The Hindu Business Line : A collective enterprise

Get a win-win deal Organised retail cannot be beneficial for farmers in the long term unless they organise themselves and insist on the best prices for their efforts

I represent a new farmer’s body. How do we get together to represent ourselves to organised retail?

- Jayant Tripathi, Nasik

Jayant-ji, farmers need to asses the emergence of modern retail as both a boon and a bane. Organised retail is good for the farmer in the short and medium term, but not good in the long term. In the short and medium term the farmer will find a channel for his produce. In the long term, this channel is going to dominate and dictate lower prices for the farm produce. Over a period of time, the Indian farmer has the potential of becoming the bonded labour of organised retail in India.

In a bid to safeguard interests, I would recommend a collective body of farmers who should organise themselves. These will be negotiating councils of farmers. Call it an intermediary body that intermediates between the small farmer and the big retailer. This body should take on the onus of monitoring quality and prices. It will offer to monitor good quality on behalf of organised retail and in turn it should offer to maintain fair prices for the farmer.

Such a body is a very important need in the country as of today, if farmers’ rights to right price need to be protected. These bodies can be profit-oriented bodies that work the best price for the farmer and best quality for the retailer.

I run a branded jewellery store. Would there be some quick tips as to what to stock and what not to? How does one go about this?

- Shilpa B. Bansali, Jaipur

Shilpa, jewellery outlets are changing. The jewellery outlet is not only about jewellery, it is about every accessory that makes for enhancing the going-out value of the human being at large. Therefore you will find watches, designer belts and avant garde jewellery such as steel jewellery, depending what your focus is.

One must stock initially only the lowest common denominator products that everyone wants to use and wear. One can slowly deepen this into niche products later. You need to monitor every store with a firm finger on the pulse of the store and its customer profile. This is not mass marketing. This is micro store-level marketing.

The store itself is morphing. In the old days, the store was just a point of purchase. Today the store is a point of marketing, a point of branding, of experiential sharing, of customer research and more. Today, the store is indeed the point of everything.

Luxury products also need the right ambience to be stocked within. Store ambience is, therefore, a critical parameter which will decide what to stock and what not to.

What is meant by “value retailing”?

- Satyapal Sharma, Mumbai

Satyapal, the customer and buyer is a value-seeking entity. Particularly when the chips are down, and when every buying rupee is being allocated by the consumer with much deliberation, value retailing is a format that comes into acute focus.

The customer seeks out value retail outlets that offer the best-buy price and the best-buy experience.

Value retail in many ways is the big retail ration shop in the organised sector. The one outlet which offers everything under its roof at a great value buy. This could be in the guise of a price cut, an off-label, added freebies on individual brands purchased, added value on discounts offered on big bill sizes, and more. Value retailing is about great offers and every day low prices (EDLP).

How suitable is the platform of health to promote brands? Has its time come?

- Sharmila Shenoy, Bangalore

Sharmila, brands have, over the decades and over generations of consumers, used every USP there is to promote themselves. In the beginning, it was the product-related USP. It was functional, for a start. This toothpaste cleans best, this tea is tasty, and so on. Then, when everyone started using the generic product-centric USP, the USP moved on. Moved places. It moved from product-centricity to consumer utility. And then it turned psychographic, like ‘this tea helps you energise yourself so that you spend more time with friends and family playing with them’.

The USP kept moving. It moved to emotional platforms. It moved on to the platform of ‘universal truth’ even. For instance, love. Any piece of advertising that uses the line seems to work.

Health is a universal truth as well. Brands have started using it in their story lines as they realise they need to be perceived by their consumers as entities that not only make profit and offer a consumer utility, but are also entities that focus on their well-being, physical and emotional.

The focus by brands on health today is an output of this evolving USP on the move. Health is a great platform to use. And there are two kinds of health. Preventive and curative. Brands tend to use the preventive line. Therefore, walk when you talk!

Globally, wellness is a universal truth that brands use to advantage. It helps make brands that much more benign as well with their consumers. The soft edge is attributed to brands. This is a valuable soft edge. The soft edge of societal and individual concern.

There is, of course, the macro fact. The more healthy your consumers, the more profitable they are to your business!

(Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. askharishbijoor@thehindu.co.in)

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