Most of us have an uncle who would proudly show of his old watch, " I have been using this watch for the last 30 years , this was gifted to me when I was in class 10" . This is a nightmare come true for a marketer, if every consumer were to use his watch for eternity then ......
Similarly most housewives collect the used containers of flour, ghee ,,, which she would clean and use it to store cereals , and other items in the kitchen and so on till it is sold to the scrap dealer . Companies like Pilot , when they launched their Pilot pens in India, were surprised by the demand from consumers that they wanted a refill for their pens. This was unheard of in the Japaneses market as the pens were designed as 'use and throw' . The local partner of the company had to produce inks locally which could be used to refill the pens.
This value which we hold for anything old in our house has been quite successfully exploited by many marketers. Their solution to this issue is offer an 'exchange' scheme' to the consumer. By doing so the company is giving some value to the consumers in return for the old. Most successful was Akai and it's exchange scheme which ended up changing the face the TV market in India. Even Bajaj use to bank on this value for a long time, its ads use to exclusively talk about the money one would get when it is sold later.
A more recent example is the annual "The Great Exchange Offer" by BigBazaar, with an offer to buy all the old scrap material (Kabaad) at prices much higher than what prevails in the open market, like Rs 25 per kilo of newspapers , old tires at Rs 50 and so on. The condition being that one has shop four times the value of the old scrap which they sell there to able to redeem the value of exchange.
There are many more unique consumer buying habits which i would try and cover in my later posts, but will look forward to suggestions and observations from readers...
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As Indian's we hold a lot of value for the 'old', maybe it is also culturally driven where we have been asked to respect 'old' rather than look for new. Though this is changing very fast especially among the younger generation of consumers, but it will take a lot of time before we actually catch up with our western counter parts. And it is even questionable whether such a transition is a good one. Anyway without getting into 'consumerism' debate I will like to look into this aspect in detail from a marketer's perspective.
Most of us have an uncle who would proudly show of his old watch, " I have been using this watch for the last 30 years , this was gifted to me when I was in class 10" . This is a nightmare come true for a marketer, if every consumer were to use his watch for eternity then ......
Similarly most housewives collect the used containers of flour, ghee ,,, which she would clean and use it to store cereals , and other items in the kitchen and so on till it is sold to the scrap dealer . Companies like Pilot , when they launched their Pilot pens in India, were surprised by the demand from consumers that they wanted a refill for their pens. This was unheard of in the Japaneses market as the pens were designed as 'use and throw' . The local partner of the company had to produce inks locally which could be used to refill the pens.
This value which we hold for anything old in our house has been quite successfully exploited by many marketers. Their solution to this issue is offer an 'exchange' scheme' to the consumer. By doing so the company is giving some value to the consumers in return for the old. Most successful was Akai and it's exchange scheme which ended up changing the face the TV market in India. Even Bajaj use to bank on this value for a long time, its ads use to exclusively talk about the money one would get when it is sold later.
A more recent example is the annual "The Great Exchange Offer" by BigBazaar, with an offer to buy all the old scrap material (Kabaad) at prices much higher than what prevails in the open market, like Rs 25 per kilo of newspapers , old tires at Rs 50 and so on. The condition being that one has shop four times the value of the old scrap which they sell there to able to redeem the value of exchange.
There are many more unique consumer buying habits which i would try and cover in my later posts, but will look forward to suggestions and observations from readers...
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