Brands have Emotionale

A visiting faculty to my college, Sumit Roy, gave us this powerful statement, which opened my mind to better understand the difference between a brand and a product. Anything that can be put on to a paper and floated around is what a product is. But when it comes to a brand, it is a far greater and closer to heart feeling that people carry towards the brands in their home. It is this feeling that people possess which leads to big words like brand loyalty and cults. The higher order attachment is actually the defining moment in the journey between a brand and its consumer.

Honestly, this is nothing new and people across the management verticals talk about this is ways more than one; basically there is nothing new that I can add here. But there is a critical part of this brand-consumer association which more often than not is the first level of this relation- we call it the brand experience and until recent, this was the biggest area of focus for retailers and brand to concentrate on. Everything that a brand put across to the consumer across all the mediums has a uniformity in terms of content and tone. The visuals and merchandise are in sync with all this. Lastly, it is about a sentiment a person has, an unfulfilled need at times, which a brand experience satisfies.

Brand retail- both as brand shops or Shop- in- shop (SIS) have their own charm. Walk into a Nike or Adidas store and even if you are not a hard core sports freak, you start feeling like one. Shelves full of shoes, jerseys, sports goods and accessories suddenly channel a rush of adrenaline. Spot a Federer or Bolt on the wall or just a face in the crowd out for a run on an empty road inspires one to just grab a pair right there to cherish that dream to get into shape. The sight of a man dressed in crisp formals at an Arrow or Raymond’s section builds the aspiration to make that impression in the meeting room. At the perfumery or the cosmetics section, all brands have testers for people to try it on and then decide what suits them in what kind of a look. Not to forget, at each stage, you have a personalized attendant to show you more options, recommend better products and even in case you are hell bent not to take his words seriously; no one hates if that person shares you a compliment. Feels like magic isn’t it?

Retail is a refined art. It is designed to stimulate your senses in every possible way. Attractive colours and themes on the displays, bright interiors with immaculately put up shelves with neatly arranged wares and smiling sales persons. Even the air within the store is pepped up with aroma candles and oils to make the people feel wanted and cared. Say for the look, an Apple store is expected to be in all white with the silver coloured machines and the staff in black Tees. A Samsung Smart Café or a Mercedes Benz showroom will look the same all across. It is all a part of giving you that distinguished brand experience. The entire affair with the look and feel is so great that clients hire specialized agencies as the people who will build this experience. These are the people who specialize in areas like retail window displays, the look for a season or festival as well as the overall retail design to catch our eye.

No matter what; this aspect of the retail experience is something which I believe cannot be easily duplicated in an online retail environment.  The convenience of shopping sitting in your lazy chair just does not have the charm of walking around in the isles, trying on stuff in a trail room to see how it fits you or at times, make you feel that you are shopping against surfing sites for the best deals. I agree that brands are putting in something very close to the SIS kind of arrangements on sites like Myntra, Flipkart and Jabong, but even with the banners and livery visible on the screen, it sincerely does not inspire the same sentiments. How can holding a pair of Ferrari Puma shoes in your hand be compared to seeing it online? How does one gauge the power dressing rush coming from an Arrow shirt by seeing some firang model wearing it unless you can touch the fabric?

It is good to know that brands are taking cognisance of this and keeping a distinction about what it sells through an online SIS as compared to its own online portals and physical outlets. They are ensuring that their products through a multi-brand online retailer is more aimed at brand penetration through these channels and maintaining a watch on the degree of discounts being offered to ensure there is no cannibalization. For all the pricing games and wars which happen every day on the online ecommerce retailers, there is much need to respect the sanctity towards loyalists through the traditional channels.   

Consumers live by experience. Comfortable, easy-to-use, convenient and ergonomic are what products are designed to be. Brands have a higher order of satisfaction- it is the aura, imagery, style and the ‘feeling-good’ factor added in. This is what makes brands, the emotions it invokes and wins consumers for life. 

Let’s go Karting on dot.coms

About six months ago, I wrote a blog post on how online retails were making hay with 30% growth over Diwali, while the economic slowdown was hurting sales across malls with drop in footfalls of 10%. Things The dynamics of the online business have been shifting gears rapidly in the interim with the likelihood of a scenario in the near future where lack on online presence may be harmful as say not having a store at the proper location.

Unlike the developed markets, online retail in India is actually an online market place where the buyer and seller trade goods with the online retail portal serving as the intermediary. So basically when you order a book or any other goods, the order is actually placed against a supplier or a local trading company which fulfill the order. The online portal earns a small margin on every transaction.

This is exactly the reason why e-shopping is so cheap; there is no inventory to be managed by the retail portals and no showroom spaces needed by the sellers and traders. The system functions on one well-coordinated web of online ordering and ERP systems that integrate the buyer- portal- seller at one shot. Yes, Flipkart had tried the warehousing model initially when they started off with books, but it was not the way ahead with an increase in number of categories.

Much like the real world, e- retails today also host various categories today ranging from specialty verticals to the mega stores which sell everything under the sun. Buy furniture and furnishings at Fabfurnish, Pepperfry or Urban Ladder, get groceries from Bigbasket, Localbaniya or Greenkart , the kinder get their needs from Firstcry or Babyoye. Every kind of personal accessory is residing on Lenskart, Watchkart, Jewelskart. Jabong, FashionAnd You, Yebhi are mostly for clothing and accessories. The sharks of this ocean are Flipkart, Snapdeal, Junglee (Indian arm of Amazon) and Amazon India.

So is this the great shift of the Indian shopper from floor space to web space?

There is enough reason to believe this, considering some indicators. The very fact that Motorola’s went ahead to launch its smartphone range in India exclusively via Flipkart was a bold statement in this direction.

Darwinism is also evident as historic presence has made no difference. Old timers like ebay, Rediff shopping, Indiatimes shopping have no space today. Adapting to change and migration has been the key. TV based shopping networks like Homeshop18 and StarCJ were initially launched for them to capitalize on the fact that Satellite TV penetration was higher than internet. I guess smart phones have changed that equation. Retailers like Crossword, Shoppers Stop have websites with exclusive online deals, so does Future bazaar. Seventy MM which offered online DVD rentals closed the business of DVDs and got into retailing in 2012.

And most significant, IRCTC; the online railway booking king which gets the maximum traffic in India by far, has got into shopping- mind you, stuff here isn't cheap by any lengths.

The biggest question in my mind tough is will this boom survive?

It might be a tough question to answer at this point, considering none of these sites have any significant USP to differentiate it from the rest. If we evaluate these sites on classical Marketing theory of the 4 P’s, this is the result as I see it:

Product: All of them are following the market place model where suppliers are the kings. If the suppliers overlap, there is uniformity in the products. Also, other than Amazon (Kindle, Fire phone and Pinzon range) and Flipkart (Digiflip), no one has any product lines or brand which they own. This eliminates exclusivity in products.

Price: Yes, the consumer is definitely price sensitive and much like a regular market, a buyer visits 3-5 sites comparing prices once the product is final. But, since the back end suppliers for many of these markets are the same, the selling price equations will always remain:

Selling price= Supplier price+ Margin,  if supplier’s are same and its price is constant; it’s a war on who can bleed on margins and survive for how long. A point to note, even on a global level, Amazon is still in debt.

Place: Let us take this as delivery and we may find that same day delivery, free delivery etc. are fairly easy to ape. The segmentation by geography is where the biggies have tried to map the market differently. Flipkart is an urban hot seller and Snapdeal is targeting tier 2. Amazon is tying up with the Indian Post to cater to the remotest buyers where a courier may not go. This in my view can be a sustained advantage for some period.

Promotion: Spams! That what every send me in my mails. I get ads on social networks, TV, on my mobile apps and games. It is as cluttered as can be.

Service: This is not a P, but usually the best way to make a difference amongst alikes. But a look at the websites and they all appear the same. The customer service is not much to choose as well.

The bottom line is there is little or no scope for any site to build their brand persona or consumer experience that can lead to loyalty amongst consumers. In that case, this will finally be an online kart race where survival will depend on who can work on the slimmest margins to stay afloat. It is only a matter of time for us to know how it flows.