When I did my internship with a leading Indian grocery store, my discussions with the business team were peppered with a lot of curious questions. One of them being, why isn't the retailer investing in radio ad jingles and outdoor media, viz., billboards,etc.,. The response I got was very reasonable - the margins in grocery retail are very meagre and moreover being a neighbourhood store format, newspaper inserts and monthly newspaper ads met their customer traffic and average bill value targets.
This was 10 years ago. Indian retail has undergone a sea change since then, and now most of the outdoor ad space is taken up by one retailer or the other, announcing launch offers or season sale. Even the radio air waves have been innundated with retail stores' advertisements.
With the number of players multiplying rapidly, the nascent but fast evolving retail landscape in India has forced major retailers to loosen their purse strings and they are now going all out to woo the customer.
Will all this advertising work? It will, it has. But after the initial hype and hoopla, it is the capability of the retailer to deliver on his promises of assortment, EDLP, and providing the best possible shopping experience to the customer, which would keep the cash registers ringing.
2 comments:
Best form of advertising is customer's perception of the Retailer about price and service.As long you are able to sustain these two key parameters customer themselves will advertise for you! Especially in India word of mouth sells!
Jokes apart retaiers in the west are being clever enough to extract maximum advt expenditure from their suppliers..Walmart's approx 1B media spend is paid alone by P&G..Imagine the kind of money retailers make as they act like ad agencies as large retailers are the best place today for any product to get quick mileage and footprint.
Ravi, thanks for leaving a very thoughtful comment, and sharing an interesting snippet about Walmart.
Post a Comment