- EMI options
- Cash on Delivery
- Huge discounts to buy online
- Cheaper than brick – and –mortar stores
- Increase in usage of internet through smart phones
- Social reviews
Friday, January 9, 2015
Digital Media Influence on Indian Consumer Buying Behavior
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Corporate Signature Tunes
But, what about the rest of the companies, shouldn’t they opt for signature tunes?
Most of the private sector banks, private hospitals play classical music and hotels most often play fusion music on the other hand some offices play whatever music they feel like playing. The corporate sector lacks Signature Tune which will help to identify the brand amongst its stake holders.
Every corporate invests to create a profiling video of their own company, brochures and newsletters to inform about the company, but nobody cares to create signature tune.
The Signature Tune should be played during displaying of the corporate video, played in the background at the workplace, ring tone, waiting tone and caller tone of the phones (mobile/landline), website, TVCs, etc.
This will help to increase the brand awareness and everybody will connect with the brand easily. This has worked for telecom companies and can also work for brands in retail stores where there is consumer walk-in.
Signature Tunes will open a new field of advertising and connecting to the stakeholders.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
What a BRAND means for a common person?
Over the years even the common person has changed, his knowledge has evolved with the information available through TV, Radio, Internet and Newspapers. Also the outside world has changed quite a lot, even this made impacted on his knowledge. The common man is no longer common he might earn $ 50 (approx Rs. 5,000/-) per month but dreams to become a millionaire (Crorepati, thanks to Kaun Banaga Crorepati). The common man dreams to drive a 4 Wheeler (Nano, the Rs. 1 lakh car, new offering from Tata Motors). So dreams are being blown out of proportion by media. Banks are offering EMIs on anything and everything from buying mobile phones to buying houses, from blowing money on weddings to entry in elite clubs and all this drives the common man towards Brands.
The common man's aspirations towards Brands have led to Brand categorisation from super luxury and elite Brand to the most fashionable Brand. Marketers and Brand managers have differentiated Brands for each segment catering to different strata of society.
To take care of the common persons aspiration about Brands, stores like The Loot (Discount store, offering 25% to 80% discounts on international brands like Levis, Pepe, Banana Republic), Big Bazaar (Offering everyday discounts on grocery, utensils, electronics, etc: it provides common people shopping mall experience), Seconds outlet of Bombay Dying towels and bedsheets have been launched, etc. These stores to provide the COMMON PERSON experience on owning a BRAND and a sense of attitude about the BRAND.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
No new innovations by Indian Pharma companies?
Indian Pharma companies have experienced a lot of R & D developments in recent few years. The innovations have placed these Indian Pharma companies amongst the top elite Pharma companies in the international scenario. This industry according to Ficci reports is growing @ 26% which is more faster rate than the retail sector.
The Pharma sectors traditionally have been investing funds in R&D and Clinical Research Trials. But in the recent few years a lot of investment is put aside for International Acquisitions, Research in new molecules and Patents. Though these companies have been competing with international counterparts to reach the top position in terms of net value of the company, innovations at the bottom of the pyramid haven’t seen any light of the day. I mean the no improvement in the training of the MRs, the sales representatives and the Brand Managers. The sales reps still carry the same old visual aids and the research papers to pitch about the company product to the doctors. Actually to think about it, I feel the Medical Representatives are the most neglected lot in the Pharma companies, coz nobody feels they are driving the company’s sales.
By the statement What at the bottom of the pyramid? I mean to say the people who directly impact the growth of the company; the other people are indirectly connected to the growth of the company.
The Marketing & Sales departments haven’t seen any innovations in last 20 yrs. The MRs (Medical Representatives) still visit 10 docs and 5 retailers as per the set target, show them the same brochures and visual aids, the same pitch and lastly the research reports. The only new development that was seen, late in the year 1998 was KOL based PR stories in publications, but can we consider it an innovation?
On an average when a new product is assigned to a Brand/Product manager he is given a budget to market the product which is peanuts. In that budget the marketing manager has to
Conduct product training for all the MRs,
Brochure development providing a brief on the product,
Conduct Research on the product stating how superior the product is from its competitors,
Sponsor CMEs of KOLs which helps in spreading the word of mouth publicity on the product and
Prepare visual aids to be given out to the doctors when the MR visits the doctors.
The Brand Managers decisions are mostly based on RoI, leaving a very little scope for innovation. He has a target to achieve, and advertising is out of question because prescription drugs cannot advertise as per the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical research), so uses the age old techniques to push the product details to the doctors.
Now once this is done, the Sales Managers job is to drive the sales of the products so he sets targets for the MRs to meet doctors. The Sales manager thought process is simple meet doctors and more doctors, meet them often, also meet retailers and more retailers, this will drive the sales of the products. Actually the Sales Manager knows the doctors will listen to the MRs only once and the next time will skip the meetings, but he knows of only one thing that will drive the sales, he doesn’t try to innovate something new which will help his team to achieve the sales target.
Doctors are fed-up of the same old story of the drugs and medicines, watching the same old visual aids, pitches from MRs, etc; this often forces them to skip the meetings with MRs, which are then bound to be quite boring.
But the BIG question is, whether any Pharma companies are doing anything to improve this situation? If the Pharma companies are not able to innovate something new to help in marketing their products, sales of the drugs might be affected in the long run.
What the Pharma companies really need is some great innovation at the ground level where sales of the products are been driven, word of mouth publicity another big avenue yet to be tapped and recommendations of the drugs. The Pharma companies should hire some ad agency to ideate or pitch to NID to think of some innovation which will be the greatest innovation for the MRs.
The story appeared in Financial express was a review of a book named:
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Select-segments-to-dominate/350276/ The Marketing Mavens by Noel Capon: The article talks about Pfizers innovations at the Sales level, this is what the book had to say…
Pfizer rigorously schools its field salespeople to ask questions and feed information back to the firm. Target expects all employees who travel—whether on business or pleasure—to write reports on trends in other parts of the world. This kind of information gathering can give your business an edge. It can pinpoint needs that customers don’t yet recognise—needs that by definition won’t show up in traditional data gathering. You should be striving to meet and exceed customer expectations not only by solving their current problems, but by anticipating future ones, and then proactively devising solutions in existing and emerging market segments.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Innovations in BRANDS
In the same manner Brands also have life, they are born, they reach the height of their image and slowly they perish, coz the brand managers fail to innovate. Brand managers who are considered the parents of the brands fail to understand this important aspect of the Brand i.e. to Innovate. Each new Brand/product is launched with a lot of budget on advertising, publicity, events, etc. But after some years of break even and profits the brand manager starts neglecting those same same Brands which everybody cherished.
Also since the Brands are targeted to a specific audience, if the audience changes or grows, the Brand managers again start targeting the same age group, so they start from the scratch the campaign for new consumers or customers. Again the same concept of advertising, same target audience and the things over again. If the Brand managers innovate then the target audience will increase, the marketing plans will change with a new challenge for the Brands to survive.
Take the example of Horlicks, earlier the Brand campaign was targeted for children and mothers as whole food for children. Then the team at Horlicks started changing the packaging of the brand with different flavours, so a new target audience I mean more consumers as every consumer has a different taste. Over the years Horlicks kept on changing the taste/packaging/campaign for the changing needs of the consumer. This was part of the Horlicks innovation team, which suited their product to each consumer requirements. Over a period of 15 years Horlicks campaign with many changes also began targeting working women and mother's as they also need energy to work. According to Horlicks the now the women are more career oriented, working mothers, they need energy to work, to meet their ends. Their are very less brands in the market who have changed the way consumers have changed their habits, Brands like Cadbury is one such brand which comes to mind when we think about continuous innovation in BRAND.
It's high time the brand managers think about long term benefits and offer long term customer service, rather than achieving short term targets/goals. Every Brand needs to innovate coz the consumers are changing, they are getting more options, more choices, more information. The consumer is more informed as ever about what is good for him/her, they understand what the meaning of reading the labels, so targeting these consumers a more innovative campaign need to be planned.
But, what I have seen is the Brand managers often goes in for a complete re branding of the brand. For a Brand manager this generates enough hype for its target audience with new hoardings, new advertisements, and press conferences, which is not the right solution.
Companies need to planned for long term goals, conduct market research, innovate, invest in R & D, etc.
The competition is not with rival companies or products but with TIME and INFORMATION coz both these aspects are changing with the speed of thought.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Brands...Brands...Brands...
What makes people come back to brands?
What impact does brands have on consumers minds?
Why a consumer is loyal to a particular brand?
Why a customer promotes (Word-Of-Mouth) brands?
How negative news impacts a brand?
Every marketing professional has different answers to these questions, but the bottom line is a good brand is good business. But then the main question is what is a BRAND?
A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand
Brands are a means of differentiating a company’s products and services from those of its competitors.
http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/brands_introduction.asp
A brand by definition is a product/service which carries its values, the customers who own/use the product/service cherish and remain loyal to it, and they also prefer to shell extra bucks for the product/service.
Below is a list of brands, that shows the world’s top 10 brands in 2002 (as measured by value):
{Rank Brand Value ($ billions)}
1 Coca-Cola ($69.6) 2 Microsoft ($64.1) 3 IBM ($51.2) 4 GE ($41.3) 5 Intel ($30.9) 6 Nokia ($30.0) 7 Disney ($29.3) 8 McDonalds ($26.4) 9 Marlboro ($24.2) 10 Mercedes ($21.0) Source: Interbrand; JP Morgan Chase, 2002
Every businessman wants his brand to become a leader in the market and the customers should define the category by his brand. Eg. In India hardly anybody will ask you to photocopy the document, everybody uses the word Xerox for photocopying; similarly everybody will refer bottled water as Bisleri. The brand itself defines the segment of products. Creating a new brand in the market clutter is a big task by itself, it involves Advertising, Public Relations, Events, etc. It also needs customer loyalty programs, relationship building programs, consumer educating seminars, etc.
The people who create brands are called brand managers. Brand managers are also considered the parents of the brand and they plan and cultivate the brand in the minds of the stakeholders, consumers and masses. The band managers have to decide activities which will cultivate the values of the brand in the minds of the stakeholders. The band managers have to decide of the course to be taken to create the particular brand like:
· Advertisements
· Public Relations
· Events
· Road shows
· Customer loyalty programs
· Consumer education seminars
· Internal staff communication
· Brand information creation and dissemination to target stakeholders
· In film product/service placements
The above mention is a brief of some of the ideas the brand manager can use to create a impact of the brand.
Brands have longed being attributed to the growth of the business in terms of sales, staff recruitment, consumer loyalty, etc.