Back Everybody is a consumer as well as a producer
D. Murali
DELIGHT them. Entertain them. Please and appease, reward and relate, tickle and treat. There is no end to pandering to the ego of consumers. However, J. S. Panwar knows there's a world outside all this. His book, Beyond Consumer Marketing, from Response Books (www.indiasage.com) looks at the world that lies outside the realm of popular thinking and "presents a holistic and comprehensive analysis" of emerging sectors in marketing.
Already, a doubt must be emerging in your mind: Just what are these sectors? Agricultural and rural, services, non-profit and social marketing. Plus, time-based competition, e-commerce, packaging and branding, retailing, and environment protection.
A depressing statistic in the chapter on agri-marketing is that India wastes 30 per cent of its fruit and vegetables, which is more than what the UK consumes. Post-harvest losses of food grains are roughly what Australia produces annually. Most agricultural products are marketed in raw form, and returns are naturally low. Do you know that the size of the food processing industry is Rs 800 billion? Or that rural primary market serves a population in a radius of 8-16 km? You'd agree that for most marketers agri is not hip.
Non-profit marketing sounds oxymoronic, but Panwar looks at public distribution system, civic services, blood banks, canteens, and WWF greeting cards as examples. Political marketing is another example of `non-profit' (?) marketing. Janata Party employed an ad agency in the 1977 elections, but Rajiv Gandhi handed over the campaign to Rediffusion. Social marketing is different; it denotes activities "aimed at changing the attitude and behaviour of the targeted people towards any social issue or practice."
When discussing services marketing, the author explains that service standardisation is the recipe for customisation in fast moving consumer service (FMCS) such as courier agencies, fast food chains, retail banks, credit card and cable TV operators. Not so in "high-price value-added services" such as market research, consultancy, portfolio management, and so on, where "personalising" is a must.
Marketing of industrial goods is not ignored in Panwar's work. He notes that "quality assurance" has become more important than "quality control," because "about 85 per cent production in industrial machines and machine tool sectors in India is now from the ISO 9000 certified firms." With such quality focus, won't it be possible to attract more manufacturing outsourcing work from abroad?
Retailing trade proliferates in India; there are 10 to 12 million shops, with more than half of them being "temporary structures, kiosks, and push carts." Less than 2 per cent of total retail sales is what organised retailing can boast of, informs the book. More than 80 per cent of organised sector's sales of Rs 50 billion is from six metros, writes Panwar, citing published sources.
An important chapter is on protecting the consumer. In the current complex economic system, everybody is a consumer as well as producer of goods or service, observes Panwar, quite insightfully. Consumer protection is through legislation, self-regulation by the business, and consumerism.
At the end of the book comes the environmental part. It was in the late 1980s that `green marketing' emerged, to focus on what is satisfying consumer needs while at the same time being environmentally sustainable. But aren't green products such as cars that comply with emission norms, and CFC-free refrigerators costlier than their non-eco friendly counterparts? Yes, that's because they attract `new costs,' reasons the author. "The green pricing strategy adopted by a firm must reflect a value level in the mind of the consumer," so you need to sell the green thought first.
Essential literature for marketers who want a feel of what lies beyond common consumer hype.
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