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'Brand experience helps create loyalty'

By Fairy Dharawat | February 14, 2014

The Smartphone segment will ride the Android platform to nearly 70 percent growth, according to Sapna Sharma, Head of Marketing - Devices, Spice Retail Ltd. In a chat with Point with Purchase, Sapna shares the trends, merchandising specifications and shopper insights for the year 2014-2015 and the youth mobile brand's vision for the future. Read on.


Projection for 2014

The year 2014 is going to be very challenging as the product's shelf life is fast decreasing. There is innovation happening at a rapid pace and the demand of the shopper is ever increasing. The smartphone segment will ride the Android platform to a nearly 70 percent growth. The feature phone segment will be slow but will not de-grow. 

Experience Oriented Activities

The market is flooded with new brands. Array of new products are being launched by new brands almost every day and each one of them is on the race to be the market leader. There is cut-throat competition in acquiring the top position and attracting the target customer.  Often, in this race to the top, brands forget that every association with the audience is about the experience offered to them.  Below-the-line activities elucidate the experience given to the customer by the brand. It brings the customer and the brand adjacent to each other by giving them a direct and an active taste of the brand, by not including the media. Subconscious impact of these activities is high and hence, increases the brand recall, eventually influencing purchase decisions of a customer by creating a strong relationship and giving a satisfying brand experience. Thus, brand experience helps to create brand loyalty and hence, retain the customer.

Merchandising At Retail

Spice is one such company that firmly believes in creating experiences for its customers. We planned and executed a BTL activity in order to recreate Brand visibility at retail outlets with enhanced brand value  towards the current scenario of competitive  Indian market. For this, we decided to make SIS (shop in shop) counters with'Back wall units' and'Front counters' with the SPICE branding.  Anmol Chadha (Manager Marketing - Device  Business, Spice Retail Ltd). designed these units in a way to offer customers as well as the retail owners, a compact and a unique look.

Investment

Our campaign has been planned in different phases wherein we are spending approximately Rs 2.2 crore in Phase 1.

Shopper Insights

We have been engaging various agencies to study the behavioral pattern of the shoppers. This helps in ascertaining the expectation of the shopper and gives us the insight into bringing in more innovations in our product offering. This is also coupled with a daily tracking of sales figures based on geographies and income groups.  The shoppers today are very well informed and make their decisions before entering the counter. But a fair percent change their decision at the point of purchase which is basically due to the in- shop branding and other POP material from other players. An SIS counter attracts the shopper and creates a trust factor in his/her  mind regarding the brand. In terms of buying patterns, we have seen an increase in the online and direct-to-Home shoppers. Also, the buyer today wants to pick the best of technology at the most affordable price point. The economic scenario is, of course, not helping the industry with sales looking rather slow.

Retail Formats

We believe that today's shopper wants to experience the product before buying it. Keeping that in mind, we have launched Android Land stores that give that opportunity to the customer. Our team explains the various features of android to the customer that helps him make up his mind.

Growth Plans for 2014-2015

The year 2014 is going to be very challenging as the product's shelf life is fast decreasing. There is innovation happening at rapid pace and the demand of the shopper is ever increasing. The industry is set to grow exponentially. The smartphone segment has a huge prospect and we might be looking at  gaining maximum growth in this segment for the year 2015.

Future Plans

Currently, we plan to cover the rest of the phases with almost 600 more counters to go.
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