Consumers

Meeting consumer needs

As a leading global consumer goods company, we promote the benefits of our products using many different channels of brand communication. Advertising can be a powerful force for behaviour change.

Advertising helps inform people about the benefits of our products and innovations. It is also a way for us to engage with consumers on issues that matter to them. Dove's successful Campaign for Real Beauty broke current stereotypes about beauty. Omo/Persil's 'Dirt is good' campaign emphasises the importance for children of feeling free to play outdoors as part of their learning and development. Increasingly our brands are exploring ways to tackle important social and environmental concerns through the power of communication.

At the same time we recognise the influence of marketing and advertising on consumers. We need to ensure we take a responsible approach and are guided by our Food and Beverage Marketing Principles when developing campaigns. We do not advertise to children under six years of age. We recently extended this commitment to restrict marketing to children between the ages of 6 and 12, for all food products except those that meet strict nutritional criteria based on our Nutrition Enhancement Programme or qualify for Choices. Specific guidelines for school education programmes ensure that food products will not be promoted as part of these programmes.

As part of our commitment to portray healthy images of beauty, our advertising and marketing principles also state that we will not use 'size-zero' models/actors to promote any of our brands.

Online advertising and communications are a growing trend. With people everywhere being able to access online material, our internet marketing guidelines ensure that campaigns aimed at a particular market are sensitive to cultural differences in other parts of the world.

Accessibility & affordability

We continue to seek new ways of bringing our products within the reach of people of all income levels. One way we have done this is by offering our products in small, low-cost packs. This makes them more affordable for consumers on limited incomes and those with only small amounts of cash to spend daily.

For example, our 30g pack of Pepsodent toothpaste in India – enough for a family of five to clean their teeth once a day for ten days – costs just six rupees (around €0.11). Six rupees is also what three eggs would cost locally. The chart below compares the cost of toothpaste with a common staple food – eggs – as an illustration of affordability.

Consumer safety

Consumers trust us to provide them and their families with products that are safe. Product safety is always considered at the design stage of a new product or process. We have an independent safety approval process for product and supply-chain technology design. The responsibility for independent approval decisions rests with our Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC), which handles over 10 000 approvals a year.

Incidents can occur if a product that does not reach our high safety and quality standards is accidentally released into the market. Examples can include quality defects, contamination of raw materials or mislabelling of ingredients. In these cases, we identify the most effective measures to protect consumers' safety, including recalling products where necessary. During 2008 we had five public recalls (compared to 10 in 2007). Every incident is followed by a thorough investigation in order to prevent reoccurrence.

We recognise that consumers may be concerned about the presence of particular chemicals in our products. We continue to work in partnership with research organisations, industry partners, NGOs and regulators to strengthen consumer confidence in our products, and try to find alternative ingredients, where appropriate.

We continually review our safety findings and act on the side of caution if anything changes. To read more about product safety, including our principles of Precaution and Substitution, see our Confidence in safety section.

Assuring safety without animal testing

We are committed to eliminating animal testing for our business and the vast majority of our products reach consumers without testing any of their ingredients on animals. Our strict internal procedures ensure that testing is only carried out where there is no other option. We are also investing in alternative approaches to replace animal testing in safety assessments for consumer products.

See the Animal testing and alternatives section of this report for more on our approach and policy.

Counterfeiting

Counterfeit products pose significant safety risks for consumers. They also erode consumer confidence in our brands and undermine our investment in R&D. We are working with others to ensure better intellectual property protection, increased enforcement and improved consumer awareness.

Consumer communications

We are guided by four principles in our communications with consumers:

• we are committed to building trust through responsible practices and through transparent communication – both directly to consumers and indirectly through other key stakeholders and thought-leaders

• it is our responsibility to ensure that our products are safe and that we provide clear information on their use and any risks that are associated with their use

• we fully support a consumer's right to know what is in our products and will be transparent in terms of ingredients, nutrition values and the health and beauty properties of our products

• we will use a combination of channels, which includes product labels, websites, carelines and/or consumer leaflets to communicate openly with our consumers.