Sales & MarketZing !

What's on your consumers mind is it on your shelf ? is a good question to always ask both at a marketing front and on the operations front in retail , or any other consumer product business . Brands spend crores in driving awareness and desire , when the consumers come seeking in for the product , its a sheer waste when they dont find what they have come looking for .This is what the blog would term as "mind1 shelf0 "(tm) phenomenon ( where on the mind gets 1 , not on your shelf gets 0, like a football scoreline ) So why does this happen always , yes its a historical issue but never is addressed or easy to address ...here is this blogs take on the why piece i) Too many variants ::most of the problems occur due to the brand's great desire to satisfy everyone , thus the great urge for more skus 'which could take the shape of too many colors ,sizes , contents etc , so more the variants more the chance of "mind 1 shelf 0 " phenomenon ,take a max of two winn

India Retail Market 2008 - New Report Published Biyani to hive-off value segments into Future Value Retail Global tie-ups, private labels to be buzzwords in retail this year The Private Label Wave Enters Indian Retail Stores Agenda 2010 for the retail sector ( not an original post , compiled from the web )

The total catchment area , of a store is an useful information to have before deciding a store location and post store opening marketing energies focus .The catchment analysis is usually done to study the profile of consumers likely to visit in terms of income profile , current shopping destinations and the likely visit to the new store , based on that make some sort of business predictions and also useful in the " yes " or " no " decision . Generally it could be considered that major retailers like department stores, furniture warehouses would be destination sites. These sites could attract people from greater distances because the items are not common purchases, are expensive or provide the opportunity where a number of purchases can be made from the one location. For these destination sites it is possible for consumers to travel 10 or more kilometers. The way to find the catchment spread is too have a robust loyalty program which captures the pin codes of consume

One way which many retailers have driven traffic into their stores is through the gift vouchers route , come to think of it ,this is a great tool .Gift vouchers play a good role in the gifting process first because one doesn't have to break their heads as to what to gift , which is the biggest disconnect mostly among consumers with the standard question "what do we give ". Gift vouchers come in various denominations and have a deadline for usage ,unfortunately one cant break it into smaller denominations and one has to use the entire value in one go , if you see the spends from gift vouchers , it would be higher than the value of the vouchers ,so its a good cash memo size driver as the users tend to spend more than the value . Plus like all vouchers , there cud be a size able number of vouchers that don't get redeemed even . Gift vouchers is a big business line , add an element of institutional sales team and you get going , so along with a walk in model that retail

Bharti Retail to expand operations Retail sector to grow to $410 billion by 2010: Assocham Future Group's Biyani Sees Jump in India Retail Sales Pantaloon Retail eyes small food cos Indian PC sales recover, grow 24% in last three months Chirag logs in to light up PC market Why do shopkeepers like credit card users? Reliance Brands ties up with Timberland Essar's telco retail arm acquires X-Cite ( not an original post ,compiled from the web )

We have come across/suggest some interesting retail concepts which should go places ,here is our take :: i) The Brighter Side store at Bangalore( www.thebrightside.in ) : is all about ,very interesting lighting fittings for residential and commercial purpose , great concept ,backed with some amount of aggressive marketing , word of mouth backed with relevant architects and interior designers tie ups , should go places , watch this space for more developments . ii) the Great Indian Store : which aims at the catering to Indian artifacts and the Indian apparels backed with the right food ,backed at the right tourist destination should do well remember the dollars and the euros ! iii) The One stop home furnishing store : right from painting to furniture to lighting to interiors store which would work on an outsourcing model of the respective vendors iv ) Fast food Indian food joints :: Eating out would be big in India how about an Indian variety of fried chicken that can take on a KF

L ike we had mentioned earlier in this blog sunrise industries like telecom , insurance , airlines , and retail have the same environment in terms of the work , the big low penetration story in the market :) ,the future is bright ,market is big , haven't we heard all this ! But one common factor which is bleeding all of these sectors is the low price play being ventured into by some of the players ( 1 rs travel , lowest prices , lowest premium but highest insurance ), the latest to join in this play is the telecom sector( 1/2paisa per sec ) , so how long would this continue ? Low price has helped in building in volumes and - Buying- customer market share ,and also opening up the market by getting at the " non users " all this doesn't seem to be sustainable for long --as even in retail- low cost -high volumes -doesn't mean PROFITS , so it would be a careful MIX or category play to compensate the low margins , its here that private labels come to play . Its also