Tarang Gautam Saxena
June 27, 2011
In most conversations we have had with international brands in the last 2-3 years, India consistently appears on list of the top-5 markets in which to expand into.
The second most populous country in the world, India has a young population that offers a vibrant population mix that will provide a workforce and consumers in decades to come. There is steady growth in per capita income and a greater availability of credit, as well as a significant change in the consumers’ outlook to life that has propelled consumption levels.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ranked India as the second most attractive destination for global foreign direct investments in 2010. The lowest recorded GDP growth rate during the global slowdown was still a decent 6.7 per cent. This growth rate is expected to have returned around 9 per cent in 2011, and is driven by robust performance of the manufacturing sector, as well as government and consumer spending.
The ongoing opening up of the economy over two decades and its robust growth has steadily attracted brands and retailers into the country. Many of them have now been in the country since the early 1990s, and the numbers have grown exponentially during the last 8-10 years. Despite this, the market is far from saturation and many more international brands are actively scouting the market.
Many of them are value brands in their home markets and may, therefore, be more a logical fit into a “developing” market, but there are also plenty of premium and luxury names on the list. For instance while the growth has largely been led by soft goods product brands, as incomes have grown, the presence of more expensive consumer durable brands has also expanded.
While the journey to the Indian market has not been a smooth ride even for the well established and successful international brands in the market, brands that have invested in understanding the psyche of the Indian consumer, adopted flexibility in market approach and displayed persistence, have been paid off handsomely.
Some international brands have exceeded domestic brands in size and reach, while others have had to reconcile to being niche operators. Some have seen profits while others may have their senior management wondering what fit of madness brought them to tackle this market where they can only dream about making money sometime in the future.
Typically, when looking at a new market the very first question anyone would ask is: what is the market potential for brand?
However, you should also be prepared to ask yourself: what need is the brand addressing and what is the value being offered by the brand? How would it be able to effectively and efficiently deliver that value? In many cases, for those entering a non-existent product category a more basic question is: “Is there a need for my product offer?” Just because a brand is huge somewhere else in the world does not automatically make it desirable to the Indian consumer.
While most brands want to target the Indian middle-class millions, their sourcing structure and strategy places them out of the reach of most of the population. Brands that have succeeded in creating a significant presence, maintaining their brand image and having a sustainable operating model have, almost uniformly had a significant amount of local manufacturing. Notable examples from fashion include Bata, Benetton, Levi Strauss, Reebok, among others. In case of certain food brands such as Domino’s and McDonald’s, the companies have collaborated with and developed their vendors locally to bring down costs, and improve serviceability.
Apart from the costs and margins, another important issue is that of the adaptability of the product mix. Brands that are sourcing locally and have a significant product development capability in India are also able to respond to specific needs of the Indian market better, rather than being driven by what is appropriate for European or North American markets. This is an enormous advantage when you are trying to be “locally relevant” to the consumer in an increasingly cluttered marketplace.
Indeed the question is more to do with the brand’s willingness and capability to create a product mix that is most suitable for India through a blend of international and India-specific merchandise. The famous “Aloo-tikki” burger by McDonald’s is a great example of a product specifically developed for the Indian consumers. Not just that, India is probably McDonald’s only market in which its signature dish, the Big Mac, is not sold.
Of course, flexibility in tweaking the product to suit Indian market can become a concern when it amounts to losing control over the brand direction, and mutating away from the core proposition that defines the parent in the international market. Many brands wish to control every aspect of product development head office, but this also severely limits their ability to respond to local market needs and changes. A one-size fits all strategy obviously will limit the number of consumers that the brand can effectively address in a market such as India.
Another key question is: what is the degree of control that a brand wants to exercise on the brand, the product, the supply chain and the retail experience of the consumer? The corporate structure itself may be determined by the internal capabilities and strategies of the international brand in their home market or other overseas markets. A brand that has presence through a wholesale business in the home market may not have internal capability or experience in retail, and would look for an Indian partner who can fill in the gap.
Based on whether they want direct operational control over store operations, international companies can set up fully owned subsidiaries or joint ventures to manage the business in India. Many brands prefer to take a slow and steady approach as they do want to exert a significant amount of control over the business (including companies such as Inditex, the owner of Zara, and other retailers such as Wal-Mart and Tesco), entering only when they are fairly confident of being able to closely manage the business in India right up to the retail store.
During our work we have come across both extremes – companies that want to manage the minute details of the India business out of their own head offices, as well as companies that are so hands-off that they only want to hear from their franchisee or licensee when things are especially good or particularly bad. While a balanced, middle-of-the-road approach would be the logical one in each case, in reality individual styles of the top management have a huge influence on the approach actually taken. Also, the size of the potential market segment – relevant to the brand – has an important role to play in the strategy. If the brand is meaningful only to a small segment of the population, or priced at the top-most end of the market, one company may choose to establish an exploratory distribution relationship, while another might choose to set up an owned presence rather than look for an Indian partner to handle their small business.
While perfect partnerships seldom exist, companies could be a lot more careful we have found them to be, in questioning the criteria and motivations for choosing partners. In some cases, financial strengths, or past industrial glory were qualifying factors for picking franchisees, and the relationships have failed because the business culture was divergent from the Principal’s. In other cases, partners have been picked because they “have real estate strengths”, but no consideration has been paid to whether the partner has the operational skills to manage a fashion brand.
On several occasions, franchise relationships and joint ventures have split because one or both partners find that their expectations are not being fulfilled, or the water looks deeper than it did when they got into the business.
The opportunities in India are many. As the managing director of one international brand commented in a conversation with Third Eyesight, India is a market where a brand can enter and live out an entire lifetime of growth.
However, international brands do need to carefully identify what role they wish to play in the market, and what capability and capacity they need operationally to create the success that can truly root a brand into the rich Indian soil.
admin
February 28, 2011
Business
Standard, Mumbai, February 28, 2011
Sayantani
Kar (with inputs from Preeti Khicha)
When some of India’s big retail chains banded together recently to substitute Reckitt Benckiser’s products with private labels to protest the latter’s decision to cut sales margins on its products, they were doing something many global retailers have done with great success. Part of their overall strategy, especially for large chains in the US and Europe, is to develop quality private label products that complement other pieces in their marketing mix. While this is one way retailers can differentiate their firms from competition, it also helps them flex their muscles in their relationships with brand manufacturers. Indeed, retail giants Tesco, Walmart and Carrefour have a significant portion of their sales coming from private labels — ranging from 10 per cent for Costco and 50 per cent for Tesco.
India is a back runner in the private label race, but it is
catching up. A Shoppers Trend Study by Nielsen found awareness
about private labels has gone up from 64 per cent in 2009 to 78
per cent in 2010 across 11 cities in India. Nielsen Director (retail
services) Siddharthan Sundaram says, “Over the last three
to four months, we found an increased awareness of private labels
in categories such as staples, household products, personal care
products such as soaps, biscuits and packaged groceries.”
Thanks partly to the recent economic downturn, there is greater
acceptance — and even loyalty — to such brands in India,
say marketers. Future Group Business Head (private brands) Devendra
Chawla reasons, “A label on the shelf becomes a brand by
covering the two feet distance from the shelf to the trolley.
After all it is the consumer’s choice.” Even in the
toughest segment for private labels to crack — fast moving
consumer goods including food and personal care — store labels
claim share of 19-25 per cent.
Low-involvement categories such as household cleaners were among the first to see the entry of private labels (17-44 per cent of sale in modern trade), bringing in huge margin-lifts for modern retailers. In categories such as food products — jams, biscuits and staples — private labels today contribute more than 25 per cent of modern trade sales. Little wonder, retailers are now mining shopper data to make private labels shed their ‘low’ly tag — low involvement and low cost. Store chains are segmenting their brands according to consumer needs, combining more than one brand according to consumer behaviour, besides launching high-involvement premium products and innovative packaging to give national brands a run for their money.
Innovate or die
Retail innovation has had a big role to play in speeding up the
process of consumer acceptance. Future Group’s retail arm,
which includes Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar, calls its in-house
products ‘private brands’ not labels. It has a separate
team, headed by Devendra Chawla, to research and test FMCG products
before launch. The team has a range of private brands — Tasty
Treat, Fresh and Pure, Cleanmate, Caremate, Sach, John Miller,
Premium Harvest and Ektaa. Look at how it is using shopper data
to improve its products. The insight that kids found ketchup bottles
cumbersome and had to be served — making it inconvenient
if an adult was not around — led it to change the packaging
that in turn gave the brand a margin advantage. By offering ketchup
in pouches, it saved on the price of the glass bottle and freight
(pouches take up less space in a truck, hence more can be fitted
in). While ketchup in glass bottles continue to be Rs 99 for a
kilo, its Tasty Treat ketchup pouches come in Rs 59 packs.
By working with vendors it has also come up with interesting combinations — for example, its Tasty Treat jam has three small tubs packed as one unit, each tub containing a different flavour to offer consumers larger variety.
Retailers have now donned the hats of “product selectors” and “product developers” at the same time, points out Third Eyesight CEO Devangshu Dutta. “So far, most of the retailers were just selecting products from vendors which are mostly lower-priced knock-offs of manufacturer brands,” he says. Not any more.
Ashutosh Chakradeo, head (buying, merchandising and supply chain), HyperCity Retail, explains the process his company follows: “To develop food products, we identify vendors, tie up with food laboratories, chefs and consumers to be part of the tasting panels. Before launching a private label we do at least a month of consumer testing. We identify customers from our loyalty programme called Discovery Club, which tells us who buys a certain category of product. We give the relevant consumers our private label products for trial for a month. We meet the customers at their homes, take their feedback and these changes are incorporated into the private label brand.”
“Our stores act as research labs and are a constant source of feedback,” points out Chawla of Future Group. Chawla estimates 3-4 per cent of the sales of private labels are ploughed back into packaging and design innovation. Reliance Retail CEO Bijou Kurien says, “The teams are our main investment in private labels. Our 100-strong designers across all the formats help in coming up with product designs that fill a need gap or offer a few more features at the same price as national brands.” Reliance Retail has recently launched its own brand of watches priced Rs 149-199 which “no national player can offer” points out Kurien.
The edge
Most vendors directly supply to retailers’ distribution centres,
cutting out cost leakage at the distributor’s and carrying
and forwarding centres. Direct access to store shelves and aisles
also cuts out the high mainstream advertising costs that brands
have to bear. By clever product arrangements and in-store promotions,
retailers can sway the shopper and draw attention to the price
advantage. Chakradeo says, “We display private labels in
heavy footfall areas in the store. We complement displays —
so we keep our private label ketchup near the bakery.”
To tackle the tricky personal care category of face creams and shampoos that Aditya Birla Retail’s More chain has entered, it plans to communicate promotional offers straight to its loyalty programme members. “It will help us induce trials,” says Thomas Varghese, More’s CEO.
Bundling products is another way to woo the value-conscious consumer. Six months back, Future Group started bundling its private brands. Chawla says, “Take home-cleaning, which requires a floor cleaner, glass cleaner, toilet cleaner and utensil cleaner which we combined as a shudhikaran solution of our Cleanmate brand.” The combi-pack costs Rs 125, which would come to around Rs 220-250 if shoppers bought a la carte. The margins are still high at 26 per cent. “Vendors are assured of volumes,” points out Chawla.
What it also does is convert the fence-sitter who has not yet bought into a category. For example, consumers who avail of the shudhikaran solution also get into the habit of using glass cleaners — a category which has a small base and gets most of its sales from modern trade. Similarly, Future Group saw a 25 per cent spurt in the sales of soups when it clubbed soup mugs with its Tasty Treat soup packets based on the insight that Indians preference to sip their soup out of a coffee mug.
Don’t be surprised if you see MNC brands coming out with combo-offers for their products, way bigger than the occasional bucket with a detergent!
Growing up
There are signs the industry is evolving. Private labels in FMCG
are shedding their low-cost tags. But retailers know better than
to vacate low price-points altogether. Instead, they are segmenting
their brands just as a manufacturer brand would do. Chakradeo
of Hypercity says, “Over a period, we hope to increase the
stickiness and the differentiation our brands bring to our stores.
Particularly, in staples where we have seen our private label
business grow rapidly. This is a very quality and price-sensitive
category. We started with basic products but now we have premium
daals (lentils) and basmati rice as part of our portfolio.”
Future Group too has its ‘good, better, best’ policy firmly in place. In staples, the stores offer some products ‘loose’, such as rice, wheat, lentils, which is at the bottom of the ladder. Its Food Bazaar version of the products straddle the middle category, and above the two is its brand, Premium Harvest, which retails at a price higher than some manufacturer brands.
Stickiness may also result from the manner in which retailers are positioning their brands. Future Group’s brand Ektaa will retail regional food and staples across its stores in the country so that migrants can buy supplies they are comfortable with. Be it Govindbhog rice and kasundi (a rice variety and mustard sauce preferred by Bengalis), khakra (Gujarati snack) or murukku (loved by Tamilians). Boston Consulting Group Partner & Director Abheek Singhi says, “Indian retailers are not cut-pasting private label products from other markets but adapting them.”
Are private labels a risk worth taking? Chakradeo says, “The entire product formulation for our cleaners was done in partnership with Dow Chemicals, USA. We did not make any investment and we gave them a percentage of sales as fee. Investments are not huge in making private labels as in most cases it is partnered with vendors. It is more of operating expenses than capital expenditure.”
Future Group brought down logistics costs further by 6-8 per cent by appointing vendors in more than one region for 10 of its product categories to fill its distribution centres. Chakradeo adds, “As the volumes go up, we will be able to put up for backend infrastructure facilities for development and R&D.”
Should national brands be worried? Devangshu Dutta says, “As long as retailers have access to the production and development and have customers for it, the private labels will remain profitable.” India Equity Partners Operating Partner V Sitaram sums up, “In modern trade, though the market leaders will face some slip in market share, the number 3 or 4 brands might have a bigger problem in certain categories thanks to private labels.”
As retailers leverage consumer insights to deploy private labels more effectively, national brands are aggressively fighting the challenge. From sprucing up supply chains to galvanising in-store promotions, they are covering all bases. KPMG Executive Director Ramesh Srinivas says, “Earlier brands had to adjust between a modern trade and a general trade supply chain. The former had to be serviced directly at the stores or had their own supply chain while the latter used the manufacturer’s supply chain. Now, some brands separate modern trade teams and even distributors.”
Britannia Category Director (delight and lifestyle) Shalini Degan says, “We have divided our portfolio into three categories, A,B,C, each having its benchmark fill-rate. We don’t allow fill-rates to drop below those levels. Why the segmentation? We need to focus on brands which have a higher traction in modern trade when servicing it, else we might end up focusing on brands that are not modern trade-led.”
Fill-rates denote how often and to what accuracy the retailer’s orders for a product are supplied by the manufacturer. Low fill-rates could mean lost opportunity since the shopper sees an empty shelf or a private label instead of the brand she might have thought of picking up.
Samsung Vice-President and Business Head (home appliances) Mahesh Krishnan says, “We have gone in for central billing system 4-5 months back with all large-format retailers. Orders are tracked on a daily basis giving retailers more control over the chain.”
In other words, private labels are here to stay and will evolve as more and more chains gain national footprint and the economies of scale kick in. Dutta of Third Eyesight says, “Gross margins for organised retailers are still low compared to global standards: So, margin fights will continue for some time till retailers gain a bigger share of the pie.”
(Also read: The Private Label Maturity Model.)
Devangshu Dutta
July 14, 2010
It’s curious how James Dyson consistently gets “more” (price) for “less” (components). First it was the bagless vaccum cleaner, now it is a bladeless fan. The retail price is currently pegged at £200, and the product is initially being targeted at the US and Japanese markets, which obviously have more people facing hotter temperatures for more weeks in the year than Dyson’s home country, the UK. Or perhaps a bigger market segment for the latest tech toys that perform well in addition to looking cool.
Branded the Dyson Air Multiplier, it is certainly a fan-tastic idea, and the uphill struggle should be significantly less than when he was trying to sell bagless vacuum cleaners. If anything there is now a “Dyson premium” available to him on the price.
However, in this case, the prices definitely need to be more accessible, or he’ll be facing clones within months. Fans are already a more acceptable reality in income poor countries, and the market significantly larger in those countries. At some lower price point the addressable market will be exponentially larger, and someone else will definitely tackle it. Patent or no patent.
Here’s a Youtube video of Dyson explaining how the fan works. Share your thoughts below, after you’ve watched the video.
Devangshu Dutta
June 8, 2010
REVIEW: FLIP THE FUNNEL: Joseph Jaffe (John Wiley & Sons)
I’ve read Joseph Jaffe’s book across multiple air journeys, nationally and internationally. I agreed with the principles described and saw parallels with excellent services businesses over the past few years. However, the implications didn’t quite strike me in the gut until I realised – while writing this on board an aircraft – that the journeys I had taken with this book had also been with just one airline.
My loyalty to this airline is not because of the mileage card I hold, although their mileage programme is certainly among the best in the world. It is not because they were the cheapest or the most on-time, though they compete favourably with other comparable airlines.
My loyalty to them is because of what they did during the Mumbai floods in July 2005. Those who remember the chaos, through personal experience or through media, wouldn’t blame airline staff for abandoning their counters, and leaving the airport to try and reach home as early as they could. Certainly most of them must have felt helpless in the face of increasingly desperate passengers who couldn’t expect to depart any time soon. Jet Airways stood out as being the only one in Mumbai’s Terminal 1-B whose team felt responsible enough to stay back at the airport to be available to the passengers. Not only did they ensure that the passengers stuck in the terminal were safe, but that all waiting passengers got three meals a day! Whether or not they were flying with Jet Airways.
Now, in telling you about incident, I have closed the loop and given you a living example of the “flipped funnel” that Jaffe describes in the book.
The normal marketing funnel is described by the process Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action (or “AIDA”) which underlies the spray-and-pray approach of traditional marketing. The result of AIDA is that a lot of customers become aware of a business, brand or product. Some are interested enough to seek out the product. However the number who move on to the next stage of actually expressing desire to buy is lower, and those who actually buy are fewer still, as amply demonstrated by carts being abandoned before actually checking out.
Jaffe points out that the AIDA principle was created in times of abundant growth in the US, but is a suicidal funnel to fall into when resources are scarce. It is lopsided, with more money being spent on customers who will not buy. It is linear and does not capture the complexity of buying behaviour. It is open and incomplete because it only handles potential customers up to the point where they become actual customers, but does nothing with them thereafter. AIDA also inherently assumes customer churn, hence the opening focus on creating awareness among potentially new customers.
The alternative principles Jaffe describes are simple: getting more customers to buy from us and more often (repeat purchases), to spend increasing amounts with us (loyalty), and finally, to recommend us to their friends and associates (referrals). However, to do this requires dramatically different thinking from AIDA spray-and-pray. Jaffe’s alternative model – ADIA (Acknowledgment, Dialogue, Incentivisation and Activation) – focuses on customers more than prospects.
Acknowledging customers itself is such a major stumbling block for so many companies, such as the retailer whose front-line staff would prefer to fold and put away garments than meeting the eyes of the customer who has walked into the store. In some cases it may be about using technology effectively rather than as a barrier. When the taxi company can recognise the number you are calling from and close your order in less than 120 seconds, why does the telephone company that issued that number make you jump through burning hoops for 5-10 minutes before they will allow you to request a duplicate bill?
That acknowledgement should lead to an on-going dialogue, before, through and well after the purchase is done. This would be supported by constant incentives for the customer to buy more from you. It is not about having a loyalty programme, as Jaffe quotes studies that demonstrate that loyalty programmes alone don’t produce loyalty; in fact there are enough businesses that do not run loyalty schemes but have what can only be called fan followings.
The final link in that funnel is building that community of evangelist enthusiasts who will carry your brand message farther and far more effectively than any traditional form of marketing could. Religious organisations have known this for thousands of years – it is high time that businesses and other organisations recognised the power of the community as well.
Jaffe acknowledges that Seth Godin actually came up with the term “flipping the funnel” over 3 years ago, when he released the e-book of that name (available on sethgodin.typepad.com) primarily about using social media effectively. Jaffe, to his credit, has applied the principles more fully across the marketing and customer service process.
Jaffe recently sold his business, crayon, but has kept his title “Chief Interruptor” at the acquiring company. If you want to make your marketing really pay, you’ll find it worthwhile letting “Flip the Funnel” interrupt your normal marketing thought-process.
(This review was written for Businessworld.)
Devangshu Dutta
March 30, 2010
Last week, Starbucks unveiled its strategy for profitable global growth, having taken approximately US$ 600 million out of costs in since January 2008.
About 3 years ago in a leaked memo, chairman Howard Schultz had raised concern about how, in the race to scale and to become consistent, Starbucks was losing sight of all critical things that had made it successful in the first place. (“The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience – Soul Searching by Howard Schultz“).
In January 2008, Schultz took on an active role as CEO in a bid to stem the rot (“Leadership Change at Starbucks – The Barista Returns“).
These two years have been eventful. Shortly after Schultz stepped in, Starbucks announced that it would close 600 under-performing stores in the US. That was well before the “financial tsunami”. In 2009, another 200 in the US and 100 globally were identified for closure, and the company also scaled back on its 2009 expansion plan for 200 new stores.
At its shareholders’ meeting last week, Starbucks presented a more confident face, and outlined a return to growth with plans to expand its presence and “accelerate profitable growth in both the U.S. retail business and in key international markets”. (This profitable growth mantra was also recited in last year’s shareholder meeting.)
However, while the business is looking better, it is far from fixed.
The environment is different. Globally, consumer wallets are leaner, competitors are meaner, and Starbucks may yet need to shrink further; the fat ain’t all in the latte.
Yet, there must be much good in the business if, for all its faults, it still gets imitated around the world.
According to Starbucks, it currently has less than 4 percent of the U.S. coffee market with its 6,800 own and 4,400 licensed stores, and less than 1 percent of the global coffee market even with 2,000+ company stores and 3,500 licensed stores. The company sees that as enough headroom to grow.
Schultz has promised to put the tough lessons learned in the last two years to good use. The company currently has approximately 200 fewer stores than it did at the beginning of 2009 even after new store openings during the year. (To put the current number of 16,700+ stores in perspective, the company had a total of “only” 2,600 stores in Q1-2000.)
But there’s something to think about. If the entrepreneur needs to step back in to fix things gone horribly corporate (bland) and wrong, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that there’s a logical limit to the size and scaling-up capability of personalized experience businesses.
Or, as a friend says, scale can be a logical outcome of excellence but excellence is never the logical outcome of scale.
It remains to be seen whether this round of growth will come from the company’s natural strengths or whether Starbucks will return to growth-by-steroids as Schultz eases on the controls.
