It’s raining offers Everywhere!

Sales, offers, goodies, freebies, discounts are the words that are seen in every nook and corner store and also at online stores during the festive season. Festivities are the time for merry-making and rejoicing. Buying new things or gifts doubles the joy at this time. With time, needs of the people change and so the demand. A major shift has been noticed these days in commodity buying. Now, people have started buying consumer electronics and mobiles on festive occasions. Another trend that is quite noticeable is buying commodities from online marketplace where people can shop their heart out. To attract this section of the masses, companies come up with best product launches, catchy schemes, goodies, loyalty programmes, discounts, etc. The companies look forward to this period of the year when they witness an upsurge in sales and this adds to their growth trajectory.

Ritu Gupta, Director – Marketing, Dell India, says, “Festivals are an occasion for togetherness and celebrations with all our near and dear ones. It is also a season for exchanging gifts and sharing the joy of celebration. This festive season, we wish to celebrate with our customers and encourage them to ShareTheJoy with the power of technology. With the launch of our new festive campaign, we aim to sweeten our customers’ experience with special offers available on our entire Dell Inspiron and Vostro range.” “The last quarter has been the best quarter for Swipe and keeping the same momentum at Diwali, we are expecting best Diwali this year, especially because of Swipe's increasing focus on omnichannel presence. We are looking forward to massive sellouts in terms of tertiary or end-consumer sale,” commented Shripal Gandhi, Founder & CEO, Swipe Technologies. S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India, said, “The festive spirit is in the air with Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali. To make gifting and shopping even more special for our consumers, Acer brings its mega Diwali celebration offer promotion. The primary objective of this special festive campaign is to engage with consumers at the ground level and strengthen our brand connect. Through this campaign, we also intend to reinforce our relationship with our channel partners and regional distributors and increase our sales. We have introduced this special festive offer to spread more fervour amongst our consumers, offering them yet another reason to purchase an Acer device." Consumer buying trends From time to time, with varying needs consumer’s demand changes. It is the need that decides the buying trends. This year, smartphones with 4G features are in much demand among the people. Sudhin Mathur, Director – Smartphones, Lenovo India, expressed his views, “Our product lineups have mostly been customer demand based. In the past year, the growing customer response to our 4G portfolio has been very encouraging. We are now looking to offer our customers an improved service experience. We are enhancing some of our most popular smartphone devices with premium add-on features for Diwali.” “With the advent of 4G services, Intex has launched a slew of 4G handsets and has an aggressive lineup in this category for the festive season. Also keeping in mind the festive season, Intex, in the month of October, entered the Rs.10K-15K segment with category defying 4G-models – Aqua ACE and Cloud Swift having 3GB RAM. “In every festive season, customers look out for good phones at discounted prices or exchange offers. Intex has always given its customers and market high-end classy smartphones at very affordable and appealing prices,” said Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Mobile Business Head, Intex Technologies. With the growing number of smartphones and tablets, people are generating more content than ever. This, in turn, calls for more storage. The young technology enthusiasts are looking for a storage device which is stylish and has features that would satisfy their data storage needs easily and efficiently. “Today’s consumers are well aware of the current trends of data storage solutions and are looking at various aspects when making a purchase decision. Apart from features like ease-of-use, they look at storage capacity, durability, reliability, data security, data sharing, etc. For an external drive, consumers are also looking at the aesthetics of a drive. They look for a sleek, portable and stylish drive that represents their styles.” “Keeping this trend in mind, Seagate offers data storage solutions that answer to various lifestyles, such as Seagate Seven and Seagate Backup Plus Slim,” added Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager for India & SAARC, Seagate Technology.

Revenue expectation With new product launches and special offers, companies always expect a surge in revenue. New products are meant to boost the market shares of the companies. “With the new products / models range introduced for this festival season, we are expecting at least 8–10% growth compared to the last year’s festive season,” said Alok Garodia, Managing Director, Jupiter International Ltd. “We are expecting an increase of 20–25% sales during the period from October to November,” added Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Mobile Business Head, Intex Technologies. “We are expecting a growth of 40% this quarter from the previous one. Our growth could be attributed to Sound Monster range of speakers, advance and meticulous planning of various models for this festive season worked well,” stated Rajesh Doshi, Director, Zebronics. This festive season, OPPO has some other plans apart from achieving a decent market share. It is aiming to spread its footprint pan India with its go-to-market strategy. “This festive season, OPPO plans to expand the reach of the brand across India with an aggressive marketing strategy, new product launches, attractive pricing and retail expansion. We aim to achieve a decent market share and more than 100% growth in sales as compared to the last festive season. We are, therefore, planning to spend over Rs.40 crore around the Diwali season in the Indian market. To strengthen the existing retail network, OPPO will also launch 8 exclusive stores in the key markets like Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pune and Bangalore,” commented Mike Wang, CEO, OPPO Mobiles India

Online or Offline Though the new shopping trend of online marketplace has spread like a virus across the country but the vendors are still concentrating on brick and mortar stores. For the vendors, both online and offline channel is important in this season. “The way consumers choose and buy smartphones is continuously evolving and, at OPPO, we are focussing on retail as of now but do keep the window open for online sales as well,” said Mike Wang, CEO, OPPO Mobiles India. “Intex has a strong presence in the e-commerce space too with exclusive tie-ups and presence all across the online space. Besides our presence in the organized retail chains and e-commerce sites, we have recently opened our exclusive branded store ‘Intex Smart World’ as experience zones, and plan to come with 400 stores across the country. At present, we have 30 such brand stores which are already operational.” “For us in the past few quarters, sales from the online platform have surely picked up but still the major share is coming from the traditional channel,” commented Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Mobile Business Head, Intex Technologies. “As of now, we are more into the channel-driven business. No doubt, e-commerce has shown unprecedented growth during the last two years and we are a part of it to a limited extent only as we have some exclusive products for this platform,” said Alok Garodia, Managing Director, Jupiter International Ltd.

Offers This is the time when consumers are flooded with offers, discounts, goodies, etc. The festival season usually sees a boost in sales as people spend on their loved ones. To fuel it more, vendors shower the customers with exclusive deals and offers. To offer something more than value, Lava has chosen to address the biggest concern of the customers that is screen replacement in case of accidental damage. Luke Prakash, Vice-President & National Head – Sales & Distribution, Lava International Limited, said, “This season, we want to offer something that consumers will value and will help them get more out of their purchase. We feel that irrespective of the price segment one thing that the consumers are concerned about is screen replacement in case of an accidental damage. The number of such instances has increased, given the amount of time being spent on mobile phones. In line with this, we have launched a screen replacement offer across our portfolio and since the replacement can be availed anytime in the next year one year from the date of purchase, it will practically take care of the entire life cycle of the device for a consumer.” “Yes, we have introduced a silver coin scheme in traditional retail and special gratification to online consumers in terms of early access of devices, special scheme, accessories bundling, complimentary insurance cover, etc,” said Shripal Gandhi, Founder & CEO, Swipe Technologies. “Any customer buying Intex handsets priced above Rs.6,000 will be eligible for 1-year one-time screen breakage warranty for free. Moreover, the customer will also get a complimentary bagpack,” said Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Mobile Business Head, Intex Technologies. The telecom service providers are equally forthcoming and aggressive in making such offers. They are also offering festive season deals to their customers. Anupam Vasudev, Chief Marketing Officer, Aircel, said, “This festive season, Aircel, in keeping with its commitment of doing a little extra for the customers, has launched an exciting and holistic roaming pack ‘ApnoKeSaath’ that has been tailor-made for frequent travellers. The pack offers 100-167 minutes of free incoming and outgoing roaming calls. We have also taken into account the needs of the growing data users and our customers can also enjoy 100MB of free 2G and 3G data.”

At Last… Though the growth of the economy is slow, still it is unable to hamper the spirit of shopping. People are on a shopping spree and all the companies have also geared up for the festive season. Festivity is the time to rejoice and spread happiness. It is the time to shop, to gift and to love everyone.