Technology Marketing in Digital Age!
So, We sold about 7m PCs this year, and total base of PCs in India would be about 30-35m.
If you go deeper into the statistics, half of this installed base has come in within the last 4 years.
What does that tell us about the market: that the rest half is ready for replacing or upgrading their PCs! And that the market for new buyers is of course growing by leaps.
So, while there is a need for customised marketing program for existing PC users, there is a huge and critical need for growing our overall market.
What are the marketers doing in India to tap and grow the market?
So, essentially the marketers segmentise the market into various clusters, each segmented by volume, profitability, demographics, compeitition etc. attributes.
One of the most upcoming and dominant clusters is the Home segment. The segment where people buy PCs for their children, and largely the PCs are used for, gaming, a bit of digital photography, playing education CD ROMs, surfing internet for mails, and using office apps a bit.
Now, I feel there’s not enough being done in this market. You may appreciate that the Office segment is laregly a bulk buying division where price, performance and global agreements, integration etc. play a major role.
But it’s the home segment where one has the flexibility of innovating…and there’s a lot more that we can do!
So, in the home segment, one can be very innovative and sell the products at varying degree of premiumness: I think we are not being very innovative in this segment.
We all know (through popular Intel ads) that a PC can improve educational productivity in a child. Can anyone of us illustrate HOW?
On a similar note how many PC companies have told us/educated us (through their print ads, TV ads or roadshows) exactly how can PCs improve the child’s knowledge or educational perfromance?
How many PC companies have tied up with schools to educate children on PCs and applications that can help them research better or understand a topic better.
How many PC companies have a specific customised PC for children (between the age group 11-18 years)?
Leave that, how many PC companies have taken up a program to teach the compute teachers in schools?
There is a unique portal for school children developed by Oracle Corporation, which enables school children to collaborate on their home-works and projects and build a knowledge community. (http://www.think.com)
To the best of my knowledge about 900 Kendriya Vidyalayas are already a part of this collaboration website.
Imagine the awe of a student (and in our country even teachers to a large extent), when they find that they can share knowledge, teach someone a new language all with a click of a button.
Imagine the brand equity that can be built (as also the volumes of hard licesnses, or PCs that can be sold -though at a subsidised rate) amongst the influencer group.
There is a Unique program by Times of India for Schools wherein they distributed free copies of newspaper (alongwith a special education supplement) to hundreds/thousands of schools across the country; Can a PC/Printer vendor tie-up and create a platform where it enables the school children to create and print their own School Supplement through the use of a PC and Printer
Imagine the kind of brand involvement one can create, and the potential market share dominance that can be created through these small, yet segmented and targeted innovations
So, this is just one aspect of the entire segmentation exercise, when you delve on other segments, we can create similar innovation opportunities for each one of them and create dominance .
Instead, what we are doing now: is copying US/Europe created ads, adapting them to include Indian faces and currency and publishing them in India!
Come-on marketers! India needs specific customised marketing programs, we don’t have dearth of money, but it seems we have a dearth of ideas and enthusiasm.
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