My Experiments With Writing: The Online Saga

My Experiments With Writing: The Online Saga: A little late in the Amazonifying stage, but I'm sure loving this transformation that Indian retail is going through. The Online era has ...

The Online Saga

A little late in the Amazonifying stage, but I'm sure loving this transformation that Indian retail is going through.

The Online era has just started to get a boost in India, it seems. Although fabmart.com, India's first online store started operating in 1999, Indians were quite not ready for the transition then. They hadn't even been properly exposed to organised retailing yet.

Now finally we are caught into the great web of The World Wide Web (pun intended). Not that I'm complaining, I specifically love the advantages that it provides. Google being the best blessing, I wonder how our parents studied without Google's help!!

I would say God Bless Social media sites, they got us hooked on to the web and now we find virtual alternates to almost everything in the physical world : Shopping, Social gaming, Dating, Fixing Marriages, Counselling, Teaching etc etc. The market for e-commerce sites is getting bigger and bigger in India, at present it stands somewhere around  40k crore, a lucrative market for the foreign players as well, with Amazon having its Indian penetration plans working out on full swing.

Walmart, the biggest retailer and the biggest company of the world, remains one-step ahead with its @WalmartLabs trying to get Mobile, Social Media, and Retailing into one sphere with its excellent data mining capacity, a sheer delight.

Thus, the online platform has become important to one and all, the retailers as well as the customers. I sure do love the discounts and deals that I get when I shop online, and its way too convenient. However, being a student, the only problem that I face is when the item is not marked COD (Cash On Delivery), and this may be a problem for many Indians as well, as many of us do not hold credit or debit cards and we know the reason why, and even if we do we are a scared lot.

That's all for now.

Cheers!!

A month's view

A long gap since I posted anything mainly because college, placements, TV shows kept me busy. Anyways so what all did happen in this past month, let's recollect over the top of our heads:


1. The Government showed interest in opening the retail sector to foreign Retailers, opened it (100% in single brands and 51% in multi brand). A lot of hue and cry from the opposition side as well as from its allies. Shut it (multi-brand) and puts on hold. Bravo!!! Just imagine the kind of image India is posing to the world. Unprofessional. 

2. Kapil Sibal talking about 'monitoring' the social media and puts a garb around his argument by stating that they  might hurt our religious sentiments.Great!!! When will this man stop using his brains?? I mean please ask him to go through our Fundamental Rights to the page where Right to Speech is mentioned.


Stating straight from Mint : "Irony is seldom so choice. A Union minister of the “world’s largest democracy”—India’s self-promoted political brand—tries to control a medium that in the past year has proved an extraordinary tool for advancing democracy in other parts of the world."


3. Iphone 4S reporting poor turnout in India. Reason : PRICE.


4. Sehwag's recent stint, applauded by all.


5.The Amri Case.


6.Oh!! and I almost forgot...Happy 100th Birthday Delhi... Jeetey Raho!!!

etc,etc....I may have missed some, but these are the ones I could think of now. Hope all had a great month..


Cheers!!

An Important Lesson From Steve Jobs!!

An Important Insight from the tech Maestro : Steve Jobs, that I came across.

Comparing Apples to Apples

Apple iPhone 4S

Apple iPhone 5

Apple, on October 4 2011, has launched Apple iPhone 4S instead of the much awaited iPhone 5. So, what's the reason behind this move?? Was it a complete "oops" move or a well thought out strategy?? Let's analyse

Apple 's market share in the smartphone's industry is at stake with  Android coalition taking up 41.7 % market share (Economic Times). 

So what does Apple do now??

It creates hype for Apple iPhone 5 & instead launches 4S. 4S is essentially an up- gradation over iPhone 4 with 8mp camera, "Siri" software for voice recognition, more memory, better & faster processing, iCloud storage (iCloud stores your music, photos, documents, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices),etc etc. Effectively priced at $199 (16GB)-$399(64GB), Apple is probably aiming towards capturing the lower tiered smartphone market in order to gain max share before Google comes up with its exclusive handsets with android, before coming up with the premium priced iPhone 5, which will not have much to offer in terms of software up gradation from that of the 4S. 

Rumors also suggest that iPhone 5 launch is just to "save face" for the company, since the testing of iPhone 5 did not go quite well (it used to heat up too quickly, being slimmer than 4), it needed time with the hardware part. So in order to "save face", all the software up-gradations in iPhone 5 were thrown into the 4S.

Now we ask, will the Apple loyals be dissapointed?

And the answer comes largely : NO. They swear by the technology that it offers, being enthusiastic about the recent launch, even though compromising on the looks of the phone which is exactly like their old iPhone 4. However, they do not give up hope on the "soon" launch of iPhone 5.

And even if some are dissapointed, a question comes up into my mind... Is it because of the number game? 4S instead of 5?? Because the technology would be the same & if its because of the looks, then I'm sorry I guess the value proposition of Apple is not clear to them.

Any which way, I guess it has got what it had wanted - huge publicity !!

Cheers

Rashi

The Retail & Mark-e(a)-t(h)ing that I understand: When Marketers jingle (& sing) all the way....

The Retail & Mark-e(a)-t(h)ing that I understand: When Marketers jingle (& sing) all the way....: He's Always On Facebook...Yes!!! This is indeed the story of every teen, adult, almost every individual, who has the knowledge & access to...

When Marketers jingle (& sing) all the way....

He's Always On Facebook...Yes!!!
This is indeed the story of every teen, adult, almost every individual, who has the knowledge & access to the World Wide Web.
Its surprising to find that not-so-tech savvy parents & relatives (from the Generation Ex) are embracing this phenomena called Social Networking with open & loving arms. Call it snooping by housewives, networking by professionals or just catching up with friends, Facebook has become omnipresent.
So Vodafone has come up with Vodafone Blue, a handset which caters to this "need" of the masses.
The advertisement by Ogilvy starts with a 20 something year old boy getting up in the morning & gets hooked onto the Facebook. Now what's so unusual about that right? The fact that Ogilvy has captured the whole digital phenomena & presented it beautifully in the physical space is the most innovative aspect, according to me. Obviously the catchy song sort of rings into your head for the whole day, is another helping aspect. 
But the advertisement sort of fails to etch the Brand Vodafone into the customer's minds. You remember the ad, but fail to remember the brand, as in the whole advertisement there is no mention about the brand Vodafone at all.

So yes, its catchy, yes its innovative, yes it targets to the facebook generation...but I forgot what brand is it again??

Another example here can be quoted about the Airtel's "Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai" campaign. When I first saw the advertisement, half way through I thought this must be about some Nokia phone (Connecting people) being launched with a separate friends network (in order to combat the bbm by Blackberry). But to my surprise it was good old Airtel targetting youth. Great tune again but what about brand recall?? My friends could not place the brand associated with the most happening "Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai", although they kept quoting the same & humming the tune through days.

Hero's new commercial "Hum Mein Hai Hero"  is another one nowadays with a catchy song by the Maestro A.R Rehman himself. The commercial clearly connects to the emotional quotient associated with the brand Hero (Cycles) in the hearts of every Indian. Brand recall is high. However, I feel the use of Hero motor bikes could have been incorporated more in the commercial. Other than that, it clarifies at the end  "Aapka Hero Honda ab ban gaya hai Hero Moto Corp." leaving no doubts in the minds of the customers.


It is indeed,  the increased usage of catchy tunes into the TV commercials, but one thing to keep in mind is Do they create enough Recall for the Brand???


Cheers


Rashi