Get Lucky this Festive Season!

Come October and we see the festive fever taking over everyone. Induced by discounts and special sales & offers, the festive season for the current year is on and we can see both customers and brands going gaga over it -

The festive season is something for which the whole of India awaits for shopping. It is also the time when vendors try to build connect with its consumers in a big way. During this period many people generally tend to look forward to make a big purchase as it is considered auspicious. Not only are consumers given compelling choices but also with several discounts, the festive offers become the right time to make the right purchase. This abundance of offers and discounts drive maximum sales for vendors.

“These festive offers do encourage growth of business resulting in increase in sales and revenue,” agrees Chandrahas Panigrahi, Sr. Director and Consumer Business Head, Acer India. “It is true across many categories as companies make a significant chunk of their yearly revenue during this time.” Acer’s expectations are very high from this quarter as it believes that it has the strongest product portfolio and a host of offers which gives extremely good value on purchase of Acer products. “It is not only about the positive business we do but also the channel relations we build and nurture with our customers and partners during this time which makes this time of the year really special,” Chandrahas adds.

Though purchases are made across product categories, IT and telecom gadgets are something which sells maximum during this time. Consumers who used to see the festive season as being an occasion for purchasing a new vehicle or home appliance have grown to consider technology devices as another vital need that must be accounted for. It is also expected that demand for personal technology devices to continue to grow this year as Indian consumer are becoming more tech-savvy and knowledgeable.

SanDisk, a Western Digital Brand runs consumer campaigns every year during the festive season with special offers for consumers pan India. “These festive campaigns are aimed at generating lot of excitement and interest for SanDisk’s wide product range, thus helping consumers to stay connected and enjoy the freedom to capture and share memories without worrying about storage limitations,” tells Jaganathan Chelliah, Marketing Director of SanDisk India Retail, Western Digital Corporation.

 

LG has the most promising product portfolio this year. A strong product portfolio and impressive retail environment combined with exciting offers will certainly impress consumers to upgrade this season. “Offering customers compelling choices and exciting deals is LG’s own way of maximizing customer satisfaction. This year festive season brings all the more growth opportunity for brands due to factors like, good monsoon, roll out of 7th pay commission. This year, we are targeting strong 30 percent growth overall as well as across categories,” points out Niladri Datta, Head-Corporate Marketing, LG Electronics India.

Amitabh Tiwari, COO – Sansui too agrees that the festive season will fare out better this year on the back of good monsoon and overall positive consumer sentiments. “Keeping this in mind, we have rolled out exciting customer offers. We believe this will further strengthen our relation with the customers who will be delighted to bring home our brand during the festivity. The brand is optimistic about this year’s festive season and is targeting 55% sales growth over the same period last year.”

Sharan Maini, Director - Noble Skiodo feels that TV as a commodity is one of the fast moving goods during the festive season. “We at Noble Skiodo have announced special prices and discounts exclusive to the festive period. We already have rolled out our schemes and singular prices and we already have started seeing traction in the market.”

Festive Schemes and Offers

Acer For this festive season, Acer has announced the special offers on the purchase of its range of Aspire Laptops, 2 in 1, convertibles and All-in-One PCs. On purchase of any of Acer’s range of laptops, notebooks, desktops, consumers can avail the benefit of attractive EMI offers. Further, Acer is also offering free antivirus and data recovery software. Now customers can also extended warranty on the products by just paying Rs. 499/-. Additionally, consumers planning to purchase a Bluetooth Headset can avail this offer by paying a nominal Rs. 499/- for the trendy headset which is worth Rs. 2999/-. Fujifilm Fujifilm has lined up 3 new offers to delight its customers this season - the Mini 8 Bundle Pack priced at INR 8,633/-, Mini 8 Festival Box priced at 9,999/-and the Mini 8 Party Box priced at 12,999/- only. Moreover, customers can avail further discount of up to 30% on these new offerings. The New Instax Combos are available at Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, Naaptol and retail stores. eScan eScan offers time-to-time special offers for the end users in terms of extended license period or lucky draw gifts. Keeping that in mind the company will be offering special discounts and offers to end users through its partners. For partner, it has special offers to claim Silver & Gold coins, foreign travels etc are on the anvil. There are also a few surprise offers for partners doing exceptionally well in terms of achieving the targets and making large deals. Zopo Zopo has great offers lined up for the end users in ZOPOs first festive season - • Zopo Looton Month: It is running a month long contest on Facebook. Users can engage to win merchandise, freebies, IT accessories from power banks, headphones, ZOPO smartphones every week, etc. • Zopo 365 Days Replacement Warranty: Zopo has a special 365 days handset replacement warranty, under which users would be able to exchange their ZOPO device for a new one in case of a hardware failure. Zopo is also giving away Assured gifts in the form of a ZOPO kit with every purchase of a phone. The kit would include surprise ZOPO merchandise. HTC HTC has launched its festival celebrations with an attractive offer wherein its most popular Flagship device HTC 10 will now be available at a discounted price of Rs. 47,990/-. Intex This year, Intex is giving a backpack free on purchase of Intex mobiles worth Rs. 5000 and above. Other than this, it has tied-up with popular apps such as Saavn, Mydala, Nazara, eTravelSmart, Viu, ChillX and TrendMicro to further enhance its connect with the tech savvy youth consumers. It is also providing a pre-bundled offer with all Intex smart phones whereby consumers can enjoy more with Idea 4G LTE and get 1GB free for 3 months. Along with this, get assured gifts - free benefits worth Rs. 1,500 and a chance to win 124 cm (50) LED TV and other exciting gifts. These offers are available on selected models (Aqua Strong 5, Aqua Q7N, Aqua 3G Pro Q, Aqua Joy). SanDisk (WD) SanDisk is running a five month long festive campaign ‘SanDisk Festival Bonanza 504GB’ and offering consumers across India the chance to win 504GB gift hamper worth Rs.22,960 daily on purchase of 32GB capacity and above SanDisk products that has the contest sticker. One lucky customer stands a chance to win 504GB of SanDisk Gift Hamper daily basis the best entries received. The gift hamper includes one unit each of SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I Memory card 128GB, SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick 128GB, SanDisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD 120GB and SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0 128GB. Sansui Sansui is offering warranty free 5 years on LEDs in the screen size of 32” and above models. Apart from new models of LEDs, Sansui will also be crafting unique product displays at the ground level. Sansui has introduced attractive finance schemes and partner with associates to extend exchange schemes, discounts and other customer benefits. LG LG has announced multiple offers on all its products like OLED TVs, Multimedia and Bluetooth speakers, Home Theatre systems, sound bars, water purifiers, washing machines, microwaves, etc. It hopes to encash on the festive season and the tendency of buyers to make purchases during this time of the year. Noble Skiodo Apart from the Amazon fest, Noble Skiodo is looking at several bundling offers which shall bring an attractive deal for the audience. Through it, the brand is trying to bring the price brackets to the customers that have never been seen before. Noble Skiodo hopes to reach out to more than 1 million customers during this Diwali season through its very attractive schemes. Lava Lava has recently announced the “365 days Screen Replacement” offer ahead of this festive season to add to the joy of celebrations for its consumers across India. As per the offer, on purchase of every LAVA mobile phone – be it feature phone or smartphone, the customers will be eligible to avail a one-time screen replacement within 365 days from the date of purchase. Canon Canon takes pride in contributing towards building memories for life. This festive season, It is announcing the special offer of a Moto pulse headset with Canon EOS 1300D or EOS 700D. This offer started on 6th Sep and will be available till Diwali/till stock lasts. Asus ASUS has an ‘Incredible Diwali’ where 100 lucky consumers will have the chance to win a 100% cashback voucher on the purchase of a Zenfone 3 from 18th to 22nd October, 2016. In addition, another 100 people will also get the chance to win an ASUS ZenPower. LeEco To add a special zing to the festive spirit, LeEco is hosting a #LeEcoFestiveMirfie contest and inviting all smartphone lovers to capture their favourite celebratory mood with a Mirfie (Mirror Selfie) using a LeEco SuperPhone. The contest will run from October 15 till October 28. Viewsonic Viewsonic has launched a Gold bonanza festive offer for its valued partners. The tier 3 scheme is to ensure that all stockiest get benefit of demand generation for 24" and above size monitors, who in turn buys from ViewSonic distributors and can enjoy the demand generation from the reseller and small time dealers from IT market. Eligible tier 3 finch partners of ViewSonic will win two gram gold on every 10 units of ViewSonic 24" & 25" monitors and One gram gold on every 5 units of ViewSonic 27" Monitors. Lenovo Lenovo is introducing a first of its kind offer to its customers in which on the purchase of premium Lenovo laptops, customers can avail two years of Accidental Damage Protection (ADP) and two years of additional warranty at no extra cost. Lenovo is providing a host of special offers on its entire range of laptops, All-in-Ones (AIO) and desktops. This Diwali, customers can choose between offers that include additional warranty up to three years, accident protection up to three years and exciting accessories like a hard drive, power bank or gaming gear. Dell Dell kicked off the festive season with exciting offers for consumers on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. It has announced compelling offers between August 19 and September 18, 2016 on its range of Vostro notebooks and Inspiron notebooks and desktops.

“HTC is happy to celebrate this ongoing festival season with its fans and friends and are proud about the enormous faith & trust that they have on us. We are hoping to reach closer to our consumers through various social media platforms and through our sponsorship as a principal sponsor of Bollywood actor/producer John Abraham’s football franchise North East United FC (NEUFC) at the forthcoming Hero Indian Super League 2016. We recently launched the mid-priced HTC Lifestyle and hope to launch the Pro version soon in the India market,” recalls Faisal Siddiqui, President South Asia – HTC.

Being one of the pure play security solution providers, eScan sees a surge in Home and Business segment product sales during this period driven by new laptop, PC and Mobile sales. “As most of the users today are aware of the cyber threats, they prefer to buy an antivirus or mobile security product along with the new device or our partners offering bundled offer give it as a package. We expect this year to be better than last year due to the positive macro sentiments as well as the growing cyber threats,” says Anil Gupta, AVP - India Sales at eScan.

This festive season Fujifilm India has planned to further enhance customer experience with the launch of 3 new Instax Mini 8 Combos - the Mini 8 Bundle Pack, Mini 8 Festival Box and the Mini 8 Party Box. “Whether you want to surprise your loved ones with a combo of Mini 8 camera, fancy stickers and accessories or capture your festival moments and keep them intact in an album or get your own party started with party props, fancy sling bag and markers, whatever is your requirement Fujifilm has got it for you,” says Taro Kawano, Head-Image Capturing, Fujifilm India.

Swipe Technologies is also very bullish about the festive season with its star series – Elite. “Elite plus has contributed a significant chunk to our turnover during the Big billon days on Flipkart. Festive season is the best time to gift your loved ones and families and there can be no better option than buying something which is pocket friendly but at the same time goes hand in hand with the modern technology,” says Shripal Gandhi Founder and CEO of Swipe Technologies.

Intex is looking forward to offer the best services along with beneficial offers. “We have received a remarkable response on our last offers and schemes. This festive season, we plan to launch around 7-8 mobile phones and foraying into Smart TVs along with varied range of CDIT products. Other than this we feel that our competitive pricing &offers to the consumers and schemes to the retailers will help us drive higher sales. Like every festive season, our sales are expected go higher because of the attractive offers that we are giving to our customers,” says Keshav Bansal, Director, Intex Technologies.

Customer Buying Trends…

Companies are expecting the current festive season demand to be subsequently higher than what it was last year as there has been a spurt witnessed in consumer buying recently. Consumer sentiment too is up and buoyant. The latest trend this season is gadgets and smartphones that are one of the hottest picks during the festival time. “When it comes to the consumer buying journey, we see that consumers these days have turned very smart and have also gone very patient when it comes to cracking the right deal. With heavy Sales and discounts available both offline and online, one shall see consumers involved in extensive research before taking the next step,” asserts Sharan. “We expect consumers this year to be technologically savvy as Technology is no longer of interest to any particular age group and with growing advancements and innovation the consumer buying trend has also seen a shift,” he continues.

Zopo is expecting a 250- 300% increase in sales in during the festive period. “But we will have to wait, see and analyze the situation,” says Sanjeev Bhatia, Founder & Chairman, Adcom and channel partner for Zopo Mobile in India. With consumers eyeing more premium products, Sansui observes an upswing in the sales of high end consumer goods. Also, since there is an expected increase in the prices of LEDs, people will make the most of the festive offers and buy LEDs before the prices go up, according to Amitabh.

Taro Kawano believes that during this festive season, people are going out of the way to explore gifts that have an impact and are thoughtful, one that will help them in storing the festive moments as a memory. “The customers will be delighted by what Fujifilm has to offer and we have also seen a splurge in the market for instant cameras,” he says. “The Instax Mini 8 Combos are perfect for any occasion be it a Diwali celebration, Birthday Party, Bachelorette Party or any other special occasion for people to enjoy instant photos.”

An Internal Survey conducted by Desidime.com revealed that Gift Cards and Vouchers have been bought more this sale season compared to last year, primarily for the extra discounts they offer. While 55% of sales are happening via App, 7% via site and 37% via Desktop (approx), exclusive products with Flipkart, Amazon & Snapdeal like mobile phones were selling like hot buns on the day when there was a sale on Mobile phones. “Overall the sentiment was that fewer deals were deep discounted as compare to last couple of years. Consumers are increasingly becoming comfortable ordering online without COD this festive season,” observes Mehul Jobanputra, CEO & Co-Founder - Desidime.com.

The Winner - online vs offline

The gulf between online retail and its brick-and-mortar counterpart is expanding and shopping experience of people is in turn evolving. There is a growing demand for products offline as well as online channels during the festive season. All in all, the major driving factor behind customers going online is the huge discount on offer, free home delivery, cash on delivery, free return – which is as high as one month.

Brands also try to maintain a balance between both the online and offline platforms. Most of them try to fit in both these platforms by making it a part of their uniform retail strategy.

Lava firmly believes in empowering its customers, shareholders and commercial partners so that they can do more and be more. “We have a strong foothold in the offline channel – as we are the only company in the Indian mobile handset industry with a 100% single layer distribution model wherein all distributors are directly managed and controlled by Lava. However, Lava products are also sold via e-commerce portals and the sales from the online channels has shown positive traction,” says Navin Chawla, Chief Operating Officer, Lava International.

“We are exploring various e-commerce platforms and even in the past, we have associated with them regularly. Though, we believe that Indians are more comfortable in buying products after personally experiencing in stores, and hence offline channels cannot be ignored. However, we ensure you that we will be present on every channel where our consumers are present. We hope to capitalize the festive season in the rural and semi urban markets,” asserts Niladri. For Intex, 80% of its sales come from offline and remaining from online. “Our growth is majorly driven by the channel strategy. However, to establish brand’s online presence we always look at strategic tie-ups with major online retailers to maintain our visibility in the e-commerce sphere as well,” says Keshav. Zopo is also doing a reasonable amount of numbers both online & offline. “Although we are present in all tier I, tier II, and some tier iii via e-commerce channels, we are getting a better response from our traditional channel community,” says Sanjeev.

The Top 4 e-commerce Shopping Extravaganza

Call it Big Billion Day or The Great Indian Festival, this is the time when Indian shop the most and taking advantage of it, major e-commerce brands launch their biggest shopping events of the year to leverage the buying sentiments of its consumers. A look at what they have in store this year -

Amazon: After the Amazon Dussehra sale which was from October 1 to October, the Diwali sale is already around the corner for Amazon lovers. The second wave of Great Indian Festival is scheduled from October 17 to 20. Products under the electronics category will get a huge 55 per cent discount.

Flipkart: Flipkart has announced its app-only Flipkart Big Billion Days that began on October 2, 2016 and ran till October 6, 2016. The second-edition was held between October 13 and October 17. The Big Billion Days offered discounts across 70+ product segments.

Snapdeal: After the last 5-day sale conducted just a week ago, Snapdeal was back with another sale that started from 12 October through 14 October. Called the Unbox Diwali Sale, Snapdeal offered some big deals offerings with discounts up to a hefty 70 percent. The sale started with some exciting deals across categories like appliances, electronics, gadgets, mobile phones and even on home furniture and FMCG products.

Shopclues: Shopclues Diwali Sale #ItneKumMein was conducted from 1st Oct to 10th October 2016. Great discounts were offered on almost every products ranging from home appliances to electronic gadgets and home products.

SanDisk views both offline retailers and online e-tailers as important channels for fulfilling the needs of the consumers. “We work closely with our retail partners in geo markets and provide them with necessary training, sales aids and consumer offers to educate and sell to their customers,” states Jaganathan. eScan, on the other hand is more focused with its channel partner network than ecommerce. As its product being a technical product, the users normally buy from a trusted source due to lack of deployment skills or awareness. “Apart from that, our product segment presently contributes less than 5% revenue in ecommerce. Hence, being a channel oriented company we will be more concentrating on the channel side of the business to reach our vast user base,” says Anil. Chandrahas believes that both the platforms-Online and offline have their own positives. While already having a robust presence on e-commerce stores, Acer has simultaneously increased its retail stores with over 2000 stores and approximately 100 exclusive Acer stores. “We believe, retail stores give our customers the opportunity to interact with the brand and to get the first-hand experience of the products. As these online and offline platforms continue to co-exist, we would also be leveraging both for our ultimate focus of ascertaining convenience for our users,” he explains.

Desidime.com, which is a social online shopping community has helped the merchant partners to sell goods worth over 65 crores in the first 7 days of October and is eyeing a figure of Rs. 350 crores across merchants overall this festive season till December. In its internal survey, Desidime.com found that more than 70% of users have said that they have reduced their frequency of traditional (Offline) shopping due to online Shopping and more than 65% of users said that they have ended up spending more than 50% of their Diwali shopping budgets on online shopping this year. “As far as our prediction goes, online orders from tier 2 & tier 3 cities will increase as compared to previous years for lack of accessibility of brands and increasing trust in online shopping,” points out Mehul.

Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com