Marketing Strategy for Selling Punjabi Jewellery and Clothing

• Type of business: import/ export
• Countries involved: India
• Product: Indian ladies stuff ( Punjabi suits, jewellery)
• SWOT analysis

My customers would be Indian ladies or girls. The main strength of my business is that I would gonna sell matching jewellery with suits and would give different deals if the customers want to buy jewellery along with suits.

What is the advantage of importing it from India to sell it here?

The weakness would be location. In prince gorge, there are fewer Punjabis people as compare to other cities like Surrey, Vancouver. No doubt, my business would grow but if I compare this to other cities in Canada then I would not having as many sales. If I think to open my business in surrey then there would more competition than Prince George. So this could be an opportunity – there is a smaller market but less competition.

The opportunities I see in my business is that as I did not see as many people who sell the particularly Punjabi stuff so I can include more Punjabi related stuff like ( “Punjabi jutti “which is Punjabi traditional shoes. The other opportunity is doing advertising in big cities like Surrey, Vancouver with some deals that would help to get online orders from other cities in Canada.

Why not target the market here? A small business has less competition, lower costs (you wouldn’t need to open a store for example or have a large inventory) and less risk (less to lose if it goes wrong). You have an opportunity to target the student market for example.

the threats I see of increasing taxes from importing material from India in upcoming days. Due to the rise in inflation, It would be one of the threats and would lead to a change in the prices of the products.

Your idea could work but you need to think about the opportunity that you have to sell in a small market in PG.

In an article on marketing as part of the business strategy, Niraj Dawar makes the point that we should not under estimate the importance of marketing.  

He argues that if a firm puts all its energy into production technology, low cost resources and labour etc, they are not maximising their potential.  They need to put just as much effort into marketing.

Imagine that a company with a well- known brand name lost all their production capacity (all their factories burnt down), they would be able to start up again once the insurance paid out.  If they weren’t able to access cheap labour or resources from a country, they would find somewhere else to source their materials.

Weaknesses

However, if everyone woke up one morning and forgot all about this brand it would be a disaster – they couldn’t just rebuild their reputation overnight it could take years.

Who are you marketing to?

Market Segmentation – the identification of unique groups of consumers. Successful marketing will depend on identifying the group and its wants/needs. People are much more likely to buy a product if they believe it is designed with them in mind. The group can be large or small (a niche market).

1) Demographic Segmentation

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Occupation
• Marital Status

2) Geographic Segmentation

• Location – country, region, city, neighbourhood
• Population – size, density
• Type of location -  rural, urban, or suburban
• Climate

3) Consumer Behaviour

• Websites visited
• Usage rate: is the user a frequent or infrequent user of a store or website?
• Brand loyalty, favourites
• Knowledge of product or service (selling computers to computer experts for example)
• Purchase history

4) Psychographic Segmentation

• Values and beliefs
• Lifestyle
• Interests and hobbies
• Personality

Note that segments don’t necessarily differ across countries (which are why some products sell internationally) but they can. In international business it is important to investigate how segments differ across countries and not just make assumptions based on one’s own experience and cultural norms and values.

Based on the people in the class – give three markets segments. Choose a product and explain one feature that you would emphasise when selling it to each of these groups.

Product Attributes – rather than marketing a car, it can be more useful to identify that particular car’s attributes.  

• Luxury or low cost
• Sporty or for the family
• Work or leisure
• Fuel efficient or gas guzzler

For the following, give two different attributes that each one could have and who they would appeal to:

• Holiday
• Gym class
• Restaurant
• House
• shampoo.

Successful marketing depends on correctly identifying your goods and what these attributes mean to consumers.  And again, do not make assumptions based on one’s own experience and cultural norms and values, you have to do the research.

Remember the work we did on culture at work – one aspect was how some cultures emphasise the importance of individual (individualistic), while others emphasise the importance of society (collectivist).

Here are some examples of how this affects marketing:

Everyone loves McDonald’s (Japan) versus I’m lovin’ it! (McDonalds)

Everyone’s invited (Samsung, Korea) versus Think Different (Apple)

Service Before Self (Indian Army) versus Be all that you can be (United States Army)

In some cultures (in North America for example), ad wars are an accepted part of marketing (Coke v Pepsi; Apple v Microsoft etc). It is ok to insult the other company, criticise its products etc. However in countries such as China, Japan and several middle eastern countries, outwardly criticising another firm (or person) is not socially acceptable.

Distribution strategy – this depends on:

• Retail concentration
• Channel length
• Channel exclusivity

• high concentrationmeans that a few retailers (sellers) supply the whole market
• fragmentedretail means that there are many, smaller retailers, none of whom have a large part of the market.

High income countries tend to have more concentration, it is affected by such things as:

• car ownership (drive to big box stores out of town and can transport larger amounts of shopping)
• larger homes and with more storage space and ownership of fridges and freezers

Lower income countries tend to have less vehicle ownership, smaller homes etc, so fragmentation is more common.

Think about how this will affect:

• Packaging (sizes)
• Fresh, frozen, dried, tinned goods etc.
• Pricing (smaller cheaper packets)

Your strategy is the plan that you have to reach your business goals.  This might be as simple as profit maximisation or it could be measured in terms of increasing market share, returns to shareholders, return on investment or return on sales.

The profit that you make (per unit) depends on the difference between the cost of that unit and its price.  So profit will increase if you can:

• increase the price
• reduce your costs.  

Let’s start by asking how to maximise the price?

You will only sell a good if a customer’s valuation is greater than the price. You can ensure this by increasing the customer’s valuation of your good/service.

Customer’s valuation = customers benefits/costs

You can increase the customer’s valuation if you increase the customer benefits or lower the customers costs (but not the price in this analysis).