The Hindu Business Line : Lifestyle’s campaign to focus on building brand affinity

Chennai, Jan. 18 The mention of a lifestyle store usually triggers off associations with fashion and apparel, when, in fact, these stores usually sell other product categories too. Retail chain Lifestyle, however, wants to put an end to this and tell people it’s much more than clothes.

The company is all set to launch a new campaign next month telling consumers it has five product categories that include home décor and furniture, footwear, infants’ clothing and toys, perfumes, jewellery and accessories, and not just apparel. Bearing the tagline ‘Your Style. Your Store’, the campaign will seek to build affinity for the brand Lifestyle. Speaking to Business Line here, Mr Shankar Suryanarayan, Vice-President (Marketing), Lifestyle, said fashion as a part of the marketing mix is too strong. Also, an average Lifestyle store is 50,000 sq. ft large, “so why not tell consumers about everything we have?” Huge amounts are invested in setting up a store and stocking it with various products, so why harp on fashion?” he says.

Mr Suryanarayan says creating an international store experience, good visual merchandising and building the store’s loyalty programme, The Inner Cirle, as a brand in itself are important elements of the marketing effort.

“In large-format stores, all the products are not immediately visible. Many are located deeper inside and upstairs. The visual merchandising and window-dressing should reflect the various categories available rather than focus on garments alone,” he says. He declined to give details on which categories were most widely stocked or contributed the most to Lifestyle’s revenue.

Rewarding buyers

Loyalty could also become a significant part of the marketing initiatives.

A “customer laddering programme” that rewards buyers proportionate to the amounts they have spent needs to be well thought out. According to Mr Suryanarayan, Lifestyle customers do not come to the store expecting trivial discounts and cheap freebies but look for stuff to complement their lifestyles, so even the discounts, promotions and gifts have to be well planned.

For instance, most of the customers are women, but the males in their families also tend to have a say in the purchase, so the gifts would have to suit both sexes, he explains.

Lifestyle is spending Rs 12 crore on advertising this year. The budget for both thematic and tactical communication will go up by about 50 per cent in the next fiscal year.

The turnover for the year ending March 2007 was Rs 500 crore and is expected to be 30 per cent higher this year.

Mr Suryanarayan said the company wants to add more brands in the existing categories. It now sells 250 national and international brands, a few of which are exclusively sold by Lifestyle.

The retail chain aims to have 35 stores operating in the next three years; now there are 12. It now has five Home Centres and hopes to increase this number to 15 in the same time frame. Efforts to this end will start this year.