Missing the other half

What is a pop-up store? And why the buzz about them?

Kruthika Krishna, Vijayawada

Kruthika, a pop-up store is a store that pops up all of a sudden, fulfils its short-term purpose of creating awareness for the brand it represents and then pops out of your life as quickly as it came.

The buzz is all about the fact that pop-up stores work in the current clutter in the market. These pop-up stores are amoeba-like and have the ability to pop up and close down at will for short durations. In these short durations they manage to gain a huge degree of quick viewership in terms of new eyeballs. They help in building quick awareness for a new product and then vanish. They move on to capture more eyeballs elsewhere. They are in many ways caravan-stores that cover a large area in a short time.

These stores seemingly emerge from nowhere and vanish fast. Permanent stores actually get boring as they become part of the mall they are located in and become part of the furniture lying around. Pop-up stores add zing to such a dead and static retail environment.

Pop-up stores work beautifully for a category that has a new product, a new technology, or even a new model to showcase and demonstrate.

The joy of such stores is that they may not be restricted to a mall. Even a large ‘Mom and Pop' store (‘ kirana ' store) can accommodate a pop-up store counter. In many ways, in the ‘Mom and Pop' stores, this is not too different from the space they used to let out on a weekly basis to products and services that wanted to demonstrate to new customers products from the old days.

What's the status of the direct selling industry in India? We do see small little noises being made time and again but never anything big.

Som Mullick, Kolkata

Som, the noises are small but the direct selling industry is fast emerging as the industry of choice in the small towns. Small-town markets are growing in terms of their aspiration to eat and buy more brands. However, there are loopholes in terms of the availability and supply-chain that caters to the small town. Direct selling, therefore, becomes the one single answer.

Direct selling will grow exponentially in the small towns just as it will shrink exponentially in the eight big metros. The industry is slated to grow briskly in two terrains: health and wellness and in cosmetic care where the range available in the small towns is not as vast as that in the big cities.

The direct selling business offers disintermediation in the selling chain and offers the best international products at the doorstep of the Indian in the small town.

As affordability, the yen to want to possess and use and, more importantly, the craving for such products increases in the small towns, the first answer will be offered by the direct selling industry. Bottlenecks, however, remain.

The biggest bottleneck is the non-use of credit cards in purchase and the return-factor on the cash-on-delivery scene in India. Returns of cash-on-delivery packages range at 30 per cent as of today. And that is a disaster.

Hero splits from Honda. What will the impact be “ break ke baad ”?

Rohini Chadda, New Delhi

Rohini, a break is a break. From the consumer point of view, it is a break-up of a brand. In many ways consumers equate the brand and its delivery capability to the fact that two mighty corporate organisations have got together to get a powerful motorcycle brand going.

The users of this product still believe that technology that comes in from abroad is superior to that available in India. This rather strong viewpoint helped brands such as Hero Honda with the Japanese connection become a big draw.

There are really two bits of equity at play in this brand. The first is that of Honda in terms of the technology and durability on offer.

The second piece of equity is the Hero equity. This is all about a local player who has a face that is Indian and is recognised to be one that has wide reach and the capability to offer good after-sales service. 

The sum equity of the Hero Honda brand is, therefore, an amalgam of the Honda technology and durability marrying the domestic sales and service capability of Hero.

Just plain old Hero is really nothing but a bicycle maker of repute. Therefore, the future option with Hero would be one where just plain Hero is just not enough. My view. So take that with a pinch of salt.

I want to brand an educational institution of repute. How do I go about it? What do I avoid?

Saleem A. Kishti, Mumbai

Saleem-ji, education is a credible output. It is an inner-sanctum subject, very close to religion.

I have a theory that there are outer sanctum products and inner sanctum products. Outer sanctum products are things such as food, clothing, shelter, accessories and telecom.

Inner sanctum products include medicare and education, to name just two. The innermost sanctum product is religion.

One must take greater and greater care as one steps into more and more inner sanctum subjects.

Branding needs to be sensitive, relevant, original and innovative. You can't brand it like you would brand toothpaste.

Some management institutes have, however, tried to do that ... much to the peril of their credibility ratings! And they have started looking like plain old toothpaste as well!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: askharishbijoor@gmail.com

COMMENT NOW