Does season influence a marketer's mood?

With the advent of winter in the plains of north India, I was thinking how two of my marketer friends would react to this change,one looks forward to it with a wide smile and other one is looks depressed and is cursing the cold winds which are sweeping the place. Both of them are in the beverages business , but one is with soft drinks and the other one sells tea. The change of season has a different impact on the sales of both the product categories...

There are many other product categories where this shift happens, Air conditioners, you can see the sales guy dusting his stock of room heaters and getting ready to sell, the street vendors also shifting from selling of cucumbers to boiled eggs, the street side cloth shops shifting from cotton to woolen...

But what is interesting to note how the mood of a marketers also gets influenced, if you talk to my soft drinks friend he is all cheerful when the summer is at its worst, it maybe also a reflection of how involve one is in his business, and how far your job influences you..

Online Shopping - Over promise and underdeliver!!!!!

Some say we are at the inflexion point with regard to online shopping in India. People like Kishore Biyani of Pantaloon retail are betting big on the sector with a target of 1000 crore from their recently started online venture.

I personally am a great believer in the power of Internet the impact it has had and will have on shopping (overall marketing) , and I personally have shifted most of my book buying to Internet. But the test of these things when there is a glitch in their operations, system or rather the faith in it gets tested when there is a problem......

I will share the recent experience which I had with flipkart.com, while buying books. I have been buying on the site for last one year, and the service has been very good. They have sent the books at the promised time and I have recommended the site to a few of my friends who are also happy with the site.

Then last Saturday night I wanted to buy a few more books, and did my usual net banking transaction only to find that the money was transferred from my account but the flipkart site said payment not received. I knew that these kind of glitches do happen and so I checked their site where they had given a helpline number saying you could call it 24X7 on any day of the week. So i called on the number and , was put on hold saying the operator would attend, and then no response.... I tried a couple of times and then mailed their customer care, there at least I got a email after a few hrs saying they are looking into the issue and would get back to me in 24 hrs , and ...no response. I ultimately after more than 48 hrs I tried calling the number again and this time (being Monday) some one responded and was able to get the issue sorted out. Hopefully will be getting the books in a few days.

Looking back I was trying to understand why was I getting frustrated by the experience as the issue was sorted out in less than 48 hrs, which could be considered a very good response time, from what we have been used to till now, but then the problem is because of the promises which the vendor was making , a 24 hr helpline (paid, not a toll-free!) which does not work on a Saturday and the customer support saying that it will respond in 24 hrs or less and then you are the one who has to again call up and get a response. Do not promise something which you cannot deliver- if we look many other helplines, they mention the timing 9am-5pm on weekday and we do not expect them to respond to my phone call on a Sunday....

I hope to listen more from reader on their experiences and opinions on online shopping

Road side vending of Tea and Coffee

Yesterday I saw this initiative by Brooke Bond on a busy intersection in the city. The guy was vending hot tea and coffee to people on the move. I spoke to him and had a cup of tea which was very good ...

People have been speaking about redefining your competition; here an organized player not only acknowledges competition from street vendors but also goes down to compete with them. It creates a very good touch point directly with consumers, which could be leveraged to strengthen the brand....

Shopping habits are changing ?

I was wondering if our shopping habits have changed ? Especially in the context of grocery buying....

If today you were to ask a typical married male the prices of various grocery products my guess is that he would be able to give more accurate answers than a similar profiled person a generation back.

The reasons would be the fact that as many of us shift to buying from organized retail, grocery buying which used to be in the exclusive domain of the lady of the house has also shifted and now has become a sort of joint family activity

This has implication for marketers as till now for many categories communication has been targeted at the house wife, but when the buying habit shifts should the focus of communication also shift??

Credit Card usage in India

Read an interesting bit of news that use of credit cards is going down, and that of debit card increasing link

People belonging to a generation before were strictly against debt, the saying "keep your legs within the blanket" which meant that live within your means was what they believed in... But the younger generation , was thought to be the one which did not seem to care much about swiping the card and making purchases. Spend today and pay later was seemed to the order of the day..

But the data from RBI, shows a different picture, consumers not using their credit cards and moving on to debit card use. Is it just a blip and consumers would again switch back to their credit cards is something which needs to be seen, but maybe the consumer is also getting smarter in realizing the high interest rated being charged....

Link to my article in Economic times on Managing Customer Expectations

Sharing the link to my article in Economic times on Exceeding Customer Expectations, Link

Car Sales and Production Delays

Last few months have been really good for the car Industry, we have seen record sales happening(July saw a 38% growth). With India becoming the fastest growing automobile markets in the world, this is in the backdrop of the sales stagnating in the US market. The growth is fueled by the series of new models launched by car manufacturers, especially in the B segment of the market, demand from rural markets, and with the Indian market entering the beginning of the festive season I think the next few months are going to be even more exciting for the automobile industry. Most of us get into the serious shopping mode only during the festivals and companies also wait to launch best of their schemes during this period, or is it the other way round ...a chicken and egg situation!!!!

But what surprised me was the news that both Maruti & Hyundai will not be able to match the demand due to capacity constraints. It is a window of opportunity for the many other players in the market who have always been wanting to get that extra market share, but seeing it from the number one and number two car makers in India, seems strange, because this growth is something which has been happening for some time now and suddenly you do not have production to cater to the demand?? Loyalty for a brand is good thing to bank on , but how long will someone wait for a car , especially in an era where we have got used to the off-the-shelf availability across many categories.

And once a consumer switches and picks up a car from some other manufacturer , he may never give you another chance. I think Maruti & Hyundai need to watch out ...

Brand India - Impact of CWG Scam and Super Bug Controversy

The last few weeks have been bad for Brand India, and the reasons being the way Common Wealth Games are been handled and the Super Bug origin theory.

Coming to the first issue of the Common Wealth Scam, though the full reports are awaited and like many other scams they might also be pushed under the carpet after the conclusion of the games. But the impact that this scam on the overall image of the country is a very high price to pay , and hopefully we should be able to salvage some pride by conducting the games successfully. It is shameful that our neighbors used the opportunity of hosting the Olympics to showcase the country's entry into the next league and our people here .......

Coming to the second controversy, attributing the origin of the super bug to India, and even naming it after the capital New Delhi-Metallo -1 (NDM-1) is something which will again go a long way in damaging the reputation of the country. There are many sides to this story and maybe it might turn out that the reports were doctored to suit the interest of a few companies or people in other countries, but my feeling is that the damage is done.

Both these incidents reinforce the idea of India being a corrupt and developing nation with poor facilities is not a good news on the 64th Independence day.

Link to my article in Economic times on companies innovating for Indian consumers

Sharing the link to my article in economic times on companies innovating for Indian consumers, link

Successful Marketing is Easy in ....Hindsight

It has been said the strength of a great idea lies in its simplicity.

And we can similarly about successful marketing - ideas, campaigns and products. Once it has been successful, it is very easy to go back, dissect it and decide why it was successful,,

The other day I was having a similar discussion, when some one came up with a short one-line explanation for the success of CCD (Coffee Cafe Day), how it started as a small cyber cafe in Brigade road in Bangalore and has close to a 1000 coffee shops today. The idea was to provide youngsters an option between a pub and a typical Darshini (a quick service option in Bangalore). A simple idea with a lot of potential.

The only alternative coffee lover had before CCD was the Indian Coffee house , which today, interestingly has a very specific segment of people who come there, anyway that is another story by itself..

For CCD the timing also helped, because we had the young crowd take over the country including the coffee shops, with high disposable income and so on.... (people interested in knowing more about CCD's success can read BT's cover story, link), and rest all as they say is history.

CCD's success, is also because of the vision and risk-taking capacity of an entrepreneur to bet on a future he believed in. Because, in 1996 if anyone were to be told that there is a potential for Asia's largest chain of coffee shops in India , with coffee selling at a price 10 times more than what one can get in the next-door Darshini ....

So though it is easy to talk about success ingredients 20 years after ... think the challenge lies in identifying it well before others do and hang on to it..