I have had terrible experiences in the long queues of organised retail outlets. Help! Is anything being done here to sort out the mess?

_ Pankaj Mehta, Ahmedabad

Pankaj-bhai, the last seven feet, as I call it, are the most lethal to a retail store. These are the last seven feet where customers wait at checkout queues. The store has welcomed the customers in with glee, has offered a wide range of choice stocked systematically, has offered an ability to experience the product and even try them on if they are apparel, and finally when the customer has made up her mind, you kill her with your queue! That’s killing her softly, but killing her surely as well.

Dropout rates can be high, and discouragement rates to shop at the same store again can be disastrous if you do not know how to engage customers in the billing queue.

First, your queue must not be long. Second, your billing must be super-efficient if not super-swift and RFID-reader led. And third, if you have a queue of any kind, it must not be more than seven feet long. And lastly, you need to invent ways to engage customers in this last seven feet lap.

In terms of innovations, rewarding wait time is a sure way of keeping customers happy. Reward them with entertainment, information or sampling in the queue as they wait (of food or beverage). Doing a quick piece of market research as they wait, and rewarding them for their responses is a good thing to do as well.

Pankaj, a lot needs to be done in this space for sure.

Nokia lost the plot. Am I right? And how did all this happen?

_ Roopa P. Menon, New Delhi

Roopa, Nokia was the first mover in India, but Nokia lost out to everyone else in the Indian market, as it became as generic a brand as Dalda had become. Much faster than all the decades Dalda took to do it.

Nokia emerged in the mobile handset market with as much finesse and bravado as Dalda had shown in India’s Vanaspati market decades ago. Dalda became a generic over the decades, and failed to innovate and hold on. Instead, Dalda lost share to everyone else, just as Nokia did. At the end of the day, both brands got the credit for being first movers and both brands got the credit for moving up the share of category to what it is today, but both brands lost all they had to everyone else who came later and innovated away to glory. Everyone took a bite.

Nokia blazed away in India in the era of “push-button phones”, as I call it. I categorise India's telephony market into the era of the “rotary-dial phones”, the era of “push-button handsets”, and finally the “dial touchscreens”. While the public-sector ITI (Indian Telephone Industries) led the era of the rotary-dial phones, Nokia led the push-button phone era, and missed out on the smart touchscreen era altogether.

Yes, Nokia hopped onto the smartphone bandwagon later, but missed the entire fast-paced and quick-evolution process of the smart-screen development. As Samsung and Apple and every LG chipped away at share, Nokia got left behind, which was its undoing. A Samsung was seen to be at cutting-edge, an Apple was at bleeding-edge and Nokia was seen to be at “confused-edge”! I am being rude now.

Confusion, the last-mover status on smartphones, and confused market moves in terms of advertising and communication did Nokia in.

Confused is a good word to go with. The brand is using everything that everyone else is using. The advertising is nothing that stands out from the herd as yet. This needs to be corrected under the new dispensation which will come into play with the Microsoft entry.

This Microsoft buy is a good one. I do believe this $7.2-billion sale by Nokia is a distress-sale number for sure. For Microsoft, however, I see this to be a fire-sale buy that will fire up its imagination. Microsoft now emerges as a hardware, business software and services giant. This complete vertical integration can be valuable for Microsoft. In many ways, just as Nokia missed the bus on the smartphone, indeed the smart services portfolio, and smart services network at large, Microsoft in turn has missed in the past a possible hardware play. This acquisition gives it that edge.

Microsoft must use this buy to redefine itself competently as a complete portfolio player. The pantheon of players is laid out. At one end you have Apple Inc with its play, at another end you have Samsung with its multiple screen-play (remember Samsung is in every screen there is to play: televisions, desktops, laptops, mobile phones and more) and now the third player is Microsoft-Nokia. An interesting line-up really.

Within India, Microsoft needs to spend time understanding consumer insight that is uniquely Indian to infuse fire and life in this category. India shows the potential to talk of teledensity of 2.1, as we see in some cities such as Chennai already.

If that is a number to aim for, India is a 2.5 billion mobile handset market. This number will happen not with the handset alone, but with an imaginative packaging of everything that Microsoft brings to the party, the business software, the entertainment software, its services play, and finally the imaginative handset.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. >askharishbijoor@gmail.com

comment COMMENT NOW