Retail needs to keep the buzz and customer flow all the day round and all the year round, for maintaining a healthy topline and bottomline. To discuss this subject India Retail Forum 2014 held the session ‘Creative Ideas to Doing Business Profitably 7 Days a Week, and 365 Days a Year’ on the day of the extravagant retail event.
The session started with Sudhir Pal, Senior Vice President and Business Head, Hamley’s giving a brief about the idea behind Hamley’s ideaology. One unconventional idea they are adopting is to be available to the customers 24×7. As a brand, Hamley’s is all about creating a unique event. They try to capture the mindspace of the kids.
Javier Sotomayor, MD, Cinepolis added “Any unconventional idea becomes conventional once you start doing it”. Cinepolis started with an idea of differentiated prices- Wow Wednesday. Deepak Manik, Group Managing Director, Retail Support Group said that the consumers today want to explore and see new things. Pramod Arora (ex-PVR) added that it is irrational to try out new things and thus there is high failure rate.
Shivnath Thukral, former MD, NDTV Profit, the moderator of the session started posing questions to the speaker. The first question was to Pankaj Rahejan , MD, retail Services JLL. The question was- “Has the nature of relationship has changed with the brand?” Rahejan replied- “in the past 10 years the cycle of retail growth has grown upward and downward. Today a retailer is a lot more open to customizing his business and localizing it, and thus opening it to a wide market.”
Javier Sotomayor, added to this that you have to be present 24×7 to provide your service online as Cinepolis wants its customers to be updated and keep getting information through their website as it is important to be present in the consumer’s mind. Sudhir Pal mentioned the product is that their product is an experience. Once the customer has left from the store the only way you can keep being connected to them is through social media and online campaigns.
Shivnath Thukral the asked Pushkaraj Shenai, CEO, Lakme Lever – “Do you t is helping you think technology is helping you to deliver your promise and engaging them? To this he replied- “the key is to get connected to your customer through social media. In last lakme fashion week, the brand launched show stopping hair collection. The whole collection was marketed only in the digital space.
Pramod Arora added that it is necessary to create a recall of the brand in the customers mind and that the convergence of physical and e-retail has to happen. Shivnath Thukral posed questions to Deepak Manik and Pankaj Renjhen- “What role advertising and branding playing a mall and how are the brands adopting to this 365 degree approach.
Deepak Manik replied that they are trying to sync offline and online experience. He said retailers can try to build kiosks in metro stations which would be live and would look just like a supermarket.
Pankaj Renjhen replied to this saying the through the current way of advertising in the mall is to try capturing the mindshare of the customer when he is there in the mall. The mall has 10-20 mins to attract the customer while he driving in the radius of the mall area.
