Products
Consumer 2.0 | Volume no. 2, Issue 25, October 2010 |
| News and Insights
Sugar confectionery booming in India The Indian confectionery market witnessed the launch of over 200 products in various categories last year, thus ranked, according to Datamonitor, in the top 20 in terms of global new product launches in 2009 Hyundai launches its SUV Santa Fe in India H W Park, MD and CEO, Hyundai Motor India Limited , said, ''Globally, Santa Fe has already sold over 20 lakh units since its launch in June 2000 and we are confident that in India, Santa Fe will give us a competitive edge in the SUV segment and offer our customers the best in terms of luxury and performance.'' IIP data: No cause for alarm, but brace for moderation Take the August IIP, for instance. Its break-up shows that it was the consumer non-durables sector, which shrank by 1.2 per cent for the month (over a year ago) that was a big drag on the IIP itself. If that leads us to conclude that Indian consumers are tightening their purse strings; the consumer durables IIP gives the exactly opposite picture. The IIP for durables expanded by a strong 26.5 per cent in August, actually improving upon that in the previous month. Android to Add Next 500M Mobile Web Users in India? Handset makers new to the smartphone market are gearing up to soon offer Android devices for $150 to Indian consumers, with hopes of future phones priced below $100, says the Wall Street Journal. If these efforts are successful and gain momentum, the scenario could be a blow to Nokia, which reportedly holds over a third of the handset market in India, down from a 56.2 percent share just two years ago. Care for some poppadoms with that McAloo Tikki burger? Starting in January 2011, if you buy an LG Electronics microwave in the south of India you will have the auto cook options of regional rice-based breakfast favourites for idli and upma. If you buy your microwave in the east, you will have the option of a Bengali fish curry or shukto, the mixed vegetable dish. Hypercity opens store in Bhopal "The Hypercity Retail India Limited, which has launched this store at DB City here is the first store in Madhya Pradesh with a product line-up of nearly 45,000 items," Head, Buying, Merchandising and supply chain, Mr Ashutosh Chakradeo told PTI. India Journal: Why Doesn’t India Open Retail? Today’s version of the Bombay Club may continue to exist. As a recent article in Outlook India argues, "big retailers have been playing on the ‘bogey of small retailers’ to keep foreign competition out." Consumers Fail to Take a Shine to 3-D TVs 3-D could just be a fad and consumers may be already losing interest. Sales of 3-D TVs have not been growing as fast as TV-makers expected this year, says research firm DisplaySearch. High price of the devices and the unavailability of good 3-D content have contributed to the lack of consumer enthusiasm for 3-D TVs, says the company. Indian Hotels' four-brand strategy for success The Indian Hotels Company for close to a hundred years operated all its hotels under Taj. "But the value of Taj was being diluted by properties that should be in the other segments," says Bickson. "Our brand architecture had to be changed for the future to remove confusion, give focus to our marketing and take on the challenge from global rivals." Now, postman will ring twice — for letters and consumer durables Godrej and Boyce Mfg. Co, one of the leading manufacturers of consumer durables, has entered into a marketing tie-up with the India Post (Maharashtra Circle) to leverage the vast reach of the latter in terms of number of offices and manpower to push sales of ‘ChotuKool' ( a low-cost cooling appliance). Under the tie-up, the postman will source business, book orders, collect payment and deliver the product in rural and semi-urban areas.
More than 10 million two-wheelers were sold in India during 2009-10 and it continues to show double-digit growth rates. Whereas motorcycles as a segment have grown at a CAGR of 17.4% during the past 16 years, other two-wheelers have been virtually stagnant, growing at a meagre CAGR of 1.8%, clearly demonstrating the customers’ choice. Consequently, the share of motorcycles in the two-wheeler mart has risen from 30% to 80%. In 16 years, the annual sales of motorcycles have grown by a multiple of 13 – and the future promises to be as exciting as the immediate past. In future, we expect to see the volume growth persist, though the percentage growth is likely to decline slightly on the back of a substantially increased base. The demand is being driven by a variety of factors, which show no signs of abating. Given the poor public transport infrastructure, high levels of migration and purchasing power levels, motorcycles are the natural means of transportation for a very large segment of the population
The socio-economic profile of consumers is used to differentiate between segments. This article looks at the broad characteristics of five categories that marketeers are familiar with: SEC (socio-economic category) A to E. The unit of segmentation is the household and there are two parameters used—occupation of chief wage earner and educational level of adult members. While education is generally a defining characteristic determining earning capacity, businessmen or skilled workers with lower educational levels may do just as well, if not better, than professionals. While further segmentation on the basis of life stages gives finer and more useful cuts, these five segments can be used at the outset to get a broad picture of consumer segments across the cities of India.
Know about Indicus Products here Insights from Indicus Markets are all about spending money, and it is of course consumer incomes that dictate the power to spend. Electricity, or rather the lack of it, is one of the biggest constraints on India’s growth. Despite a decade of work on rural road connectivity, India’s track record is uneven Learning can be the best vaccine The more educated the mother, the more likely she is to vaccinate her child against a range of diseases, a government survey shows The government appears to be going all out with plans to address the shortage of qualified health personnel in India India needs to focus on the rural-urban gap in bank penetration to achieve financial inclusion The country has made progress in reducing infant mortality but it is still some distance from its 2015 target As we expected, the growth numbers for the first quarter of 2010-11 came in high at 8.8%, the highest in more than two years. But this will also be the highest growth we see this year. |
