The Grouse Retail Economy

By Harish Bijoor


We live in a world full of complaints. The retail world is no different.

In the beginning, the micro Mom-and-pop retailer complained about the neighborhood large
store. The Micro retailer had his own grouse. He ran his outfit with the help of wife and son and
daughter. His was really a Mom, Pop & Child enterprise. In came the corner grocer of
relatively larger format. While the Micro-retailer managed with a 60-sq feet enterprise, the
corner grocer was all of 600 sft. He stocked variety. He stocked both grains and packaged items.
He offered better lighting and a better display. He had a refrigerator to stock butter and bottled
drinks as well. Consumers of the hinterland flocked to him, and the micro-retailer remained
micro in terms of size and dream alike. The corner grocer became the big bad boy of retail.
Mom, pop & Child cried hoarse.

And then came the super-market. This happened all of 35 years ago. Into the hinterland of the
corner-grocer, who had grown leaps and bounds, came the local Super-market. This guy was
bigger than them all. He had occupied all of 3000 sft. He offered a seamless shopping experience
that brought in self-service. A customer could not only see the item he was buying, but could
touch and smell as well. He could compare one with the other. He could peer keenly into the
produce and package. He could be that much more informed a shopper. He ate into the
hinterland of consumers hitherto dominated by the corner grocer and his smaller cousins in the
realm of the Mom, Pop & Child format as well. The large-format super-market became the bad
boy of Indian retail now. The corner-grocer cried foul. The Mom, Pop & Child enterprise
believed this was karma playing out. The smirk was now on his face.

And then came real organized retail. Organized retail spearheaded by organizations that were
never imagined to be in this space. These were Indian enterprises of every kind. In came the
Future Group. We had a Reliance Retail happen. In came the Aditya Birla effort. In came every
other effort from every other group, (the Tatas included), that was hitherto considered an entity
that had bigger axes to grind than to look into the realm of retail as a business proposition at all.

This was big fish entering the space of relatively moderately sized fish. This fish wanted to eat it
all up in a way. It protested and said that nothing would happen to the micro-format, the corner-
grocer and the medium-sized super-market at all. In many ways it was right. The market
opportunity was so large, and the efforts so small by these biggies as they tested the waters, that
nothing really happened to eh volumes enjoyed by the rest of the retail chain. Big fish did not
really eat small fish. And Darwin was right. The fittest in every category survived and thrived.
Every category had a space all its own to occupy and hope to thrive in. The operative word here
is hope!

But then everyone cried hoarse. Everyone complained. The bigger you were, the badder you
were! Forgive me for coining that word and giving good grammar a beating. It deserves it here.

And then we have just about emerged from the cries and the tumult on FDI in retail. Even the
biggest Indian names in retail are said to be in sync with this, only to attract FDI that goes to
mitigate its losses in this space. It is said that the biggest Indian names would not like to compete
with a 100% Wal-Mart or a 100% Carrefour effort. The wails are still around. The complaints
are still floating in a space very near to all of us.
The latest cry is from the space of the physical brick and mortar retailer. Brick and mortar
retailers are now crying about the current small fact that the e-retailer is making a dent into his
business. Bookshop owners are crying hoarse that consumers are browsing physical books at
their stores and buying them online at a discount. Quite the reverse of what was being done a
couple of years ago. As of today, I buy my vegetables at home from an e-retailer. E-retail is not
ubiquitous as of now though, and I hold that e-retail is still anecdotal in its presence, reach,
acceptability and habit. Even then, the cries are all around. The complaints are all around in our
psyche.

The retail world has been a complaint economy thus far then. It started thirty-five years ago, and
the complaints are still around. Newer ones replace older ones.

As all of this abounds, my one suggestion to the latest complainant in the space of brick and
mortar retail is a simple one. All of us need to accept the fact that Darwin has always been right
for all of these 175 years. The fittest will survive. Retail that caters to the needs, wants, desires
and indeed growing and forever changing aspirations of the consumer, will always survive and
will always thrive. There is space for everyone.

The fact remains that India is large. The fact remains that the Indian is on the morph. The fact
also remains that for every one of our 1.2 Billion people, there is a solution that needs to be
different in its appeal. Each of our retail formats, from the micro-retail format of 60-sft to the e-
retail format of just no square feet at all, has an appeal to a distinct set of customers. Everyone
will survive and thrive. The fittest in every space will thrive.

Just no point complaining and wailing about it at all. Lets laugh together. Hopefully all the way
to the bank. The e-bank.

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Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor
Consults Inc., a private-label consulting practice that operates in the
realm of brand and business strategy. The company has a presence
in the markets of India, Hong Kong, London, Dubai and Istanbul.
Harish is a public speaker who speaks to Corporate audiences across
the globe in the realm of motivation, people-management issues,
brands, marketing and business at large.
He is active on twitter @harishbijoor
Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com
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POSTED BY HARI SH BI J OOR AT 1 1 : 55 PM 1 COMMENT:
LABELS: ADVERTI SI NG WARS , BRAND- TRENDS, BRANDS, HARI SH BI J OOR, MARKETI NG
TRENDS, MEDI A
S A T U R D A Y , A U G U S T 0 3 , 2 0 1 3
Paid Media Versus unpaid: A Debate
-->
Paid Media versus Upaid!

By Harish Bijoor

The brand manager is in a dilemma today. In the old days, all media was paid for. Today, you
have yet another avatar on the rampage, earned media. While paid media is what you buy as
advertising in every form, earned media is what you earn as coverage in media that is viral,
editorial in guise, and C2C (consumer to consumer) in reach, credibility and consumer buy-in
terms.

The dilemma is simple and complex at the same time. The simple dilemma point is which one to
back? Which one gives your brand the bang for the buck? Which one is trusted more? Which one
delivers sales? Which one delivers image? And which one damages the brand more, when push
comes to shove?
The complex part of the dilemma is measurement of efficacy. How do you know which avatar of
media did what for your brand? How do you know what paid media did for you as opposed to
earned media? And how do you plant your marketing bucks on each? In what proportion? And
how deep must you be in earned media?

The dilemma of the brand manager will continue. I will however put my weight behind paid
media for now. I do believe paid media works better for brands in todays context. Paid media is
specific, controlled by the brand to the point of a science, is dished out with consistency which a
consumer is used to, and by and large, credibility of paid mediums remain reasonably intact to
date.

Yes, advertising is being trusted less and less by consumers. Yes, advertising is seen to be
something that promises the stratosphere and offers the sky. However, advertising is yet to reach
the bathos point in India in terms of credibility and credulity norms. To that extent, all paid
mediums are still trusted, except paid PR. Paid PR sadly has hit the bathos point in India with
consumers switching off any communication that looks overtly paid for in PR terms.
Advertising on the other hand does not suffer that status and stigma as yet. Consumers are aware
that all advertising is paid for by the brand, and this paid-for status is overt and in the eye. There
is no subterfuge. The consumer does believe today that it is the right and privilege of the brand to
advertise itself overtly. In many segments, advertising is seen to be a form of public service as
well, as it is informative and disseminates what is wanted to be learnt by the consumer.

Earned media is however a tough cookie to understand today. It is totally amoebic and totally un-
solicited. While in the early days, what you earned through such media exposure is considered
editorial in nature and use-centric in output, a little while down the road, there is consumer
distrust here as well. As tales of brand interventions in earned media space gain grounds, and
as consumers understand that many a tweet and many a Facebook mention and LinkedIn
message could be bought as well, the USP of earned media dies.

My point is a simple one. The consumer loves brands as of now. He/she understands and
appreciates the role, power and utility of paid-for advertising that is overt. He/she distrusts paid
PR fundamentally because it is not overt, and hides behind editorial material that looks part
editorial and part paid-for. The consumer hates being cheated. The consumer is fine being told
clearly that this is a paid medium and this is not. On the other hand, when it comes to earned
mediums, the consumer is today not very convinced that what is earned is really earned, and
what seems earned is really not paid for as well! Touche!

At the end of it all, lets remember, the consumer is not a moron. She is your mistress, if not your
wife!

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The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Twitter @harishbijoor
POSTED BY HARI SH BI J OOR AT 1 2: 1 1 AM 1 5 COMMENTS:
LABELS: DEBATE, I NDI A, MARKETI NG, MEDI A, PAI DMEDI A
T H U R S D A Y , J A N U A R Y 0 3 , 2 0 1 3
What's ahead for Brand India in 2013?

Get Inclusive, Or Get Excluded


By Harish Bijoor


The Mayan era is done with. And looks like all of us have survived it. And how.

As the year 2013 dawns, whats ahead for us in Brand India?

Plenty ahead, provided the mindset is to reap the plenty. Read a lot in those words, as this peek-
ahead piece of mine is all about reaping the opportunity that lies in the largest of the masses
rather than the old approach that has held us in good stead over the last several marketing
decades of reaping the niches.
The year and indeed the decade ahead of us in marketing terms is all about looking at market
opportunity with a different set of spectacles altogether. If I were to summarize it all for the
Twitter-Gen of today, I would put it simply in 31 characters: Get inclusive, or get excluded.

The idea is a simple one. An old one as well. One berated by many a thinker over the decades,
but seldom listened to by a nation that was plucking the low hanging fruit of market opportunity
that lay with those with early-money in their hands.

Now however, since that opportunity seems to be drying up, time to think different and look at
the masses with a keener glad-eye than before.

The world is today all of 7 Billion people. 1.2 Billion of them reside in India. Maybe a lot more
than that as well, as I firmly believe our population fact is an understatement rather than a
statement. Of the 7 Billion in the world, as much as 5 Billion are people a typical marketer
would put outside of the active branded consumption mindset. This mass is really, really large.
This mass is one that is growing not only in terms of size, but aspiration as well. The opportunity
ahead is therefore in this big mass.

If you look at India in particular, this mass could be as large as all of 840 Million people. 840
million people waiting on the precipice of a brand buy. 840 Million people who have a rather
skin deep penetration of brands today. And most of these brands that have penetrated their
lifestyles may be in the realm of telecom, telecom services, and basic FMCG products. Imagine
the opportunity ahead as this mass booms in terms of aspiration to buy and aspiration to
consume. Imagine the opportunity ahead as this mass moves from products to services. From the
basic to the value-added segment as well. The opportunity ahead is large. Very large.

Look at India today. In many ways modern India has been built by brands that started their early
work in the first few years of the last decade. Look at telecom. Telecom brands have helped
place 942 million handsets in the hands of as many as 670 Million people in India. The halfway
mark has been breached. Look at the telecom service providers who power these handsets with
basic and value added services. Look at every FMCG player in the market who has quietly built
a super-structure of active consumption of brands. India is a nation of 1.2 Billion bellies and
bladders. As many bellies, that much the opportunity for food. As many bladders, that much the
opportunity for every kind of beverage. And guess what, the Indian at large has not only belly
and bladder. Add to it thirty-one other body parts that crave for branded solutions. The hair for
hair oil and hair dye alike, the skin for moisturizer and vitamin creams alike, and lots lots more.

The real opportunity ahead is looming large, and lies in Indias under-penetrated categories. The
opportunity lies equally in rural as in urban. Our big asset is population. And population is an
asset that delivers slowly. Its time to deliver has come. The marketing and brand fraternity needs
to wake up to this opportunity and leverage it to advantage.

There is a problem though. The opportunity is out there in terms of numbers, but this opportunity
can be leveraged only by those who do believe in market creation exercises, rather than market
reaping processes that have dominated past decades. Time to change that mindset altogether.
And this is difficult.

Markets of the future that lie in the realm of the bottom 5 Billion of the world population
opportunity, will need to be created, rather than reaped. And that is a mindset that needs to
dominate 2013. Create first. Reap later. The era of Instant gratification for the marketer is over.

The trends that will dominate market creation activities in the years ahead will be aided and
guided ably by systems and processes that are falling into place. The UIDAI Aadhaar, its
financial inclusion goals, its real pan-national roll-out and the tools of schemes such as the DCT
(Direct Cash Transfer) scheme of the government of India, will all help and spur the movement
of market creation.

Think of it this way. Till now, as much as INR 3,50,000 Crores was reaching the bottom end of
the market as subsidies and transfers what were less efficient and leaky in its delivery pattern. As
the subsidy regime gives way to DCT, it simply means one big thing for the salivating marketer
in India. When subsidies are doled out, the consumer got kerosene and had to use it. The
consumer got rice and fertilizer and pesticide alike, and had to use it or re-sell it at suboptimal
prices. Now, if DCT kicks in finally, it means there is that much money in the bank accounts of
the consumer. This money will find its way into consumption. And this consumption is going to
spur market opportunity further. As more money hits consumer wallets at the bottom of the
pyramid, more expenditure happens. And as more expenditure happens, a lot happens.


As India becomes an opportunity that is getting bigger and bigger, marketers need to however
remember one big trend point to tread carefully for the years ahead.

The marketer needs to get inclusive. The marketer needs to think of the masses that are larger
than what he defined to be his masses. The marketer needs to reach out to potential consumers
and non-consumers alike. Every brand offering needs to have two avatars. One for the potential
buyer and one for the non-buyer. The marketer needs to molly-coddle the non-buyer as well
today, with the hope of him being a vital part of his future market. Marketers that forget this
basic tenet will get excluded from consumer mindsets.

In the future, you cannot depend on your advertising to buy markets. You will instead need to
depend on your good market creation work to put together your markets. The India Marketing
Rubiks cube is in your hands. You need to create the right picture on every side of the cube.
Every side. Not only the one side you were comfortable with all these decades. You need to get
more and more inclusive.

In short, get inclusive. Or get excluded. Touch.
Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Twitter @harishbijoor


POSTED BY HARI SH BI J OOR AT 1 0: 1 8 PM 1 1 COMMENTS:
S A T U R D A Y , N O V E M B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 2
New ways to look at old Retail

Retail Branding for India

By Harish Bijoor


My seminal contribution to the subject of branding is a simple one. A definition for a start. A
definition I have been defending, traveling to the university towns of the world at large, debating,
fighting and holding firm for the last eleven years.
My definition of a brand is a simple one. The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in peoples
minds. To that extent, every dominant thought in your mind is a brand. The thought of your mom
therefore fights for mind-share with the thought of your wife, just as the thought of your wife
fights for mind-share and top of mind status with that of your brand new Patek Phillipe you
picked up in Zurich last week.

Brands live and thrive in mind-space. The mind-space of people. Never mind whether they are
your consumers or not, they know your brand. The brand is therefore a thought. A powerful
thought that lives in peoples minds.

Let me leave the definition there for now, planted firmly in your mind. It is indeed the start-point
of understanding branding in retail.
This therefore is the start to understanding the brand. The brand is really not a promise alone.
The brand is much more. A dominant thought!

My research in the Indian sub-continent, large parts of SE Asia, small sets of cities and towns in
Continental Europe, and again sprinklings of small towns in North and South America, indicate a
confusion and lack of understanding of the retail brand at large in several markets. And that is
going to be the confusion I am attempting to clear in this piece.

Branding is a discipline on its own. It is all about the brand, collective sets of consumers, image,
positioning of this image in the minds of these consumers, and creating a positive impulse for the
brand at large.

Retail on the other hand, is something different, as all of us know it to be. It is that important
front-face point. It is that point where the consumer actually meets the brand on the floor of the
shop. It is that important meeting point. It is the point of action. It is the point of purchase.

The point of purchase today is the point of advertising, the point of marketing, the point of
selling, the point of market research and more. The Point of purchase is therefore the point of
everything.

While retail remains the art, science and philosophy of managing the consumer at the Point of
purchase (which is the point of retail), branding remains a philosophy, art and science (in that
order) of managing the image, creating the awareness, stoking the interest in the brand and
leading the desire-stoked consumer to the point of retail. The two are therefore umbilical in
connect. However, the important point to remember is that these two sciences of branding and
retail are separate subjects in their own merit. Combining the two to arrive at the subject of
retail branding is possibly the most simplistic sin committed by a large many. The two are
different sciences.

Therefore, note the point. The branding expert you got into your retail brand from that big
FMCG corporate entity that has twenty brands with near billion dollar revenues, just did not
seem to fit right. Retail branding is a different science altogether. While branding is about
aggregation, retail is about disaggregation. While branding is about coagulation of intent, retail is
about dissipation of intent. Branding is 1: Many. Retail is 1:1. And there lies the seminal
difference. A difference few retail players recognize in their choice of people to head the
discipline of retail branding.

Therefore, the mistakes get made. And the mistakes are many. You look around and see retail
brands being promoted and advertised about just as toothpaste would be. The focus is on the
brand name. The focus is on creating awareness, and possibly interest. The focus is on getting
the largest numbers of people to look at your retail brand offering and see its merits in a rather
aggregated FMCG-kind of manner. The lure is the brand name, and the bait is the offer of
500gm sugar on every 5 panties you buy even!

What should the branding strategy of the retail brand be then in the Indian context? How should
it be different?

Our research across 103 retail brands across the markets of India, SE Asia, UK, Hong Kong and
the U. S. indicate many new ways of handling the retail brand to commercial efficacy and
profitability levels. Every one of these ways is in direct contrast to the way a typical FMCG or
durable brand is handled.

Here is a quick and ready peek into just one out of 32 of our research diagnostics pointers,
converted into action points for the retail brand manager.

Nugget 1 of 32 then:
Gyan: Never manage your retail brand offering as one.
Instead. Manage it as what it is. Many.

Mistake: Most retail brand owners tend to start small. Every Big Bazaar was once a small pilot
offering. And every Big Bazaar dreams big.

Take Starbucks. The first outlet is just about announced to be launched at Horniman Circle in
Mumbai, even as I write this. Starbucks will want to be one for a start, and many sooner than
later. There is a hurry in retail roll out. Thats normal and part of standard operating norm of a
retail enterprise. But this hurry needs to be managed with care.

When your retail offering is one outlet, you nurture it with care. Local care. You customize your
every offering, tailored to your local customer. You analyze your walk-ins. You interact with
them carefully. You build your stock plan accordingly. You alter your shop layout accordingly.
You tailor-make your customer service norms to need. You promote in the local hinterland of
your outlet. You reach out to your potential customer 1: 1. You do everything local. You do
everything tailored to the hinterland.

And then you open your second store. You open it basis your learning of Store 1. You are
aggressive with your plans. Less tentative and more aggressive. Your learning at Store 1 has
made you more solid. You roll out. You meet with early success. You imagine your model is on
the roll. You do not discount the fact that you just might be plucking the low-hanging fruit of
opportunity in the new hinterland. You dont want to get granular with the data. Remember,
retail brands do not have the time to sit back and think in India. Everyone is on a roller coaster.
The deadlines are tough and the stock-inventories sourced and piled up by you need larger front-
face locations in terms of numbers, to be able to be monetized. And this needs to be done quick.

And then, excited by the success of Store 2 in the new hinterland, you imagine your model is
ready for rollout. You open your next ten stores in a hurry. And this is where you slip. This is
where you roll out with the mindset of a big brand. You really use the mindset of an FMCG
player out here. You imagine the brand is one. You imagine you have tested the offering as a
pilot. You imagine your early pressure-test of the brand offering as a go-ahead for your larger
rollout.

You then go out there and achieve scale. This scale is good for the back-end. It achieves supply
chain efficiencies. It achieves quick windows that will liquidate held up inventories that were
procured in larger numbers to get the best price advantage. Scale is the language of the retailer
on the rampage.

Scale is good and scale is bad. The moment you achieve scale, you start behaving with the
mindset of a large player. A large player, who primarily aggregates rather than disaggregates. It
almost seems as if the small retail enterprise was waiting and fantasizing for this point of time.
This is the time you let go and become the big brand manager with the big brand mindset. In
many ways, these are easier days. These are days when you can afford to say that your small
pilot retail outlet is a big brand. These are days when you think big and aggregate. These are also
days when you start advertising. You have scale on your side, and the effort is to build the big
brand image in the minds of potential customers who will walk in.

The morph is now complete. You were once a small retail play, with efficiencies of customer
management that were 1:1. Today, you are a big brand with efficiencies of scale on your
side. Today you are 1: Many.

In my rude manner of writing, yesterday you were a retailer. Today you are a brand. Sadly, the
retail-brand is really more about being a retailer than being a brand. My research numbers
indicate success scores that are in the region of 92-97 percentile points when you manage a retail
brand as small retail, rather than the score of 39-46 percentile points when you manage your
retail outlet as a mega brand that is advertised. Advertising is a crutch. It is easy, outsourced,
difficult to measure efficacy, and macro in its approach. And you get used to it. So used to it, that
you think little else.


In many ways, the moment you advertise, you have grown up. You are outsourcing the micro-
bits of hard work that helped create your customer profile for your Store 1, to advertising. You
hope advertising will bring in customers. You hope, you will never have to manage customers as
intrusively as you had to when you just had one store.

Small is therefore beautiful in my model of retail-branding play for India. The moment you leave
the mindset in retail-branding that says loud and clear through your actions that you are small
and cater to small sets of customers isolated in small little islands that surround a hinterland of
1.6 Kms at maximum, you have lost your small-is-beautiful business mindset. And this in many
ways is the beginning of the end of your retail-rampage in India for sure.

Retail outlets that have applied my basic evangelism of the small-is-beautiful thought pattern,
even when they have grown in numbers, size and turnover, have had a better success score that
rattles the 96 plus percentile number.

The point is simple. Start small in retail. Learn small in retail. Stay micro-oriented. Dont bite
into the temptation of adopting knowledge from the FMCG sector. Sack the guy you got from
there. Stay focused on the constituency of 1:1. Stay local. Dont advertise. Retail brands just
cannot afford to advertise really. You must not load advertising cost onto the consumer. Even as
you expand and grow into the 1600 outlet league, manage every store as a store. Never ever
aggregate the brand label as one. Manage the local hinterland.

Every Caf and Super-store must have a Hinterland Manager. His/her basic role must be to
manage the customers in a hinterland area of 1.6 Km in India, 0.7 Km in UK, and a very precise
1.1 km radius in Zurich. This Hinterland Manager is really the most important part of your retail-
brand management toolkit. Not the least important as some would see it.

The Store specific Hinterland manager is the most vital part of the store. He looks after the store
as a local shopkeeper would. He does not get besotted with the bigger picture, as he does get
passionate about the small picture. He costs little. He brings customers in.

My research indicates a weightage of store revenue returns calculated and accrued to levels
across types of individual Store managers as follows:

Chain Super-store Model

General Manager: 11
Merchandising Manager: 7
Cashier: 4
Sales: 14
Receiving: 3
Loss prevention: 1
Visual displays: 5
PR: 6
Promotions: 10
The proposed Hinterland Manager: 39

Total: 100


Fine Coffee Caf Model

Store Manager: 31
Barista: 14
Shift supervisors: 4
The proposed Hinterland Manager: 51

Total: 100



Simple point. Morph your retail business to manage it as a retail business. Manage it less as a
brand and more as a store. Touch!

Basis of Gyan
The above Nugget 1 is basis an active modeling study done across markets of India, Hong-Kong,
UK, Dubai, Switzerland, Brazil and the USA. Sample size covered: Chain super-stores: 28 and
Fine coffee Cafes: 6.

This study was conducted over a period of 30 months, concluding September 2012.



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Harish Bijoor
Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com
: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

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POSTED BY HARI SH BI J OOR AT 8: 1 1 PM 1 COMMENT:
LABELS: I NDI A, MARKETI NG, RETAI L BRANDI NG
M O N D A Y , J U L Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 2
Why I am India Positive.....

5 Reasons I am positive about India and Bangalore

By Harish Bijoor

The real-estate market of any city is a sub-set of the environment in the State it belongs to. And
that is a sub-set of the country and its many policies, progressive or otherwise. Add to it the fact
that the world is for sure a connected place today, and therefore there is a bigger environment
that governs real-estate prices and practice, and that is the environment across the world at large.

Real estate is however all about geography that is real. It is about physical spaces that are about
land, buildings, gated communities and more. To that extent, it is a physicality. A physicality that
is very dependent more on the local than the global. To that extent, while the stock market of a
country is all about being umbilically linked to the sneezes and joys of the world at large, the
physical real-estate market is that much more local than global. And thankfully so.

In the world of real-estate, the further you move away in concentric circles from the local to the
global, factors that affect the price point of real-estate get that much more insulated from the
factors that surround. To that extent, the point I am making is a simple one. When you look at
real estate, dont fret and fume as to what is happening in Greece. Dont worry that Nicolas
Sarkozy has been replaced by Francois Hollande. Just dont worry that you will not see Carla-
Bruni Sarkozy that much in the news anymore. Just worry more about factors that are immediate
and adjunct to the area of your investment. If you are planning an investment in Bangalore,
worry more about what is happening to the governance structure in the real estate market, worry
about jobs in the eco-system that throws up investors in the Bangalore real-estate market, worry
about laws and rules that are in force and ones that will be enforced later than sooner. But worry
about nothing more than that.


5 reasons why I am excited about Bangalore and India then, in that order:

1. The aggressively young population


Bangalore boasts of a young population. While 54% of the population of the country is below the
age of 25, Bangalore boasts of 63.6% below the age of 25. A younger city means a hungry city.
A city hungry for achievement, hungry for jobs, and most certainly hungry enough to invest in
land and more. This young profile of the city is un-enviable. The only other city that comes close
is Pune on this count. Young cities are hungry cities and hungry cities are investment friendly
cities.


The downside of a young city is the fact that pressures to perform abound that much more in
younger cities. Younger cities are high-tensile cities. No wonder then that Bangalore and Pune
have emerged to be the suicide capitals of India as well. Sad fact.


2. Spends and patterns of splurge in the TOP and MOP


The second reason why cities such as Bangalore are exciting places for the real-estate market for
first buys, re-sales and repeat buys, is the fact that the splurge quotient of cities such as
Bangalore is very high. The city is a polemical factoid. While Bangalore boasts
of 10,600 Dollar millionaires at one end, at the other end, it also hosts large populaces of those
living on the fringe of a hand-to-mouth existence. The real-estate market, sadly, depends on what
the Top-of-pyramid (TOP) and Middle-of-pyramid (MOP) folk have to contribute to the kitty.


When you look at the spend patterns of the TOP and MOP profile, one witnesses no gloom at all.
The splurge quotient is high on products and services alike. Super-market carts are still laden full
with products that do not necessarily represent the best value-buys. The number of spas in
Bangalore has grown from a measly 6 in 2001 to 121 in 2012. The number of beauty parlors has
grown from a mere 107 in 2001 to 1220 in 2012. I do not have a comparative number for
restaurants, but if you just look around, you dont need numbers to tell you the story.


And every one of them is raking in the moolah. The point is a simple one. Never mind the fact
that Greece is in trouble. Never mind that Europe is in shambles. Never mind that the Japanese
economy is slated to de-grow at 0.6% p.a, in GDP terms. Just never mind. Look around and you
will sniff prosperity and spends in your local TOP and MOP markets. Sadly or happily, the real
estate market depends on its future on this market.


3. The eastern investment mindset, and the shift from metal to land
This is a quick and happy one. Indians at large are very highly investment geared and investment
oriented. The old mindset of investment was gold. This has held families in good stead over the
years, particularly with gold prices ruling at an all time high as of today. This investment mindset
has gradually shifted in the country from gold to land and dwelling units. The first things
everyone wants to do, even before buying a Life cover in an Insurance policy, is to own a house
or a piece of land. This has spurred and will continue to spur demand. Real-estate investment
apathy has not set in as yet. It looks far way for now.


4. The poised Next-gen ahead


The next generation is a very highly educated generation. Parents of the current generation have
spent their lives working hard to educate their children and get them the best in terms of a
qualification to earn more than they have earned. This is a good sign for the economy at large.
This means the children of tomorrow will earn higher multiples than their parents did, net of
inflation. This means there will be more money to invest. This is a trend that is quite unlike what
we see in markets of the United States, where new generations are lesser equipped at large in
terms of qualification and earning potential.



5. Bangalore as a magnet city


The city despite all the ills we bemoan, is still a magnet city. We host mixed nationalities. We
remain a secular city with secular intent. We are largely peaceful. We seldom fight. We might
watch porn in the assembly, we might huddle our MLAs time and again in close-by resorts, we
might clamor for free IPL tickets, but essentially we are a nice people living in a nice city. The
city will still remain a magnet city. And thats a big one for real-estate investments.


Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Follow him on Twitter.com @harishbijoor
POSTED BY HARI SH BI J OOR AT 8: 27 PM 32 COMMENTS:
LABELS: BRAND TRENDS, I NDI A, MARKETI NG, POPULATI ON
S A T U R D A Y , J U L Y 2 1 , 2 0 1 2
Modern retail and Shopper Marketing



Modern retail Ver. 2.0: Shopper marketing!


By Harish BIjoor

Shopper marketing is possibly the most under-explored, and for sure the most under-exploited
science of them all. Shopper Marketing is therefore the most efficient of them all tools that lie
out there in the open market place for retailers to grab and run with.
The story of retail is an interesting one. Since retail is the oldest professions of them all, every
retailer stepping into the terrain imagines it to be kid-play. Choose a location, set up a store,
stock it well, brand the store, advertise, and wait for your customers to walk in and pluck
inventory off the shelves. And you are running to the bank, laughing all the way!

Wish that were true. The cruel fact is that it is not. Modern retail of both the big and small kind is
way different, and way more difficult than all that. Dont we know by now?

In the old days, Shopper Marketing was not even a subject to bother about. The terminology was
yet to be invented and made ubiquitous. And "old days" was just 5 years ago!
Those were the days modern retailers were excited about plucking the low-hanging fruit of
opportunity in the sector. The subject of retail had a centricity of approach that was entirely
different. The approach was clearly one where you focused on back-end efficiency. This was
really Modern retail 1.0 where you worked out great deals with suppliers, you worked out pack-
size options that you were going to stock, you worked out shelf-stocking norms, and you were
ready.

Modern Retail 1.1 was all about location. You took the next logical step of scouting out a
location that was killer in all respects. You did a quick 'thingie' with the demographics of the
locality, local competition that was vulnerable, and if you were a wee bit savvier, you did a quick
one on the psychographics of the folks who lived in that location. And you were ready. More or
less. And most of the time, the Mall developer did all this home-work for you. All you needed to
do was walk in with your set-it-up-in-twenty-days store.

Version 1.2 of Modern Retail started depending on unique products your Modern Retail store
could offer. Literally every super-market in the hinterland was offering the very same brands.
Every super-market literally started looking like one another, except for the brand-name at the
entrance and the ownership certificate you proudly had to display within the outlet at a
prominent place for the Municipal authorities and the Shops and Establishments inspectors, and
twenty others of their ilk, to examine when they did their visits.

In came the dealers own brands (DOBs) in this phase of the development of Modern Retail in
India. Every retailer vied with one another to have different sets of exclusive designer labels
within their store, just as the 'dal-cheeni-chawal-atta retailer tried to set up his own low-end
private label brand. This was the differentiation at play.

And then came version 1.3. This was the phase where advertising took charge. The 30-second
commercial on television was the big one to go with. The store had sorted out its back-end
issues splendidly, the location had been laid out thoughtfully, the store had been designed to
efficiency norms that were global, the private labels were all there, and business was still 'parri
passu'. Time to re-invent then. Time to think of drawing in customers through mass media.
Through discounts. Through deals. Through loyalty programs.

Version 1.3 became 'parri passu' a bit too soon. Every Tom, Dick and Harish retailer was doing
the same thing all round. Everyone brought in advertising. Every piece of advertising started
looking like the suitings ad of yore, where you could not distinguish one brand from another.
Therefore, one chain helped another, and advertising of the 30-second type became a generic
piece that worked for the category of Modern Retail, but did not quite do too much to the
specific brand for sure.

Every retailer went a step further and offered the loyalty card. The loyalty card of one store
became the disloyalty card of another. Loyalty degenerated to location loyalty rather than brand-
loyalty, and stores bled on this count. Version 1.3 of Modern retail in many ways was totally
experimentative, 'parri passu' and bled moneys that a retail outlet of any size and ownership
pattern could ill-afford.

I do believe we are still going through this Version 1.3 of bleed-value. Modern retailers are all of
a sudden realizing the true-blue merit of Shopper Marketing at last! As the high-hanging fruit of
opportunity is all getting plucked by the host of 214-plus modern format retailers in the country,
it is time for the real action to start. This action is in the realm of Shopper Marketing.

Version 2.0 of Modern Retail in India is about to kick-off then. This time round it is all about the
most important link in them all: the shopper. It is time for insight building exercises that take you
into shopper homes as you do wardrobe studies that tell you the exact number of undies with
holes in them. The exact number of lucky garments in the wardrobe and equally unlucky ones.
The ones that make you fail in exams and the one that makes it rain heavily when you wear them
even!

The world of insight into the shopper is getting more and more defined. Out of the window goes
the 30-second spot, and in comes a focus on understanding the shopper holistically. And having
done just that, time to put together Shopper-insight-geared offerings. Offerings that make your
Modern Format retail chain that much more edgy and that much more buzzy than the shop next
door.
Over to Modern Retail Ver 2.0 then: Shopper marketing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., a
strategy-consulting practice with a presence in the markets of India, Hong-king, Dubai, UK
and Turkey.
Twitter.com @harishbijoor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





POSTED BY HARI SH BI J OOR AT 1 0: 48 PM 4 COMMENTS:
LABELS: ADVERTI SI NG, BRANDS, I NDI AN MARKETI NG, MARKETI NG, MARKETI NG TRENDS
F R I D A Y , M A Y 0 4 , 2 0 1 2
Modern Retail and Integrity Branding



The Chicken and Egg of Retail

By Harish Bijoor



As we get excited with every data bit and byte that hits at us on the front of the Indian economy
at large, and the emergence of modern retail as the manna from heaven solution that promises
to tie up an efficient supply-chain that links the deprived back-end to the craving front end of
Indian consumers on a consumption spree, we forget something basic.

Yes, India is growing. Yes, the prognosis says that India will be a USD 7 Trillion economy by
2020. Yes, we will be the third largest economy after China(which will incidentally be at the
USD 16 Trillion number in 2020) and the US(at USD 21 Trillion!)
And yes, the latest census proudly tells us that we are all of 1.21 Billion people now. And yes,
the spending power of the Indian is on the morph. But, as I have already said, we keep forgetting
something basic.

The basic then: Indian retail is chasing the Western dream a bit too much by rote. If at all Indian
retail needs to be relevant, original and innovative in terms of appeal to the Indian at large, we
need to be different. Different on the one acid-test scale that every human being looks at the
buying, selling and intermediation process at large. With Integrity.


In the several marketing summers I have lived, fought, sweated and thrived, there is one insight
that has held me in good stead. This is the insight of Integrity branding.

Integrity branding is all about saying the simple truths in your brand communication process.
Stick to the tone and tenor of integrity and you cant do no wrong!

Let me look at it in a manner of detailing the concept at hand. The point is simple. All consumers
are essentially truth seeking animals. Yes, all of us lie in some small manner or the other. These
are really the small lies that make the fabric of our modern day lives. Small lies that ward off the
inconvenience of a lie-less society.

Despite all these small lies, we are essentially truth seeking as consumers. When you buy a
toothpaste, you expect honesty out of the entire exercise. The consumer-brand interaction
process is a relationship. A relationship quite like the many relationships we go through in our
social lives.

When you get into a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, or let me be politically
correct and say member of the same sex even, you expect just one primary thing out of the
relationship. The truth. There is no relationship you get into expecting dishonesty and the lack of
integrity.

Very simply put, consumers get into brand relationships based on the expectation of the truth.
But does she get it? And how much of it? And how frequently so?

My belief is that the brand that offers the most of the truth most of the time in this continuous
relationship is the one that succeeds. The brand that fails on this count is an utter failure right
away, or on the path of a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom round the corner.


Let me illustrate this with an example. Let me choose my favorite gourmet table bird for this
example, the chicken! Let me take three of them.

There are really three chickens in our marketing lives. And remember, all of us are marketing
people, since there are only two kinds of people in the world. The marketing person, who
markets to others. And the marketed-to person at the other end!

Imagine three chickens out there. Each of the chickens is a manufacturer and a marketer. Each of
the chickens has done something they are very good at. Each has laid an egg. And each of the
eggs looks alike.

Each of the marketer chickens takes a different path to market their respective eggs.

There is the first chicken, which I call the Shy chicken. This chicken looks at the egg it has
laid and finds the product quality to be all of 100. It then stands up, looks at the target audience
of potential consumers and whispers with a decibel of shout that is at best 2 on a scale of 100.

This chickens whisper is heard by very few of those in the target audience. Even those who hear
of it, hear it as a faint whisper. The promise offered by the whisper is just 2 on a scale of 100.
Those few who hear the whisper actually come to see the egg, lured often by the under-shout that
creates quite a bit of mystery in the consumer at hand.

When the few consumers actually arrive to see the product, there is great joy. The consumer
expectation of 2 is rewarded with a delivery of 100. The positive strokes offered in this purchase
is +98. The negative of this approach of course is the fact that it scores very low on consumer
awareness scores.

Look at the second chicken then. This is what I call the honest chicken. This chicken looks at
the target audience and shouts out the product offer with a shout level of decibel 100. The shout
quality is equal to that of product quality.

The pros of this approach is apparent. Awareness scores are good. Everyone has heard that the
chicken has an egg to offer. But there is a problem here. Consumers do not necessarily respect
honest chickens. When the consumer has heard the full story, he does not want to see the egg at
all. There is just no mystery. Only a few arrive to see the egg, and these are the only ones who
actually need an egg. And when they arrive, they expect 100 and get 100. No positive strokes
and no negative. The potential of a buy is low as well.

The third chicken is waiting. This chicken finds the competition hot. This chicken gets onto the
rooftop and shouts with a decibel value 400. The darned chicken has laid an egg but shouts as if
it has laid an asteroid! The awareness scores are terrific. The entire town lands up to look at the
phenomena. The expectation is 400. The delivery is 100. There is a negative stroke quotient of -
300. And nobody buys!

All these three chickens and their respective approaches are out there for the marketer to choose
from. Each of us makes this choice every living day. There are variations available in the gamut
of 0-400 in terms of shout levels. Different marketers choose differently.

But guess what, the chicken that shouts with a decibel of 80 is the one that succeeds the most.
Also, after 400 what? Back to a decibel of 2. In a market where everyone is shouting at 400, the
one chicken which whispers the least is the one that is heard and trusted the most.

Think about it. Which chicken are you as a marketer? And which chicken are you as a working
person? And which chicken are you as a person living in a family of your own?
creeps