Group B4- The Marketers- Source- 4p's

“It’s about creating buzz”

Prashant

·        Sandeep Komaravelly talks about Snapdeals present and future marketing initiatives.

·        They are targeting tech savvy youth market. They prefer shopping through websites and are confortable buying product and services online.

·        In 2012, 20 % of the traffic on portal is because of mobile devices.

·        Currently online shopping is 1% of organised retail in India.

·        Compared to last year snapdeal had 10X growth.

·        They are adopting 360 degree marketing keeping in mind market is still unexplored

“Price is not always the driver of consumption”

Santhosh Unni, CEO, Costa Coffee India believes that the aspiring Indian is today looking for products which truly reflect the value they attach to them.

The aspiring Indian middle class is today looking for products which truly reflect the value they attach to them. Retailers and brands therefore need to ensure that they deliver that value.Retailers cannot rest on their laurels, because standing still in a rapidly developing and fast growing market like India is dangerous.

Coffee is the heart of our business and our aim is to “save the world from mediocre coffee”. In fact, our hand-crafted coffee, which is an art form, is based on a process that can be replicated by our baristas day in and day out. This helps us keep our promise to our customers consistently.

Today’s consumers compare their experience with your company not just to their interactions with your immediate competitors but to their experiences with companies in general. For instance, a pampered luxury car customer expects the same attention from a retail store at a mall. working on convenient and approachable locations, the ambience, and innovations in  F&B offering is very important.

Today the voice of dissatisfaction echoes louder than ever before. According to conventional wisdom, a dissatisfied customer might tell 10 people of a negative experience; today, social media enables that same customer to reach thousands with a few keystrokes.

“Our positioning is of an outdoor adventure brand”

From making shoes to apparel and adventure gear, woodland has carved a unique identity in the minds of consumers as a tough and functional brand.

The footwear industry in India is worth about Rs.25,000 crore. Woodland are operating in a very niche category – catering to outdoors footwear – which is 10% of the overall footwear market. Currently, woodland  are doing sales of Rs.850 crore. In the overall footwear market there are many sports brands, both organised and unorganized but woodland  are the first mover in the outdoors category. Woodland is positioned as an outdoor adventure brand that provides outdoor apparel, shoes and gear to youngsters, majorly catering to the 18-25 age group.  provide functional products that last long. That is the USP of  products. These products, be it shoes, apparel or adventure gear, can be used in extreme conditions compared to the products of our competitors. So company use a material that is durable and functional.

Will apple keep its shine with markets? Has the economically troubled global market now conspired to cast a shadow on Apple’s vaunted quarterly earnings? The company earned $8.2 billion in profits – $8.67 per diluted share – during its Q4 2012 fiscal quarter that ended Sept. 29. Revenue was $36 billion. For its fiscal first quarter, which will end Dec. 31, Apple projected earnings of $11.75 a share on a whopping $52 billion in revenue – 12% more than the same quarter a year ago. However, those numbers fall short of Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts have been expecting earnings of $15.43 per share and $55 billion in revenue. A $52-billion quarter would still be the highest quarterly sales ever reported by a tech company. But even Apple isn’t sure whether it would be able to meet analysts’ projections of $55 billion. The company has a phalanx of new products that will find themselves given as gifts during the Christmas holiday season: the 2-month-old iPhone 5; a fourth-generation, full-size iPad; the all-new iPad Mini; a new 13-inch-screen MacBook Pro; two new iMac desktop PCs; a refreshed line of iPods; and a new iBook cloud service. Japanese consumer electronics giants in a sea of trouble The cup of woes for Japanese consumer electronics firms seems to be brimming over. Be it Sony, Sharp or Panasonic, all of them are bleeding red. For instance, Panasonic Corp will lose $10 billion in the financial year 2013 as it gets down to writing off billions of dollars in losses in its mobile and energy business. The company is heading towards its fourth year of net loss, which in the current financial year adds up to 765 billion yen, almost equivalent to last year’s record net loss of 772 billion yen. After writing down the loss for the current financial year, its cumulative losses over five years comes to a staggering 20,890 billion yen. In a bid to stanch the losses, the company has so far laid off 36,000 personnel. At the same time it has undertaken an ambitious restructuring exercise to get the business back in shape. Its overall restructuring costs in the first half of this year ballooned to 356 billion yen, and it expects such costs to reach 440 billion yen for the year. No doubt the charges are high but they are a small price to pay for turning around a once thriving business.

Marketing windows 8  The launch of Microsoft’s new OS Windows 8 on October 26 was preceded by a lot of market buzz. All this was perhaps justified considering that it was arguably the biggest product release in Microsoft’s history. Windows 8 represents a new approach to user interface, replacing icons and programs/apps with live tiles that link up to social communities, Internet services, and cloud-based data storage and retrieval. Microsoft has installed this interface across computers, tablets, smartphones, creating the first-ever semblance of an integrated ecosystem for its users. No wonder that there were reports of Microsoft planning to splurge between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion on its Windows 8 marketing campaign. But almost two months into the launch, there isn’t much sense of where the billion dollars of advertising is going, or what its Windows 8 campaign will look like.

Gap widens its portfolio

·        Gap Inc, a leading global specialty retailer offering clothing, accessories, and personal care products for men, women, children, and babies under the Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime, and Athleta brands, has acquired the New York based women’s apparel retailer Intermix Holdco for $130 million.

·        The purchase will help Gap to further expand its footprint in the thriving luxury apparel market. Intermix sells clothing and accessories from prominent designers such as Yigal Azrouel, Yves Saint Laurent, Missoni, Helmut Lang, Stella McCartney, Jimmy Choo and McQ by Alexander McQueen, in its 32 stores in the US and Canada and on its e-commerce site.

·        The acquisition will help Gap to extend its portfolio of brands and scale up its e-commerce platform further by making changes to the Intermix e-commerce site.