Retail: Value Propositions for Customer Satisfaction

Someone famously said “If people went into stores only when they needed to buy something and, once there, they bought only what they needed, the economy would collapse”

Different kinds of people have different attitudes to shopping. Some will buy stuff because it’s cheap, some because its expensive. Some want to browse forever, some want to buy and run. Buying a gift for a wedding you don’t want to go to vs buying a gift for your best friend’s daughter. Buying diamonds vs buying grocery.

Given the complexity of bahaviour patterns, usage, occasions, and purchase pathways, how do you arrive at what could be a handy guide to value propositions for retail brands? Here’s a point of view: V2E3. Value, Variety, Exclusivity, Experience and Expertise. Every retailer needs to pick the dominant offering and craft a combination of those that suit its desired customer base best. Take a look at how each of these come alive.

Value: Some people just can’t resist the lure of low price.
Variety: something for everyone.
Exclusivity:The dilemma and pleasure of buying something expensive.
Expertise:How often have you gone back to a shop because of a sales person, or walked out of a shop because of a sales person?
Experience:Ambience and display turned into an art form, almost.

VALUE:

VARIETY:

EXPERTISE:

EXPERIENCE:

EXCLUSIVITY:

The above post is an excerpt from a talk titled “Value Propositions for Customer Satisfaction” delivered by Mythili Chandrasekar at Asia Retail Congress, Mumbai, Jan 08

Any Male In Sight? 2

Men and Sports: Fatal Attraction

"Sports is one of the few things on Planet Earth that just makes sense. Men don’t want to accept confusion. We want things simple. Sports allow us to do that."
-A Basketball Fanatic


Whether its a platform for male bonding, opportunities to show off cool facts and give “expert” advice and dazzle fellow fans with their superior knowledge, or evoking national pride, sports has been a perennial male passion. Captured yet again in the new Vodafone ad, which shows a tense man outside a maternity ward, equally awaiting close-finish cricket alerts! But what’s a new twist in the tale, is the woman in the Canara Bank “Square Slice” commercial who decides to get into cricket for his sake.

Tech Talk 2: Shaleen Sharma,JWT Delhi

Mobility and Web Services - Challenges and Opportunities in Developing Countries

From Japan to US, from Africa to Asia, there exists a fanatic optimism about the increasing power of the internet. It seems that just like advances in micro processing transformed computing experience, the internet browser will change the very way people have been using internet till now. (Primarily E mail and search).

There has been a lot of noise about the next killer apps residing in the browser. The likes of Google are now offering integrated office solutions (like spreadsheets, word and power point) completely online. Software itself is no longer peddled shrink wrapped on IT stores, it is following a pay-per-use services delivery model which pundits are calling SAAS-Software as a service.

To my mind, internet itself, more than being a consumer medium, is a “Great services and information framework.” Mobility too essentially started as a service, till entertainment and computing applications converged on the same.
One wonders, what is the next tidal wave of evolution, for mobility and for the internet? Can the internet drive mobility adoption or mobility facilitate quicker internet penetration? These questions are all the more relevant, for developing countries like India who’s technology adoption will not be linear and is expected to benefit from the “experience curve” of the developed world.

Of course, the convergence of mobility and web services is going to open new opportunities, but the players looking to leverage those opportunities will have to negotiate through some tough challenges-cultural and economic.
While in Western Europe and US, high in-home broadband penetration levels have led consumers to view web services completely differently. The experience there has to be larger, richer, bigger, and quicker. In developed mobile societies of Asia like Japan and South Korea, though in home broadband levels are roughly similar (or even more) than those in the West, consumers have taken to mobile broadband and mobile web services far more excitedly. May be this is cultural or may be this is because the overall mobile services infrastructure there has evolved faster and better. Just the other day we heard that in Japan notebook sales declined for three straight quarters as people are downloading most of the web applications (entertainment, e mail etc) and using services (billings and bookings etc) on other web compatible appliances. High Definition Televisions and Hand Held phones were the dominant segment of such appliances.

In India, the driver of web services roll out through mobile phones is primarily going to be economic. Critics concur that India’s rate of tech adoption across categories is a little sloppy. But what most people fail to understand is that whenever a technology has been made economically affordable, Indians have grabbed it. This is evident from automobiles technology (where Tata Nano has created such a splash in popular consciousness) to LCD screens to mobile phone tariffs itself. (Folklore has it that since the time tariffs have been coming down, rate of growth is going up by a factor of 4).

Some key learnings have come to us from the African continent. It has been estimated that the “Unbanked” (people who have no bank accounts because of very little savings generated or illiteracy) are sitting on a liquid capital of around a trillion dollars. Cellular Services Providers in Africa have been aware of this opportunity. MTN and Vodafone are successfully experimenting in providing mobile banking solutions to all such people. One can have a mobile account, and all the financial activities one undertakes can be routed through their mobile bills. This is both convenient and economical.

In countries like India however, financial web services can be the killer app for their adoption, initially, especially amongst the mobile segment at the lower end. Just as e mail was the killer app for web’s adoption, basic, transaction based financial services can drive mobile penetration as well as internet adoption in India.But just like the EU, India is a federation of markets and consumer segments. Consumers at the upper end of the spectrum might not be so gung ho about financial services being delivered through the mobile portal. Many Indians in the Upper SEC ranks, rate security much above convenience and even economy. But what will drive these guys will be differentiated content. For certain segments it could be gaming, for some others it could be music and for some video.
By differentiated I mean exclusive- content that is not available elsewhere on other gateways or portals like television stations, radio or even websites.
Web services could also proffer information or opinion that is not available outside of the mobile cloud (embedded in the handset or relayed by the service provider)

All of this brings us to two critical questions. One definitely is that if it happens, and eventually it will who will “control” the last mile, i.e the consumer relationship. Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone was recently asked about the handset vendor-services provider relationship status in the wake of Nokia launching its web services foray. Mr. Sarin made it quite clear that the service providers believed that they control the relationship with the consumer and there is no way they would want to loosen their grip on that! The consumer mobile bill is the greatest instrument they have, and they have to continue to generate it.
I would tend to think so too! And I believe that is their rightful domain as well. And may be that is why, from AT&T to T-Mobile to Vodafone everybody is more interested in integrating “mobile content and services” in their business architecture, across countries. It will be nice to see how Nokia who says that web services will be the mainstay of its future strategy handles this fundamental conflict.
In hindsight, Apple looks smarter! They came out with web content and services portal in the form of i-tunes, and then launched the handset. Could Nokia have done the same? In hindsight, yes!
But may be what handset manufacturers like Nokia can do, is pick up areas where service providers can not effectively provide web services. This can be done through exclusive tie in like the one they did with Universal Music, where Nokia music phones will come with some embedded tracks, and Universal taking a cut from the overall sales. But such web services will be asynchronous and not live.

May be consumers will tell what mode of web services they will adopt?! May be Apple was smarter or may be Nokia is!

Case Study: Nike Mean Streets

Navonil Chatterjee, JWT Planning, Bangalore shares the thinking behind the award winning Nike TV commercial, on behalf of the Nike Team in JWT Bangalore.

Hardly a Walk in the Park : The Challenge

In a country where the Jordans, the Federers, the Nadals and the Rooneys could not help Nike much, it was imperative for the brand to be associated with Indian cricket in order to make inroads into the market. Besides, Reebok and Adidas had a head-start over Nike and had also signed up almost all the major cricketing superstars of India. It was in this challenging environment in December 2005 that Nike successfully bid to be the official apparel sponsor of the entire Indian cricket team for a period of 5 years.

The team sponsorship undoubtedly gave us an opportunity to drive visibility, credibility and even acceptability for the brand. But the biggest task for us was how to make the brand stand apart from a plethora of other cricket-based commercials? Especially given the fact that in India almost every third ad - from soaps to bikes, from shampoos to cars, from credit cards to televisions, from colas to insurance - features one cricketer or another!

The Search for a Point of View (POV) : What JWT DidWe soon realized that to stand out in this cricket clutter, we needed to have our own unique POV on the game itself. What was this game truly about? We contacted every possible stakeholder of the game in trying to answer this one question …We asked ourselves … what are the greatest moments of cricket for us?We debated … what stood out in these moments?We interviewed … top Indian cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Jawagal Srinath, Anil Kumble and also met past Indian greatsWe spoke … with cricket commentators like Harsha Bhogle and Charu SharmaWe observed Cricket Crazy Kids training at the National Cricket AcademyWe wrote … to cricketers and coaches in every test playing nation in the world to check their take on the game, and even did focus groups amongst some of them …Character Over Cover DriveAfter tapping through all the responses, we realized that the abiding moments of cricket are those where character prevailed over cover drive, temperament took precedence over technique, fighting spirit reigned over flamboyance and grit glowed over timing.

Moments like Kumble bowling his heart out with a fractured jaw, Sehwag refusing to play it safe and risking a six when approaching a triple century, Yuvraj and Kaif relishing the pressure in the Natwest run-chase or the VVS Laxman-inspired epic turn-around against the all-conquering Australians at the Eden Gardens.We realized that cricket is not just about skill and brilliance and timing alone.

It is about context, about handling pressure.

That it is not just a game of bat and ball. Rather, it’s all about balls.

And it is from this realization that Nike’s POV on cricket was born: GUTSY CRICKET!

Celebrating Gutsy Cricket : The Communication

Our commercial then when went on to dramatize that POV instead of indulging in the usual ‘Come on India’ kind of jingoism. However, given that cricket is a religion in India, in the brand’s first foray into the Indian market, we chose to ‘CELEBRATE’ gutsy cricket instead of making it grim and over-intense. And an Indian traffic jam served as the perfect amphitheatre for this celebration of a spectacular and yet gutsy brand of cricket.

Just Did It : The Results

The effects of the commercial were clearly not gone in 120 seconds. Sales showed a 40% growth in the activity period over last year, 60% of the Nike Team India jerseys were sold out within 10 days of the launch, Nike got the maximum free media coverage (around 180,000 USD).

There was unprecedented buzz – the commercial was displayed 16 times on a YouTube page and had close to half a million hits. It became the most debated ad on agencyfaqs. There were communities in Orkut and innumerable number of blogs on the ad.