Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, May 04, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, May 04, 2002 |
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Info-Tech
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Hardware Marketing - Brands HP on brand building spree Chitra Phadnis
BANGALORE, May 3 HP is on a brand building exercise for its printers. The game plan is to treat printers just like any other consumer durable and opt for the worldwide ``customisation'' strategy to help top-of-the-mind recall. Today, when it comes to impulse buying, IT products are the farthest from the customer's mind, according to international research. However, people do buy 29 inch televisions on an impulse, ``so why not printers which are much cheaper,'' said Mr Princy Bhatnagar, Market Development Manager, Consumer Peripherals. Worldwide, HP has a customisation initiative in which the company launches limited editions of printers for specific target communities based on age, gender, professions and usage patterns. For instance, HP Japan successfully launched printers for women and painted them yellow, then the in colour with women. The newest such initiative born out of India is printers for children in the age group of 5 to 12. The `Just for Kids' programme will launch throughout the country starting May 6 to coincide with the school summer holidays. The idea has spread to HP in four other countries, Mr Bhatnagar said. Children this age are more IT savvy, a big influence in buying decisions in homes, like to be creative and like vibrant colours, said HP's market research. The `Just For Kids' entry-level HP Deskjet 656c is a multi coloured printer with plastic moulds in red, blue, green and yellow. Visual appeal apart, the company also caters to the creative urge by offering an A4 size page of stickers with Walt Disney characters on it. Users can fill the cartoons with colour and make their own stickers, said Mr Bhatnagar. The stickers alone would retail for Rs 500 or so and this is the first time that Walt Disney has agreed to an OEM arrangement, he said. While customisation does send up costs, it is marginal because of the company's efficiencies, he said. The company manufactures all its printers in a single plant in Thailand. The immediate aim is more to keep the brand alive than push up sales, Mr Bhatnagar said. The `Just For Kids' printers will be advertised through ground level promotions. The target audience may not be able to read print ads and television is too expensive, explained Mr Bhatnagar. During the promotion period, printers will be installed in leading toy stores to give children the ``touch and feel'' experience. A total of 6,000 printers will be produced and sold out of 300 outlets in India. Finally, this will also give the company a database of customers who belong to the ''post liberalisation'' generation. ``They have a different attitude and we want to address that. We also want to find out what it is that they want to include that in the next products,'' he said.
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