When someone walks into your store, give them the camera as soon as possible and half the sale is done. Make them click a picture and the deal will be sealed, says Alok Bharadwaj, Executive Vice-President of Canon India, to salespersons in India. For Canon, the preparation serves the larger purpose of positioning traditional stores as the only place where customers can get a first-hand experience of a product. If the brick-and-mortar variety cannot compete with the e-commerce on product pricing, it has to try and find something else to offer.

“The plan is to somehow harmonise these two retail channels. In fact, e-commerce has grown into a disruptive force in the Indian consumer market,” says Bharadwaj. On the other hand, it is also in a close contest with Nikon on Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras, which camera majors aim to put in every shutterbug’s hand. Canon outstripped Nikon in the March quarter but got pushed back in the next three months.

Between the two of them, they hold about 90 per cent of the ₹2,000 crore DSLR market, Bharadwaj said in an interview. Edited excerpts:

How did the e-commerce story get sour?

Indian consumers were used to buying in retail stores. We usually give our traditional retailers about 15 per cent margin, and after discount, they make 10-12 per cent.

Also, they provide the first touch-point with the customer. If done right, it takes care of our branding.

Now here comes a disruptive force, which turns the whole story upside down. They tell customers, directly or indirectly — go to the showroom and get the experience of the product. Then, go online and get the experience of buying. As an impact, retailers just cannot make a margin of over five per cent now.

About three years ago, hadn’t Canon dubbed e-commerce as a positive force?

Back then, we saw e-commerce as a powerful tool to educate the market. Since cameras are consumer products that enhance the creativity of the user, some hand-holding is always required. But now, the price discounts are far too much.

E-commerce is destroying the platform providing the first experience of the product to the consumer. The market will not grow without this platform. For commodities like dresses, shoes, sandals, this is, perhaps, an ideal platform.

What is Canon going to do about this?

Canon products are sold on Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, and Snapdeal. But, we do not sell our cameras to them directly; they are sourced from dealers and traders. Our website has a list of authorised online sellers and we would like to advise customers to not buy from websites not on that list.

Notices of caution have been posted on our website on counterfeit products being sold on internet auctions.

The concept of Minimum Operative Price is not writ in law in India. We are hoping the discounting will abate and the game will move to quality and customer experience. At the same time, we are bolstering our physical retail network to 150 stores from 109 this year. Nevertheless, e-commerce can quickly sell off products that we are planning to pull out of the market.

In that perspective, online websites are a great avenue for end-of-life cameras.

What is your strategy to expand market-share in the coming months?

The festive season is coming up – a slew of promotions, discounts and free accessories will push up market value to ₹2,000 crore by end- 2014, and how successful these market expansion efforts by Canon and Nikon are will decide the market leader. Over 3 lakh units of DSLRs and about 15 lakh compact cameras a year, make a ₹4,000-crore market for cameras.

Right now, both companies are guarding their promotion plans… By the first week of September, ahead of Onam, Canon will make announcements of short-term price-cuts and even longer warranty periods.

Besides, we are trying to promote the DSLR market among women. We launched variants weighing about 350g. The EOS1100D also comes in colours other than the standard Black. However, one learning experience was that women don’t go for a DSLR for the colour.

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