92%) pick LinkedIn. Twenty-seven percent cite YouTube as a top performer, 18% say Facebook, and 10% pick Instagram and Twitter. Only 1% cite TikTok.

marketing case study of nestle

It makes sense that 73% say they increased their use of LinkedIn over the last 12 months, while only 36% boosted their YouTube presence, 19% increased Instagram use, 15% grew their Facebook presence, 12% increased X use, and 9% increased TikTok use.

Which platforms are marketers giving up? Did you guess X? You’re right — 34% of marketers say they decreased their X use. Twenty-four percent reduced their use of Facebook, with 14% decreasing on Instagram and YouTube, 3% pulling back on TikTok, and only 2% decreasing their use of LinkedIn.

Interestingly, we saw a significant rise in technology marketers who use TikTok: 17% say they use the platform, which is triple from last year (5%).

marketing case study of nestle

Content management and operations: The right tech isn’t a guarantee

To explore how teams manage content, we asked tech marketers about their technology use and investments and the challenges they face scaling their content .

Content management technology

Among the technologies used to manage content, technology marketers point to:

  • Analytics tools (82%)
  • Social media publishing/analytics (73%)
  • Email marketing software (71%)
  • Content creation/calendaring/collaboration/workflow (66%)
  • Content management system (58%)
  • Customer relationship management system (57%)
  • Marketing automation system (38%)
  • Sales enablement platform (30%)
  • Digital asset management (DAM) system (24%)

But having technology doesn’t mean it’s the right technology (or its capabilities are used). Only 29% say they have the right tech to manage content across the organization. Thirty-two percent say they have the technology but aren’t using its potential, and 28% say they haven’t acquired the right technology. Eleven percent are unsure.

marketing case study of nestle

Even so, 40% of technology marketers say their organization is likely to invest in new technology in 2024; however, another 39% say it’s unlikely. Twenty-one percent say their organization is neither likely nor unlikely to invest.

marketing case study of nestle

Scaling content production

This year, we introduced a new question to understand what challenges technology marketers face while scaling content production .

Almost half (49%) say it’s a lack of communication across silos, and the same number say it’s not enough content repurposing. Thirty-one percent say they have no structured content production process, and 29% say they lack an editorial calendar with clear deadlines. Six percent say scaling is not a current focus.

Among the other hurdles are difficulty locating digital content assets (19%), translation/localization issues (17%), technology issues (15%), and no style guide (13%).

marketing case study of nestle

Measurement and goals: Generating sales and revenue rises

Almost half (43%) of technology marketers agree their organization measures content performance effectively — but the same amount (43%) disagree. Thirteen percent neither agree nor disagree. Only 1% say they don’t measure content performance.

The four most frequently used metrics to assess content performance are conversions (77%), website traffic (73%), email engagement (72%), and website engagement (70%). Sixty percent say they rely on quality of leads, 58% use social media analytics, 55% rely on search ratings, and 52% say quantity of leads. Less than half use tracking the cost to acquire a lead, subscriber, and/or customer (32%) and email subscribers (31%).

marketing case study of nestle

The most common challenge measuring content performance experienced by technology marketers is integrating/correlating data across multiple platforms (88%), followed by extracting insights from data (82%), tying performance data to goals (81%), organizational goal setting (73%), and lack of training (71%).

marketing case study of nestle

Among the goals assisted by content marketing, 82% of technology marketers say it created brand awareness in the last 12 months. Eighty percent say it helped generate demands/leads, 71% say it helped nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, and 61% say it helped generate sales revenue (up from 48% the previous year).

Less than half say it helped grow loyalty with existing clients/customers (46%), grow a subscribed audience (42%), and reduce customer support costs (14%).

marketing case study of nestle

Success factors: Know your audience

To separate top performers from the pack, we asked technology marketers to assess the success of their content marketing.

Twenty-seven percent rate the organization’s success as extremely or very successful. Another 58% report moderate success, and 15% feel minimally or not at all successful.

The most common factor for successful technology marketers is knowing their audience (81%).

That success factor makes sense because “creating the right content for our audience” is the top challenge. Top-performing content marketers prioritize knowing their audiences to create the right content for those audiences.

Top performers also set goals that align with their organization’s objectives (74%), have a documented strategy (67%), and collaborate with other teams (64%). Thought leadership (62%) and effectively measuring and demonstrating content performance (59%) also help top technology performers reach content marketing success.

marketing case study of nestle

Several other dimensions identify the differentiators of top technology performers:

  • 75% of the most successful say they’re backed by leaders who understand their work. In contrast, just 50% of all tech respondents feel their leaders understand.
  • They’re less likely to report a lack of resources (57% of top performers say they lack resources vs. 66% of all tech content marketers).
  • They’re more likely to have the right content management technologies. About half (49%) of the top performers say they have the technology they need, compared with 29% of all tech marketers.
  • Nearly three-fourths (74%) of top performers say they measure content performance effectively, compared with 43% of the whole set of tech marketers.
  • They are more likely to use content marketing successfully to create brand awareness (96% vs. 82%), nurture subscribers/audiences/leads (82% vs. 71%), generate sales/revenue (81% vs. 61%), grow loyalty with existing customers/clients (64% vs. 46%), and grow a subscribed audience (57% vs. 42%).

Little difference exists between top performers and all respondents when it comes to the adoption of generative AI tools and related guidelines.

marketing case study of nestle

Budgets and spending: Holding steady

To explore budget plans for 2024, we asked technology marketers about their knowledge of their organization’s budget/budgeting process for content marketing. Of the 53% who have knowledge of their budgets, we followed up to assess the specifics.

Content marketing as a percentage of total marketing spend

Here’s what they say about the total marketing budget (excluding salaries):

  • 18% say content marketing consumes at least one-fourth of the total marketing budget.
  • More than one in three (37%) indicate that 10% to 24% of the marketing budget goes to content marketing.
  • Just under half (45%) say less than 10% of the marketing budget goes to content marketing.

Content marketing budget outlook for 2024

Forty-eight percent think their content marketing budget will increase this year compared with 2023, whereas 39% think it will stay the same. Only 7% think it will decrease, and 6% are unsure.

marketing case study of nestle

Where will the budget go?

Next, we asked where respondents plan to increase their spending.

Sixty-nine percent of technology marketers say they would increase their investment in video, followed by in-person events (60%), thought leadership content (54%), webinars (41%), paid advertising (40%), online community building (27%), audio content (22%), digital events (21%), and hybrid events (11%).

marketing case study of nestle

Of course, content doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Kami Buckner , HPC solutions marketing manager at Dell Technologies, notes that content must be integrated into a larger plan and support the customer journey by driving them to other content.

“Videos, in-person events, and thought leadership content may rank similarly in this survey because they are often developed to complement each other,” she says. “Thought leadership content is an important component of any event plan, and videos are an effective peripheral asset that can engage an audience to generate interest in downloading long-form thought leadership pieces, generate excitement before and after events, and be displayed at the event.”

For example, Dell developed a 15-second video to use on social media to drive viewers to a landing page, which hosted the 60-second sizzle reel to promote an upcoming event. We also:

  • Launched thought leadership content around the video and event.
  • Created and displayed another video at the event highlighting key points in the new thought leadership content that could be shared post-event.
  • Developed a virtual reality experience for the event that built credibility for Dell Technologies, both hosting and serving thought leadership content.

Action steps: What tech marketers should do

These results from tech marketers reflect what we find across other B2B organizations. You should know your audience, lean into brand awareness, integrate data across the buyer’s journey, and invest more in thought leadership, events, and video.

But what should you prioritize as a technology marketer? Given where you are in 2024 and your relationship with modern technology, put these three things at the top of your list:

  • Lean into the brand and develop relationships early and often . Marketing pundits laugh at the idea of technology companies developing “relationships” with audiences and buyers. They cynically surmise, “Nobody wants a relationship with their hydraulic actuator provider.” That may be true, but it doesn’t relieve you from trying. Today’s world makes it more imperative that technology companies differentiate, not just by providing the fastest, cheapest, easiest, or most scalable product on the market. You must also differentiate by helping customers be the best versions of themselves. As I used to say to my marketing team, “Our competitive advantage isn’t that we help people become better digital asset managers; it’s that we help digital asset managers become better people.” That leads to the second action.
  • Grow owned media’s importance in your products and services. A differentiating strategy provides a reason for people to engage with you outside the small portion of their lives that goes into their buying journey. Owned media experiences create an ecosystem of value for your customers in the pre- and post-buying journey, foster a competitive advantage, and celebrate the complexity your products inherently induce. Yes, your tools are complex and sophisticated and do amazing things. Let you be the source of how to do those things better than anyone else.
  • Connect first-party data. How you connect your buyers’ digital interactions will be the fabric that develops better relationships with your customers. If you understand their true intentions, needs, and wants, and more importantly, how they evolve, you can optimize every experience that leads and follows a sale. Of course, you likely must make big changes to implement any one or all three of these action steps. An audit, where you examine all your customers’ content-driven experiences along their journey, can help you develop a plan for which ones to keep, which should change, and which should be sunset for good. Creating this ecosystem gives you the power to transform what is seen as overly complex and hard into a worthwhile evolution and innovation. Your technology is not there to make the customer’s journey “easy” — it’s there to make it “worth it!” 

For the 14 th annual content marketing survey, CMI and MarketingProfs surveyed 1,080 recipients around the globe in July 2023, representing a range of industries, functional areas, and company sizes. The survey was emailed to a sample of marketers using lists from CMI and MarketingProfs.

This article presents the findings from the 272 respondents, mostly from North America, who indicated their organization is a technology company and that they are either content marketers or work in marketing, communications, or other roles involving content.

Of this group, 84% represent B2B companies, while 13% work for B2B+B2C brands, and 3% say they work for a tech company of a different nature. Thirty-six percent work at businesses with more than 1,000 employees, 36% work at places with between 100 and 999 employees, 23% work for brands with 10 to 99 employees, and 5% work at tech companies with between one and nine employees.

Thanks to the survey participants who made this research possible and everyone who helped disseminate these findings throughout the content marketing industry.

marketing case study of nestle

Interested in sharing the key takeaways from this report with your team or associates? You can download a summary here (registration required).

Get the latest Content Marketing Institute research reports while they're hot – subscribe to the daily or weekly newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

About Content Marketing Institute

marketing case study of nestle

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) exists to do one thing: advance the practice of content marketing through online education and in-person and digital events. We create and curate content experiences that teach marketers and creators from enterprise brands, small businesses, and agencies how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multichannel storytelling. Global brands turn to CMI for strategic consultation, training, and research. Organizations from around the world send teams to Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing-focused event, the Marketing Analytics & Data Science (MADS) conference, and CMI virtual events, including ContentTECH Summit. Our community of 215,000+ content marketers shares camaraderie and conversation. CMI is organized by Informa Connect. To learn more, visit www.contentmarketinginstitute.com .

About Foundry, an IDG Inc. company

marketing case study of nestle

Foundry helps companies bring their visions to reality through a combination of media, marketing technologies and proprietary data on a global scale. Our intent data and martech platforms are powered by data from an owned and operated ecosystem of global editorial brands, awards, and events, all engineered and integrated to drive marketing campaigns for technology companies. Foundry is dedicated to generating and innovating with data, driving demand for technology marketers with 38 offices in markets around the globe. Foundry is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group, Inc. ( IDG ), the world’s leading tech media, data, research and marketing services company. To learn more about Foundry, visit www.foundryco.com .

Robert Rose

Robert Rose

What is omnichannel marketing?

Cursor icon on blank background

Picture this: you’re browsing online for some new work clothes, and you add something to your virtual cart but ultimately decide not to buy it. Then later, you see an ad on social media for the abandoned garment. Some scratch their heads at this, but it’s actually an example of omnichannel marketing.

The prefix “omni” means “all,” and “channel” is a reference to the many ways customers might interact with a company—in physical stores, by surfing the web, on social media, and in emails, apps, SMS, and other digital spaces. And this omnichannel approach can be a powerful way to meet your customers where they are, providing them good service in line with their preferences and needs. (Note that, in this article, we use the terms “customers,” “consumers,” and “shoppers” interchangeably in referring to omnichannel marketing in both B2B and B2C contexts.)

More and more, customers move across all channels—in person, online, and beyond—to get what they want. But not every customer is looking for the same thing, and omnichannel marketing acknowledges that. Some people want more services for certain transactions; others prefer low-touch, 24/7 interactions. Effective omnichannel marketing , then, happens when companies provide a set of seamlessly integrated channels, catering to customer preferences, and steer them to the most efficient solutions.

So why is omnichannel marketing important? Research on the omnichannel experience  shows more than half of B2C customers engage with three to five channels each time they make a purchase or resolve a request. And the average customer looking to make a single reservation for accommodations (like a hotel room) online switched nearly six times between websites and mobile channels. If these customers encounter inconsistent information or can’t get what they need, they may lose interest in a brand’s products or services.

And this can translate into business outcomes. Omnichannel customers shop 1.7 times more than shoppers who use a single channel. They also spend more.

Sometimes the term omnichannel is used in the context of customer service or customer experience . And it’s also used as a descriptor of other elements that go into supporting an organization’s omnichannel efforts—for instance, omnichannel supply chains , which is shorthand for an approach in which companies ensure that their supply chains are optimally set up to support omnichannel marketing efforts.

What are examples of omnichannel?

Omnichannel approaches are commonly used in retail  (both B2B  and B2C ), but you’ll also find it in healthcare and other spaces. Medtech companies , for instance, use a variety of channels including digital marketing, inside sales, portal and e-commerce, and hybrid sales-rep interactions to engage with healthcare professionals.

Several omnichannel examples  can illustrate various approaches:

  • Best Buy typically focuses on commerce (both in store and online), but boosted its in-store experience by creating offerings for customers to explore smart home-technology solutions, pairing them with free in-home advisory services. And its mobile app lets customers “scan to shop” from catalogs and curbside, or buy online and pick up merchandise in the store itself, smoothing the end-to-end journey for customers with the 24/7 tech support from its Geek Squad. Best Buy’s Totaltech support offer was compelling to customers—it launched with 200,000 memberships in 2018, which climbed to two million within a year.
  • Beauty retailer Sephora emphasizes omnichannel personalization, relying on rich in-app messaging, personalized push notifications, and easy ways for customers to book in-person consultations. Its in-store technology is a powerful complement that allows employees to access customer favorites and suggest products they might try next. Its loyalty program also plays an important role. The efforts are already driving value for Sephora: data showed that customers visiting the retail website within 24 hours of visiting a store were three times more likely to make a purchase, and orders were 13 percent higher than for other customers.
  • Nike takes an ecosystems view of omnichannel, extending the brand experience and offering customers an ever-growing platform of content, offers, and community interactions. Its SNKRS and Run Club apps, for example, facilitate in-person meetups, running groups, and events. It also has an app for delivering individual workouts and fitness programs, creating experiences that go far beyond shoe and apparel lines to meet customers in their day-to-day routines.

Learn more about our Retail  and Growth, Marketing & Sales  practices.

How has omnichannel been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?

Omnichannel rose during the COVID-19 pandemic as more consumers turned to e-commerce. Due to the increased demand for contactless shopping during the height of the pandemic, US grocery stores saw 20 to 30 percent of their business shift to online . Before the pandemic, e-commerce accounted for just 3 to 4 percent of total sales for grocers.

The shifts made during the pandemic are likely to persist . In the pandemic, people gravitated to curbside pickup, “buy online, pay in store” models, and self-checkout at higher rates than in the past. And recent research indicates these behaviors are “sticky”—indeed, about 70 percent of people who first tried self-checkout in the pandemic say they’ll use it again.

Circular, white maze filled with white semicircles.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

What do customers want out of the omnichannel experience.

Customers want a compelling and personalized omnichannel user experience with robust digital capabilities, both online and offline. About 60 to 70 percent of consumers research and shop both in stores and online . More concretely, over one-third of Americans  made omnichannel features—think buying online and picking up in store or curbside—part of their regular shopping routines since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Nearly two-thirds of those individuals plan to continue doing so. And younger buyers, like Gen Zers, embrace omnichannel enthusiastically; these customers don’t think in terms of traditional channel boundaries, and they expect brands and retailers to provide a seamless experience, no matter where they are.

In a sense, all customers are omnichannel customers now, McKinsey partner Tiffany Burns  explains in an episode of the McKinsey on Consumer and Retail podcast :

“Many retailers still think, ‘There are omnichannel interactions and store interactions, and I’m optimizing those two things separately. I have two different teams working on and thinking about those experiences.’ But as a consumer, when I go on the retailer’s website or app, I expect to see availability, a connection to what’s in the store, and a way to order things that I can pick up in store. I also expect to be able to stand in the aisle in the store and research a product. Today, consumers are figuring out workarounds to do all those things: they’re switching over from the app to Google, looking up the product, and searching for reviews.”

Organizations that make shopping a seamless omnichannel experience , or provide an app that helps customers find their way or see what’s in stock in the store, are already creating experiences that are a win for omnichannel customers .

Is omnichannel the same thing as phygital? And what is phygital, anyway?

Omnichannel is a business strategy, while “phygital” (a portmanteau that combines the word “physical” and “digital”) refers to the integration of the physical and digital worlds.

The term suggests a completely connected world that is both physical and digital at the same time . While fewer consumers are visiting brick-and-mortar stores and choosing to use e-commerce instead, more than 80 percent of retail sales still occur in a physical location . By 2030, the shopping experience will be highly personalized , and some activities may even take place in the metaverse . According to a recent survey, 80 percent of US adults  want personalization from retailers with multiple, personalized touchpoints , which can include a mobile app, digital displays, interactive screens, tech-enabled associates, and point of sale.

What about omnichannel vs multichannel?

When it comes to omnichannel vs multichannel, the key difference is the focus at the center of all efforts. Omnichannel is a customer-centric approach in which all channels are integrated so the customer has a unified and consistent experience whether they are at a physical store, using an app, or on a website. Multichannel, in contrast, tends to revolve around products instead of customers. It aims to inform as many people as possible about the product or brand, and the channels are not linked, so the customer experience is often different for each channel.

An interview with an insurance executive, Eric Gewirtzman of BOLT , makes that distinction relatable: “Insurance customers are already moving between various channels,” Gewirtzman says. “But there’s a big difference between being multichannel and being omnichannel. Just because carriers have, say, an exclusive agent channel, an independent agent channel, and a website, doesn’t mean they’re omnichannel. Too often, consumers will get a different experience and different results depending on which channel they use. This has to change. If there is no awareness between the channels, sales are lost.”

Learn more about our Financial Services practice.

What is omnichannel personalization?

Omnichannel personalization refers to the way organizations might tailor the customer experience for individuals across physical and digital channels. This includes multiple touchpoints that cater to the customer’s preferences pre-visit, during the visit, and post-visit. Customers receive products, offers, and communications that are unique to them as individuals.

Efforts to personalize the omnichannel market can have a big payoff. Indeed, getting omnichannel personalization right  could help companies increase revenue by 5 to 15 percent across the full customer base.

While companies recognize the power of omnichannel personalization, they may face roadblocks in implementing these efforts for a variety of reasons:

  • Omnichannel personalization requires a lot of investment in technology  (both software and hardware). Personalizing physical spaces often starts from scratch because it requires enabling digital touchpoints such as screens, kiosks, or tablets for store associates, which may not exist.
  • It is difficult to deliver a seamless customer experience and train employees. The front line needs training to understand and reinforce the customer journey.
  • Traditionally, companies operate their digital and physical channels independently. Omnichannel personalization requires companies to rethink their organizational structure across both the digital and physical parts of the business .

These barriers, however, can be overcome. Five steps can help companies achieve omnichannel personalization :

  • Define the omnichannel personalization strategy and learning agenda. It’s crucial to develop a clear view on key moments of influence in the customer journey , and then identify what outcomes are desired at each step of that journey. Finally, an organization needs to prioritize use cases to test, looking at their ability to deliver business benefits and value to customers.
  • Address five digital touchpoints to activate personalized experiences in physical environments. Companies need to connect digital and physical footprints to drive omnichannel personalization, especially at touchpoints where these worlds converge. Five are particularly important: mobile apps, digital displays, interactive screens, tech-enabled associates, and point of sale.
  • Use an omnichannel “ decisioning engine ” to deliver experiences and measure performance. This can help organizations identify, quickly and accurately, the next best action to take with each customer.
  • Implement agile operating practices. Personalized marketing goes beyond mere technology; it requires new ways of working, and agile marketing teams  can help in this regard.
  • Activate omnichannel personalization in the field. To bring all these elements together, a company’s sales force must be fully aligned and well trained. In-person teams could make your customer’s day, so frontline personnel need to support personalization efforts, understand their value, and use digital tools to deliver the complete experience.

What is omnichannel strategy?

An omnichannel strategy for marketing is a way of ensuring that your efforts drive tangible business value. Rather than rushing blindly into the space, or haphazardly approaching it, organizations should step back and think about underlying business value drivers. Excelling in omnichannel depends on a laser focus on value creation, looking at both strategic and customer priorities to craft the omnichannel strategy that will be most effective for their unique circumstances.

The most successful companies set their omnichannel strategy by leading with their strategic ambition and aspirations for customer experience. There are three primary omnichannel strategies :

  • Commerce. This prioritizes cross-channel shopping experience both in store and online.
  • Personalization. This strategy focuses on tailored, targeted, and relevant cross-channel engagement at scale.
  • Ecosystem. Here, the strategy aims to provide rich cross-channel platforms integrated with consumer needs and lifestyles.

Learn more about our Growth, Marketing & Sales  practice.

What’s involved in omnichannel operations?

Organizations can build leading omnichannel operations , spanning a variety of areas. By strengthening the foundation of your omnichannel operations and focusing on strategy, structure, and processes, you could gain a performance edge.

Topics to explore include mastering omnichannel supply chains , creating a customer-centric supply chain strategy , designing the omnichannel distribution network of the future , reimagining the role of physical stores , and more.

What should I know about B2B omnichannel?

Omnichannel has become a permanent part of B2B sales , with e-commerce, face-to-face, and remote videoconference sales all a necessary part of buyers’ experience. According to a 2021 McKinsey survey of US-based B2B decision makers, 94 percent of respondents view today’s B2B omnichannel reality  as being as effective or more effective than before COVID-19. The findings also revealed that B2B customers regularly use ten or more channels to interact with suppliers, up from five in 2016.

B2B omnichannel efforts can be a path to grow an organization’s market share, but loyalty is up for grabs, with customers more willing than ever to switch suppliers for a better omnichannel experience. B2B decision makers use more channels than ever before to interact with suppliers, and being attuned to those channels will be important.

There are five must-dos for B2B companies seeking to retain customer loyalty and succeed in omnichannel:

  • offer a performance guarantee (nearly 80 percent of B2B customers say it’s crucial)
  • show product availability online
  • enable purchases over any channel
  • provide customer service in real time
  • ensure the customer experience is consistent as buyers toggle between channels

While B2C omnichannel efforts might be the first to spring to mind, omnichannel experience is crucial to giving all customers a better and more seamless journey.

For more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s insights on marketing and sales —and check out omnichannel-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

  • “ The new B2B growth equation ,” February 23, 2022, Arun Arora , Liz Harrison , Max Magni, Candace Lun Plotkin , and Jennifer Stanley
  • “ Omnichannel: The path to value ,” April 30, 2021, Holly Briedis, Brian Gregg , Kevin Heidenreich, and Wei Wei Liu
  • “ Omnichannel shopping in 2030 ,” April 9, 2021, Praveen Adhi , Eric Hazan , Sajal Kohli , and Kelsey Robinson
  • “ Redefine the omnichannel approach: Focus on what truly matters ,” June 22, 2020, Jorge Amar , Raelyn Jacobson , Becca Kleinstein, and Allison Shi
  • “ The end of shopping’s boundaries: Omnichannel personalization ,” February 10, 2020, Gal Gitter, Meg Raymond, Kelsey Robinson , and Jamie Wilkie

Cursor icon on blank background

Want to know more about omnichannel marketing?

Related articles.

The survival guide to omnichannel and the path to value

Omnichannel: The path to value

The new B2B growth equation

The new B2B growth equation

3D layered shape cyborg head on neon colored background

What is the metaverse?

marketing case study of nestle

  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to search
  • Skip to footer

Products and Services

Live stream splunk's user conference for free.

Global broadcast | June 11–12, 2024

marketing case study of nestle

Making AI work for you

Cisco AI is where the AI hype ends and meaningful help begins.

Certifications

Cisco Validated

Announced at Cisco Live

marketing case study of nestle

Cisco XDR with AI Assistant

Remediate the highest-priority incidents with an AI-first XDR solution.

marketing case study of nestle

Cisco Networking Cloud 

One platform experience. Assured, secured, and simplified.

marketing case study of nestle

Secure Firewall 1200 Series

Compact, all-in-one SD-WAN firewall for your distributed enterprise branch.

Catch up on what you missed

Keynote: Vision for the Future

CEO Chuck Robbins addresses how to connect and protect your business in the AI era.

Keynote: Go Beyond

Learn about Cisco, Splunk, and reaping the benefits of the AI revolution.

Deep dive sessions

See tech announcements and strategic direction from Cisco's senior tech leaders.

View keynotes and tech sessions in the on-demand library.

Press release

Cisco Live puts AI center stage and more. 

Cisco launches $1B global AI investment fund.

marketing case study of nestle

Validate your AI skills with certifications

Join all Cisco U. Theater sessions live and direct from Cisco Live or replay them, access learning promos, and more. It's time to Go Beyond the basics and level up your learning.

marketing case study of nestle

Identity is the new perimeter

Stop identity-based attacks while providing a seamless authentication experience with Cisco Duo's new Continuous Identity Security. 

Inside Cisco

  • More events

Cisco reveals Nexus HyperFabric

Cisco Nexus HyperFabric makes it easy for customers to deploy, manage, and monitor generative AI models and inference applications without deep IT knowledge and skills.

Cisco and Splunk launch integrated Full-Stack Observability experience

Using Cisco and Splunk observability solutions, customers can build an observability practice that meets their IT environment needs for on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud.

ThousandEyes Digital Experience Assurance shifts IT operations

New Cisco ThousandEyes capabilities and AI-native workflows in Cisco Networking Cloud will deliver Digital Experience Assurance, transforming IT operations.

IMAGES

  1. Nestle Case Study: How Nestle’s Marketing Strategy Helped Them Grow -2023

    marketing case study of nestle

  2. Nestle Case Study: How Nestle’s Marketing Strategy Helped Them Grow -2023

    marketing case study of nestle

  3. Nestle Marketing Case Study Example

    marketing case study of nestle

  4. Full Marketing Strategy of Nestle

    marketing case study of nestle

  5. Nestle. Case study

    marketing case study of nestle

  6. Marketing Case Study of Nestle as a Provider of Wellness to its

    marketing case study of nestle

VIDEO

  1. Maggi Case Study 🔥🔥 #shorts

  2. DCO Case Study: Nestle’s Maggi uses automated DCO to personalize recipes for consumers

  3. Display Solutions: Case Study

  4. Understanding Deceptive Marketing & Ads by example

  5. 20 Best Business Case Studies

COMMENTS

  1. Full Marketing Strategy of Nestle

    This Nestle case study will examine how this mega-corporation in the Indian market has maintained a unique brand image for itself through innovative marketing campaigns and strategy that has created a strong brand connection among consumers even in this increasingly digitized world.

  2. Nestle Case Study: How Nestle's Marketing Strategy Helped Them Grow -2023

    The answer to this may lie in Nestle's digital marketing and functional strategy. Nestle Case study: Introduction of Nestle company. Nestle is a world-renowned manufacturer of packaged foods and beverages. It is the world's largest food manufacturer operating in more than 186 countries and with over 2000 product brands.

  3. How Nestlé Became The World's Largest Food Company

    The external growth strategy has worked wonders for Nestle by allowing it to expand into new industries and distinctive production lines - all of which have contributed immensely to its growth over the years. Simply put, if you can't beat them, just join them, or well, in Nestle's case, buy them. Key takeaway 4: importance of brand & values

  4. 10 Key Takeaways from the Nestle Marketing Strategy

    The Nestle marketing strategy adopts bundle deals from time to time, often during festive seasons. Key Takeaway: A product mix strategy allows you to increase the visibility of your low-growth products and make the premium ones appear affordable. It also helps you sell low-demand stock. 4. Set Consistent Goals.

  5. Successful Marketing Strategies of Nestle (With Campaign Examples)

    Nestle's marketing strategy complements its tagline, "Good Food, Good Life," with campaigns that convert. From Nestle's social media strategy to its in-store promotional banners, the brand's marketing strategy is a testament to Nestle's mission of harnessing the power of food to raise people's standard of living.

  6. Nestle Marketing Strategy: Building Trust, Boosting Sales

    Nestle's marketing strategies serve as a valuable case study for businesses looking to build a strong brand and maintain a competitive edge in today's crowded marketplace. By taking a holistic approach to marketing, focusing on product quality, sustainability, and consumer engagement, businesses can create a lasting impact and drive growth for ...

  7. Nestlé's global marketing strategy

    By driving a consistent global marketing strategy across the organization, our team has been able to drive change at scale, embracing data and technology to build competitiveness. Our strategic priorities are helping us build resilience through uncertainty, positioning Nestlé to achieve long-term growth. Google's Official Digital Marketing ...

  8. Nestle Marketing Strategy: A Case Study

    Conclusion. Nestle's marketing strategy has played a crucial role in the company's success over the years. The company's market segmentation, product mix, pricing strategy, promotion strategy, and distribution strategy are all designed to cater to the needs and preferences of its target audience. Additionally, Nestle's focus on digital ...

  9. Nestlé Marketing Strategy: The Ingredients for Sweet Success

    Related: Liquid Death Marketing Strategy Case Study: Slaying the Beverage Industry with Killer Branding and Marketing. The Role of Innovation in Nestle's Marketing Approach. When it comes to innovation, Nestle has always been at the forefront.

  10. Nestlé: Branded active benefits

    Part of a case series on marketing innovation, the Nestle Branded Active Ingredients describes how Nestle developed its strategy of marketing key functional ingredients for some of its leading food brands across different markets. The underlying concept behind this idea was to build brand sustainability and translate complex scientific arguments into simple messages that consumers

  11. Nestle: A Look at the Marketing Strategies and Global Presence

    History of Nestle - Making of a food giant. The story of Nestle begins in Switzerland in the mid-19th century. In 1866, Henri Nestle, a pharmacist, developed a nutritious and easy-to-digest infant food known as Farine Lactée.The product was a lifesaver for mothers who were unable to breastfeed their infants and quickly gained popularity throughout Europe.

  12. Marketing Strategies in Delivering Customer Satisfaction: A case study

    hypermarket operations is the quality of the product. H1: Nestlé s product strategy positively correlates with customer satisfaction. Secondly, Nestlé has used the price strategy to inc rease ...

  13. Nestlé's Social Media Strategy

    In today's case study, we'll go over Nestlé's social media strategy and discover how the brand managed to maintain a unique brand image through innovative campaigns and marketing strategies. And because case studies and podcasts complete each other, we talked with Alexandra Reay, global social media and community manager at Nestlé, to see the ...

  14. Analysis of Marketing Strategy and Quality Policy of Nestlé

    Abstract. Nestlé has more than 2000 brands ranging from global icons to local favorites, and we are present in 196 countries around the world. Nestlé's purpose is enhancing the quality of life ...

  15. Nestle Case Study: How Nestle's Marketing Strategy Worked ...

    Introduction. Nestle's digital marketing strategy revolves around people. We bring people together, wish them well, and sell our products through it. All of their campaigns have an underlying atmosphere that allows them to connect with their audience. They have a well-optimized website that is driving conversions and performing at its peak.

  16. Nestle PESTEL Analysis

    Nestlé S.A. is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company considered one of the largest in the world. Here is a brief overview of their business: Foundation and History: Nestlé was founded in 1866 by Henri Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland. Initially, the company specialized in selling infant cereal, but over the years, it expanded its ...

  17. Nestlé powers on with a rural revamp and innovation

    Case studies. 07 December 2021 12:28:14 IST. ... 4As of rural marketing. The 4Ps of marketing are a standard for marketing strategy. But rural marketing needs something different — these are the 4As — acceptability, affordability, availability, and awareness. For any company to be successful in rural India, an adequate mix of the 4As is ...

  18. How MAGGI's GENIUS Marketing Strategy made it a Market Leader?: Nestle

    Buy the best health plan for you and your family with Navi Health Insurance: https://bit.ly/3IFJKyEVideo Introduction:Maggi is one of the most iconic brands ...

  19. Case Study of Nestle

    Competitors of Nestle: A Case Study. Carnation, Kit Kat, Nestle-water, and Stouffers are just a few of the well-known consumer brands owned by Nestle. The corporation is a major player in the global food and beverage market because thirty of its brands had earnings of more than $1 billion in 2010.

  20. A Case Study of The Food Company Nestle Marketing

    A Case Study Of The Food Company Nestle Marketing - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Nestle is one of the oldest multinational companies, founded in Switzerland in 1867. It is now the largest food and beverage company in the world, operating in nearly every country. Nestle pursues growth in emerging markets by employing local ...

  21. Online Digital Marketing Strategy Course

    Digital Marketing Strategy will equip you with the latest tactics, tools, and trends to acquire and retain customers, position your brand for success, and develop data-driven strategies. Stay active by engaging in a new activity every three to five minutes. Get social by collaborating and networking with a global community of peers before ...

  22. Nestle: Market Saturation And Cannibalization Problem

    Nestle shares have underperformed the S&P 500 for the past decade due to a lack of growth and unsuccessful optimization efforts. Nestle's dividend appeal is not enough to justify investing, as a ...

  23. Nestlé wants to cash in on the world's aging population problem

    Nestlé, the baby food pioneer, wants to cash in on the world's aging population problem. Mark Schneider, Nestlé's CEO, thinks there's a big opportunity with the world population aging. There ...

  24. SAP and Nestlé Success Story

    Nestlé is enhancing the customer experience for its business customers by streamlining the ordering, tracking, and invoicing processes. The existing approach relied on frequent telephone contact, resulting in time-consuming processes and potential errors. To overcome these challenges and adapt to the "Consumerization of Commerce," Nestlé ...

  25. Nestlé's global marketing strategy

    By driving a consistent global marketing strategy across the organisation, our team has been able to drive change at scale, embracing data and technology to build competitiveness. Our strategic priorities are helping us build resilience through uncertainty, positioning Nestlé to achieve long-term growth. Google's Official Digital Marketing ...

  26. Technology Content Marketing Research 2024

    As in the previous year, the three most popular content types are short articles/posts (96%), case studies/customer stories (93%), and videos (90%). Eighty-two percent use thought leadership e-books/white papers, 81% use long articles/posts, 63% use data visualizations/visual content, 62% use product/technical data sheets, and 56% use research ...

  27. What is omnichannel marketing?

    The prefix "omni" means "all," and "channel" is a reference to the many ways customers might interact with a company—in physical stores, by surfing the web, on social media, and in emails, apps, SMS, and other digital spaces. And this omnichannel approach can be a powerful way to meet your customers where they are, providing them ...

  28. Cisco: Software, Network, and Cybersecurity Solutions

    New Cisco ThousandEyes capabilities and AI-native workflows in Cisco Networking Cloud will deliver Digital Experience Assurance, transforming IT operations. Cisco is a worldwide technology leader. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all through software, networking, security, computing, and more solutions.