Chapter 1: Introduction
This dissertation proposes to evaluate the marketing strategies, brand perception and consumer behaviour pattern as regards fairness products for South East Asia and the Indian sub continent. This topic was chosen in order to analyze the manner and the reason fairness products have such a huge market in India followed by the other Asian countries. Incidentally, India is the largest market for fairness products in the world.
These products have created a niche for themselves in the Indian consumer’s psyche because they have been able to successfully capitalize on the typical desire of the Indian women to look fair so that they could match up to the western world. The marketing strategies adopted by the FMCG companies have further accentuated this desire and furthered demand. Further the Indian media has played a role of being the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ and even in the wake of advent of high class luxury brands, the media has still managed to keep alive the age-old Indian tradition and belief that ‘Fair is Beautiful’ . This belief is prevalent across all classes in India and the preference for fairness manifests itself even in form of people investing in surgeries, foreign cosmetics, and expensive clinic treatments.

Further in spite of the highlighting of subtle differences, most men continue to use female fairness creams

As a tool employed in this regard, major celebrities in the media & entertainment as well as the sports segment have been appointed as brand ambassadors and face of fairness products.

The current size of the market is estimated to be around INR 18000 mn. Hindustan Unilever continues to dominate the women's fairness cream market in India with an over 70 per cent share, followed by Cavin Care at 10 per cent and Garnier at around seven per cent. (Rediff)

Skin lightening or fairness cream is the most dominant category in the Indian Skin Care Market & has become the only cosmetic product to enter the Indian household customer basket
There exists a significant potential for growth in the Indian market for this segment in the times to come, especially in South India where people are agreeably darker than the rest of India