The Economic Times - February 2001
The traditional marketing paradigm is about extracting money resident within the consumer base (‘capturing customer surplus’ is perhaps a more politically correct phrase.) However, watching growth aspirations of companies outstrip the growth in purchasing power of the Indian consumer base, I do believe that the time has come for companies to adopt an additional marketing paradigm – that of enriching the consumer base. The idea is that companies, individually or collectively, should invest significantly in feeding the goose that lays the golden eggs, or to use a more rural market analogy, put nutrients back into the land that they reap from, even though they are not in the animal feeds business or in the soil nutrients business. The idea also is that companies should accord the ‘enrich’ activity the same seriousness as the ‘extract’ activity – as a key element of the marketing strategy, and not just something that is […]
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The Economic Times - 10 July 2000
Maruti has had a lot of unsympathetic press lately, and the media post mortem of its strategy is not yet over. When Titan decimated HMT, the ‘timekeeper of the nation’, there was no editorial saying “Titans of industry can suddenly look like endangered species if the evolutionary tide of the market moves away from them”(Business Standard, July 5, 2000). The mechanical to quartz shift in the watch market definitely was an evolutionary tide, the like of which has not happened in the car market. Another evolutionary tide, the scooter segment of the two wheeler market collapsing, did not earn Bajaj Auto the screaming headline “market share hits an all time low” (Economic Times, June 24). When Colgate’s 60% plus market share was getting gobbled by Hindustan Lever, there was not much mention of “humbled giant” and “fall of the mighty”. Incidentally, the outcome of that battle suggests that a fundamentally […]
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The Economic Times - 12 June 2000
It used to be said of a prestigious men’s college in Delhi that when it rained in Oxford they would open their umbrellas here, in reflex. The dotcom industry seems to be in the same mode nowadays. When B2C sneezes in America, everyone here seems to develop a full blown cold, complete with cold feet! “B2C is out”, is the buzz we have been hearing of late from consultants, funders, and valuation focused dotcom companies, scrambling to re-incarnate themselves as B2B. Yet there is a parallel conceptual discourse going on that suggests the opposite. For example, in the June 8th issue of Economic Times there was an interview with a global management consultant who said “Any area where the gap is huge between the customer’s desires and the realities holds good potential”. In India there are several areas with yawning gaps that we know about and experience all the time. […]
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The Economic Times - September 1999
The whole discourse on ‘Internet India’ in the media and in business forums leaves me with an uneasy feeling of déjà vu. It sounds a little too close to the “size and opportunity of the Great Indian Middle Class” saga that was enacted out not too long ago. Small current markets were forecasted to grow to huge numbers, born out of the analogy school of forecasting that applied ‘elsewhere’ metrics of penetration, per capita consumption and growth to the humongous numbers of people in India. To the quantitative analysis, we then added the qualitative element – the Indian consumer, we believed, was ’emerging’ and the ugly duckling was about to become the beautiful swan. The result was a very seductive picture of market opportunity that was expected to happen with a momentum of its own, powered by the ‘who can resist progress’ compulsion. What followed, as they say, is history. […]
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