Band-baba-barat divinity as fmcg what an idea sir jee

4Ps B&M‘s Consulting Editor Monojit Lahiri investigates this new booming form of market-friendly, Designer Moksha!

It is an astonishing paradox of human life that with progress, sophistication, modernity and success comes depression, loneliness, alienation, and insecurity! Today in the year 2011, as we scan the lifescape inhabiting planet earth – with special reference to the advanced and developed western countries – we find startling horror stories of dysfunctional life amidst plenty. Amongst us in India there is no dearth of mimics and west-apers passionately engaged in the business of living a ‘proxy’ life – a life invested with ‘imported’ thoughts, beliefs, products and processes. They believe it spells progress, being cool, smart, belonging to the swish Page 3 set and generally being perceived as aspirational role-models and preferred objects of desire.

Sadly, nothing is further from the truth! In the insane and direction-less pursuit of a mirage called “happiness”, the first casualty is peace of mind. Why? Because nothing in this world comes for free and the first world joys offered by the enticing packages called ‘Consumerism’ and ‘Globalisation’ come with a sinister price-tag! Suddenly, the sexy, 10-digit paycheck doesn’t look so great because the tension and pressure that accompanies it is scary. Family life, social life, cultural life, intellectual life … everything is sold at the altar of moving up in life. So, what next? What is the solution? Where is the salvation? Enter the marketers of spiritualism!

Ad-man Gullu Sen – Founder of Delhi based agency From Here On Communications – comes up with an instant one-liner. “If you have a Sapnon Ka Saudagar, why can’t you have a guy hawking spirituality?! The con-game is the same, boss!” On a more serious note, Sen believes that in today’s troubled times where tension and pressures rule the roost, spirituality is in high demand & low supply. “Hence, the smart, shrewd marketer who has his ear to the ground and is able to think on his feet, can do wonders – for his desperate clients and laughing wallet.” He cites the example of Aastha and a host of similar TV channels which enjoy a wide viewership cutting across all stratas of society.

Perizaad Zorabian, the gorgeous red-head scorching the Bollywood marquee and modelling scene, takes a more serious view. She believes that each and every human being has a spiritual side to him or her “but unfortunately, due to the pressures of everyday life, sometimes, they are forced to give it low priority. Interestingly, in times of real stress, it is this spirituality that gives them the strength and sustenance to cope.” Although she lives an extremely busy life, Zorabian makes it a point to save some time each day for herself “to catch up with her spiritual self that is a source of both enrichment and empowerment.” As for the spirituality-on-sale tack, the actress believes that something as sacred and precious as this should not be treated as a product or service to be hawked for consumption. “I find it a very sick line of thinking!”

Burly, bearded, iconoclast Ad-man Prahlad Kakkar is however totally comfortable with the idea of marketing spirituality. “Yaar, we live in sexy Kalyug times where everyone knows the price of everything but the value of nothing! Spirituality, therefore, for the stressful, materialistic, gimmee-gimmee community, is something they can easily connect with as a consumer,” he tells 4Ps B&M. Kakkar believes that the simple, innocent days of basic goodness that was the DNA of our forefathers, have long disappeared. They have been replaced by a turbulent and complex environment where basic values are frequently under siege. “Hence, a safety valve like spirituality is a super-seller – a pre-sold, sellout!”

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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4PS B&M - ICMR Exclusive Survey India's most Admired Consumer Durable Brands 2011

ICMR and 4PS B&M Present The Most Comprehensive Profiling of Indian Consumers’ Preferences and recall of Consumer Durable goods

It’s no more a secret that India’s consumer durables market is riding the crest of the country’s economic boom. In fact, Driven by a young population, with access to disposable incomes and easy finance options, the Indian consumer durables market has been throwing up some staggering figures lately. Even high inflation and poor consumer sentiment could not take the sheen off the industry. What’s more? pegged at Rs.350 billion, the Indian consumer durables industry recorded a growth of 12-13% in sales in 2010 over the previous year. While the average sales growth in the sector rose to 46% in Q4 2010 from 17% in Q1 2010, profit growth also improved from a 31% decline in Q1 2010 to a spectacular 118% growth in the December quarter. Analysts predict that the industry will continue with its stellar performance going forward as well. and the credit for this goes to those consumer durable brands, which embraced the change, and recognised the need to sprint along that one track that not only led them to win the loyalty and continued trust of customers, but also chart an impressive growth trajectory for the industry. After all, In the cut-throat world of marketing and mass media, where products have a tendency to become history quickly, they stormed into OUR LIVES with ridiculous ease. And that was nothing compared to the ease with which they have stayed there! 4Ps Business & Marketing, in association with THE NATION’S LEADING MARKET RESEARCH FIRM, Indian Council for Market Research (ICMR), presents the Power list of ‘India’s Most Admired Consumer Durable Brands 2011’! THIS LIST, WHICH SPANS THE top five consumer durable brands based on brand recall and THE top three based on consumer preference ACROSS SPECIFICALLY CHOSEN PRODUCT CATEGORIES, aptly reflects the changing moods and aspirations of a young and dynamic nation that HAS entered a roaring new decade full of opportunities.

Methodology: India’s MOST Admired Consumer durable brands Survey

4Ps B&M conducted a survey in association with Indian Council for Market Research (ICMR) on India’s most admired consumer durable brands amongst 855 respondents in 5 Indian cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai – using a structured questionnaire and a random sampling technique. To make the survey more focused and detailed, the consumer durable segment was sub-categorised and brands were listed accordingly, mostly from the household segment of durability, with a deliberate preponderance of the electronics segment – cars, sports equipment, furniture, thereof were excluded. A few other sub-categories (including MP3 players,cameras/camcorders, juicer mixer grinders et al) were excluded from the purview of the survey with a focus on giving specificity to high capitalisation product segments. Cellular phones were another important exclusion given a combination of various factors – rapidly rising technology curve (leading to newer brands coming out with increasing regularity), extremely low product life cycles, and decreasing average usage life cycle per consumer – which almost pushes a modern day cell phone into the FMCG category in the retail segment, leave the business phone users to some extent.

The survey, in the previously mentioned cities, was conducted with SEC-A & B segments. Under the survey, respondents were asked to recall brands under different heads in the consumer durables segment. They were also asked to name their preferred brands. In the statistical representation featured within this section, only the top five recalled brands and the top three preferred brands are documented, along with the percentage divided between respondents who chose ‘specifically’ these brands – in other words, this would mean that the percentages shown in each graph would therefore statistically add up to 100%. The respondent profiling was donhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=25045928e based on the segment being interviewed. The age-group of the respondents (25 years and above) was also given importance considering that such respondents are high users and buyers of different products.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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They are The Economist... And they Talked to us

The Man at The Helm of Affairs at The Economist’s office in India, Supriyo Guha Thakurta, reveals to 4PS B&M what makes The Economist, well, The Economist.

Having worked as a leader with brands like Lintas Personal and Adfactors Advertising, this marketing graduate from XLRI Jamshedpur is at the helm of making decisions at The Economist’s office in India, pertaining to strategic leadership, and enhancing business revenue & profits. His task is far from easy considering the battle he fights everyday to increase the awareness of an already strong brand and ensure it gets a consistently better circulation year on year. In an exclusive conversation with Suprio Guha Thakurta, MD, The Economist India, 4Ps B&M finds out how challenging it has been for him to market the magazine in India and what unfolds next in those marketing plans.

There has been a 13% y-o-y increase in the magazine’s readership in India. What factors drove these numbers home?
We had established an office in India towards the end of 2007. The vision was that all factors were driving the Indian economy, and as such it did make a good place for our brand to be in. Our focus is to build a strong business driven by print, reason being our brand is recognised mostly by our magazine; and as such, we want to keep it alive till other forms of media take the front stage. The increasing readership only proves that the demand was always there for our product... it just needed to be marketed well, and we are pretty much in line with what we thought we will get to when we started off in India.

Globally, the magazine has marketed itself through billboards and outdoor advertising. Why is it different in India?
In India, we had the choice of taking that step, but we decided to look at each market in the country separately because this market didn’t know our brand. Brand awareness was there, but nothing beyond that. And based only on the perception of its name, our targeted audience thought it was a magazine focussing on politics and business, which is not the core of our magazine. Initially, we focused on Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and we had a pure measure of effectiveness for our communication strategy. We needed people to be aware of the brand and then read the magazine. We measured the number of unique visitors on our website and found that it grew gradually. Eventually, there were visitors subscribing to the print version of the magazine through the website. When we started off, the numbers were approximately 2-3 subscribers per day, but in the last few years that number has grown to an average of 10 subscribers per day. So, the unique readership has grown more than three times over the last three years. After targeting these three cities, we realised that there’s more for our market beyond them. We were spending all the money in three metros, whereas 15% of our subscribers were not even from the first 20 metros. We thought perhaps it’s time to spread the message out there. That’s when TVCs were made. So, it was not some ad hoc thing, it was a well thought strategy. Now to ensure the increased awareness span, we have consistently kept commercials alive across India.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Buy later, pay now,or what?

The 4PS B&M Annual Consumers’ Guide to Post Budget Price Movements

It’s the killing question that hits every consumer before a budget – will the prices rise or will they fall? While the Devil is in the detail, the price movement is in the interpretation. 4Ps B&M, in its inaugural post budget issue, took up six sectors – automobiles, real estate, white goods, computers and gems & jewellery – to give you the dummy’s guide to price movements post budget.

One of the core concepts of marketing theory and practice is that consumers act as value maximisers, and relentlessly make cost benefit analyses before they make a decision on any purchases. Despite that genuine intent, though, value maximization is obviously a very utopian concept. While every marketer puts his best foot forward into the market with his positioning, communication and distribution strategies, the consumer has to move through this intricate maze and seek out what’s best for him. Various factors could help clear the way or even make it hazier, like brand perception, social and economic background, cultural influences, inputs from family and friends, et al. Also, consumers have an upper limit (which is largely psychological) to which they research for the best value, which also varies with respect to the nature of the product they are buying. After that, they tend to simply sign on the dotted line. Moreover, our society is not that advanced in terms of consumer activism as compared to the US. In the US, there are associations like Consumers Union, which are not only keeping marketers and retailers alert through consistent scrutiny of products and services, but are also playing a key role in shaping consumer oriented policies. In that sense, the very notion of the consumer being the king, particularly in India, may be quite distant from reality.

Even if it is assumed that you have decided upon the best possible product, the other critical aspect of value is price, and the entire effort that goes into extracting the best deal. Moreover, pricing is in itself a very strategic tool today, and the ‘cost plus margin’ approach looks centuries old. Companies look at a lot towards factors like perceptions that pricing builds, price elasticity of demand, the stage in the product life cycle, competitor pricing strategies, their positioning strategy, overall company policies, et al. Even the salesperson you interact with has gone through multiple training programmes in negotiation theory. He is taught to make a quick judgment about the kind of customer you are and the values you seek and also use this judgement to decide what price to offer you at the start and at what price to stop.

Conversely, there is a lot that customers need to understand about how they can formulate their own price negotiation strategy. A lot of it comes from experience, but then, if you understand how companies behave today, you can bypass years of bad experiences and non-value maximizing transactions and significantly improve your consumer experiences here and now. It matters to understand, for instance, that if you cannot afford a premium brand like Sony, there are a lot of brands who can give you an acceptable or even remarkably similar experience at a lower price. Or the fact that coffee chains adopt a price differentiation strategy to target multiple customer segments, which is why the Mocha that you drink may be Rs.10-20 more expensive in terms of price over the Cappuccino, but there is hardly any difference with respect to cost of production.

Consequently, the focus of this cover story of 4Ps B&M is on one specific and critical aspect of a consumer’s pricing strategy – the right time to buy, a decision that is hugely dependent on the FM’s budget speech every year. Especially during these days of dizzying inflation, any buying strategy that is even a wee bit lighter on the wallet is definitely worth considering. Through first hand analysis and industry interactions, this cover story discusses ongoing and anticipated price movements across sectors, due to budget announcements or due to specific sectoral trends, to act as a guide to your purchase planning in the coming months. We’ve selected a handful of industries that garners the maximum interest of the investor population and have attempted to give an analysis that, despite going deep into numbers, keeps it simple for your understanding. While there are no guarantees that the prices would move exactly in the way we are postulating, what is true is that the probability of your making the right informed choice – of whether to buy now or later – increases. And now, jump right on to the 4Ps B&M Annual Consumers’ Guide to Post Budget Price Movements.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Movie Buffs’ Internet Warfare

UTV World Movies, India’s first world cinema channel has revamped its website to cater to the niche world cinema segment in India. The new website displays drop down menus; excel sheets and a cine map to choose films from the database. Various social networking links have been added to increase visitors. World Movies stands with 5% of market share above Warner Brothers and Lumiere which have 4% and 0.1% share respectively. “We had two goals behind the revamp. One that the fans can come and check the movie schedule and figure information about the movie; and two, to increase awareness of world movies as a genre,” said Vahishta Mistry, VP Ineractive, UTV World Movies. The website revamp may attract viewers over the short term; increasing viewership over the long term still remains a per movie question.


For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management

MD PRABHU S HAS TAKEN ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED BY TAKING ON THE LOW MARGIN SEGMENT OF IT SERVICES TO SMES/MSMES YET IN A CANDID

How do you cope up with the challenges faced in a competitive environment?
When we are confident of adding value to customers, the question of competition does not arise. In this context, we haven’t still got exposed to a competitive environment yet.

Would you like to share any anecdotes from your learning of business in the industry?
I would like to narrate an incident which occurred recently. When we approached a firm for selling our product, the IT manager politely declined stating that “I am unable to provide all reports that the management needs”. Although we were initially setback, we persisted and somehow managed to get an appointment with the MD. When we asked him, “What information do you get today? And what do you don’t get today?”. We were taken aback when he replied – “I don’t even know the company’s turnover! The Accounts department gives one figure while the sales and IT gives another’. That’s when we realized the true state of the top management. Overall, the company is making profit, but certain brands/regions/area are not profitable and they are not noticing it because of data. Even though it may be strategic, they need to have control over that which can be monitored using our product/solution.

What is it according to you that takes to make a great brand?
When customers see value in the solutions offered, the brand gets established automatically. However, a great brand should have an well-established ecosystem of partners who can provide quality and timely service.

From a business point of view, what is your ultimate objective?
My ultimate objective is to provide game-changing solutions that can enhance the turnover and profits of Indian SME businesses.

What do you think is the best way you could market your brand?
We approach the market through consultative selling. We believe that our customers are our best marketers.

How would you describe your and your company’s success story?
Success is a journey, not a destination. We are so far happy with the progress made. And we are confident of seeing more successes in our way.

How do you manage your personal and family priorities?
My first family is Cindrel. I am enjoying each and every moment I spend for Cindrel and I am sure it will take care of my other family.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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RAHUL JINDAL REALLY BEEN WEAVING AT LOOM CRAFT

You infused new life into an ancient weaving technique, whose origins can be traced back to ancient Egyptian civilisation. It is fast becoming a fashion now. But do you think you are betting on a sustainable future demand as well?
We have been in the furniture business for decades now and Loom Crafts was born just five years back. The demand for wicker furniture is surely on a rise and the trend is sustainable and in complete sync with our targets. Today, we are catering to some niches like 5-star hotels, farm house owners et al. But given the fact that demand for wicker furniture is rising amongst the masses, we are also coming up with a special product line to fill the supply-demand gap. We want to give great value products to our consumers, and outperform our Chinese industry peers by miles in terms of quality!

What are the marketing and advertising initiatives that you are undertaking at present?
We have been heavily advertising in hospitality magazines and other print vehicles. On one hand, while we keep launching new marketing and advertising campaigns with a high frequency, on the other, we also keep innovating our products, once every two months. That further gives us an opportunity to advertise more. We also participate in exhibitions where we can directly interact with our customers.

What is the USP of your brand?
We provide outdoor furniture that lasts for years in a 100% eco-friendly manner. Plus, we provide a lifetime guarantee with great after-sales services.

What are your expansion plans?
We want to expand globally and increase our exports. Five years from now we want to make the name Loom Crafts a synonym for “outdoor furniture”, and grow manyfolds!

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
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NARESH GUPTA, DIRECTOR – STRATEGIC PLANNING, DENTSU MARCOM

In fact, this version 2.0 of Internet may spark off four dominant trends, here’s a look at all four of them

Go out often: Technology has made finding interesting places around the cities easier than ever. Places can not only be discovered, but also commented upon. This will encourage people to explore their world more.

Get bitten by wanderlust: The constant feed of holiday pictures from a variety of locations will encourage people to pack their bags and discover their world more often. The normal holiday hotspots will make way for newer, more exotic destinations. Maybe tourism boards need to revisit the very motivations of travel.

Niche will get powered by mainstream: The niche performers, products, brands will increasingly get access to mainstream audiences as customers will become patrons and interest groups will broadcast their approval to a wider set of audience.

The world will become large: The world instead of becoming a global village will actually become a very large thriving vibrant mega polis. This will mean more people to meet, more things to do, more smells to savour, more connections to be made.

This is a very interesting transformation that we will see all around us. A generation that was supposed to be socially challenged will challenge the norms of social connectivity.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM makes business education truly global
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting
Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
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