The power of brand!

I would like to share with you all a recent experience and relate it to what we have learnt about branding and/or will be learning about branding. Around one week back my mobile phone broke down, I tried getting it repaired but the repairing cost was too high as compared to India, so I decided to rather buy a rather basic model for the time being and get my phone repaired once I get back to India.

So as a typical Indian consumer I enquired about price on a number of shops and thus finally find a shop close to our hostel. The shopkeeper was an old man, gave me quite a few options ranging from 60 dollars to 600 dollars, but as usual I was broke and had very little money! So I told him to narrow down the range to minimum, which is $ 60.

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Love, Life and Logic

Madhur Dhawan

Services Marketing and Management, December-08

With each passing day, we all are moving towards “crucial time”. This time is something which we all dreamt of when we applied for this institute. No doubt all of us are full of energy and have high hopes!

We all see the glimpse of the totally commercial world outside within our batch. We have seen many ups and downs in past eight months which have brought us together and have taken us apart. Each case study and each subject has thought us of being more and more professional in approach, to focus more on our objective. Our professors have given us a piece of their minds and we have engrained those conclusions in our minds.

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Invisible India

Shreeram Kunte

Services Marketing, April '09

The growing economic crisis that has gripped the world currently doesn’t really make a difference to 12-year old Kishan who is busy mending shoes in the dark by lanes of Dharavi in Mumbai. Neither does the news of a gain in Sensex excite Murthy, a poor farmer in Andhra Pradesh who has a feed his family of five. Life, for millions of people across India, is a crisis any way. Isn't this a cold-blooded fact that we are completely alienated from a larger part of India? While we discuss the impact of this crisis in the comforts of our air-conditioned class-rooms, these people, in a sheer helplessness fight the already lost battle.

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Endless possibilities in services

Madhur Dhawan

Services Marketing and Management

My recent trip Pulau Ubin Island provoked a thought. We took a ferry boat from Singapore coast and it a ten minute boat ride and you reach Pulau Ubin. As I de-boarded the boat and entered the island, there were many shops which were renting out bicycles for one day. As Pulau ubin is a small island, one can easily roam around the island on the bicycles.

Looking at the business these shops were able to generate, I thought the possibilities which are there in services. It was the Right Place, the right product which helped these shops to do the business, no tourist wants to buy a bicycle just to roam around the island and yet every one wants a bicycle to roam around. What a business opportunity!

Now if you see how many such places are there in India, I mean places like Pulau Ubin, places which are unexplored and have tremendous potential to be the nest tourist destination. Not only in tourism but in every aspect of business, I think there is a huge potential for services as they offer what customer wants and that to without buying it as it is required for a short time. There are companies which are offering IT hardware on rental basis for short terms as many organizations want IT hardware on project to project basis and are unwilling to incur the cost of purchase.

I can now relate everything I buy to services. Say for example why do I buy bottle of water when I m thirsty. Its not the bottle which I need but its jus that I want o quench my thirst. Just think how big this business of bottled water is. Why cant there be a company which offers water instead of bottles. What If a customer doesn’t have to buy a bottle of water whenever he r she feels thirsty, instead there can be dispensers which can be placed across a geographic location and anyone can just pay a small flat rate for the amount of water he or she drinks, I know this idea is a bit too radical but may be something can be worked out!

I believe that there is a lot of scope of services and innovation in this field, any government can look into this as a means to promote tourism and more over it can act as  a source of employment for the local people. Even if there is no help intervention form the government, innovative ideas by local people can attract a lot of tourist. Similarly innovative ideas in services can bring in a drastic change in any field. I see endless possibilities in the field of services!

The Dawn of Internet Marketing

Sharon Barsey

Service Marketing and Management

December’08

When I graduated from Senior College in 2006 the biggest dilemma I faced was which industry I should make a career in. I met many career counsellors, gave random interviews to see what excites me the most, until one fine day I got an interview call from an internet marketing company. Not knowing anything about this industry I thought lets give it a try. I gave the interview, got the job and from then on there has been no turning back.

The whole concept of using the internet as a medium to reach out to customers and entice them to buy seemed so amazing and promising to me that I decided to test my boundaries in this field.

Internet Marketing or online marketing as some of us call it is essentially using the internet as a medium to market products and services.

The various forms of internet marketing include:

• Affiliate Marketing

• Social Media Marketing

• Viral Marketing

• Search Engine Marketing

• Email Marketing

• Interactive Advertising

• Mobile Advertising

• Banner Advertising

• E-Commerce

Subsequent posts will explain each of these in more detail. Also several internet strategies and models will also be discussed like Web Analytics, Web 2.0 etc.

Another important aspect that will be covered are the competitors – Google, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter

Finally the latest developments in this industry like ICANN conferences, Traffic Conferences and similar stories will also be covered.

So the tall and short of it is that to know the in and out of this ever growing and ever changing industry, that is quickly eating into the market share of other mediums of advertising, keep a watch on this space.

Consulting in turbulant times

Madhur Dhawan

Services Marketing and Management

December 2008

Like all industry sectors, the consulting companies have also been biting there nails in last 6 months to see if the market is going to come back to normal and will the client companies start giving them the projects again. This time was very difficult because most of the sectors paralyzed during this period.

On one side the impact of recession was that the clients put their projects on hold, the positive side of recession for consulting market was that it added one more field to field where they could offer there services. All the major players in the market added crisis situation handling as one of the services in their portfolio and researched heavily on what are the various sector specific steps which companies can take in order to minimize the impact of recession.

During this period the consulting companies faced a major problem because of the workforce as workforce accounts for more than 60 percent of cost for a typical consulting company. A lot of proposals were discussed during this period with the clients but as there was a crash crunch situation in most of the sectors few and most critical projects were finalized and the deals were inked. There was a situation in the consulting industry where the manpower was been looked upon as a cost center as the resources were not being fully utilized. Generally it is seen that consulting companies get major projects during the first three months of the year as the financial year starts in the western markets. But since this January the markets were not in their usual form, most of the consulting companies saw a subdued beginning of the year. Thus even the recruitment scenario in the consulting market was bleak in the first quarter as most of the companies were finding it difficult to maintain its current human assets. Moreover consultants looking for a switch in their career had limited opportunity due to limited business.

Fortunately second quarter of 2009 has come up with a ray of light for the consulting industry; the confidence level in markets has rose and companies are again looking forward to invest in new projects, this means the consulting companies are again back in business and thus the manpower is required. But as the consulting companies are now in a very fragile state because of how the markets will be in next three to six months, companies are hesitant to hire fresh post graduates and graduates which required to be trained, instead they looking to hire experts who can give highest value for money on a relatively lower pay package. This has opened a window for people who are experts in their sectors but have not worked for consulting firms.

As today most of the post graduates from business schools across the globe look forward to work in consulting domain, they hope that pretty soon the market bounces and  they are in demand again.