About This Episode
Arpan Biswas is the Chief Marketing Officer of Wonderchef – a leading online kitchenware brand. An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Kozhikode, he has worked across multiple industries including textile, real estate, lifestyle, food, automobile and homecare in his extensive career spanning 10 years.
In this episode…
i. How to effectively craft a brand message?
ii. Why content marketing is extremely crucial for kitchenware products?
iii. How to choose a pricing strategy that helps you enhance your brand perception?
iv. How Wonderchef is emerging to be the most preferred brand for household needs?
Here are our top 3 picks from this episode:
1. Combining retail and e-commerce strategy in kitchenware
Ashana: In kitchenware mostly we see that retail leads the customer, most women tend to go to the retail stores, feel the product and then purchase it. According to you what should be kept in mind while marketing a kitchenware product with respect to retail and e-commerce marketplaces?
Arpan: Today it’s all about content, how you can convey the value of the product in the shortest span of time. In retail, it can be through POS, online it’s through A+ content or through reviews, mostly user-generated reviews which shares the feedback with the customer directly. I think the focus is obviously on content and producing really high-class content which makes the brand look better. I think if these are done well and it will help customers a lot in their purchase journey because you are not going to use the kitchen ware product rightaway at the store, you are going to determine the value of the product from the features, so it needs to be conveyed well.
Ashana: True!
2. Discount is not a strategy but a short-term sales boost
Ashana: Here comes my favorite question, kitchenware tends to be a category where people are really sensitive about the prices if the competition will offer them lower prices with good value, most of them will run to grab it. Do you think that discounts are a long-term growth strategy and In your opinion how does it affect customer loyalty?
Arpan: Honestly, I don’t think discount is a strategy, it’s just a tactical measure to boost sales; short-term sales. Given the rise in online shopping, e-commerce players are willing to shelve their margins to increase their GMV. In my opinion, customer loyalty is not based on discounting. Customers are loyal to the brand’s promise, what the brand stands for especially the value, health, and convenience. Although some customers are willing to shift to another brand if they get a superior price but they will surely move back in the long run if they don’t find the value. Discounting should always in line with the competition without going overboard. At times, we do discount products depending on the business needs but we don’t really use it as a strategy.
Ashana: That’s a great insight, Arpan!
3. Multi-channel communication for different phases of the customer journey
Ashana: How do you combine multi-channel communication strategies i.e SMS, social media, web-push? What is important while devising these strategies?
Arpan: See at the end of the day, we are more or less talking to the same user, a person who is doing social media is also looking at SMS and push notifications; only the content which goes out to them through different channels varies. What expectation does the customer have from social media post vis-a-vis SMS, Email and TV ad; that’s what changes. The content depends on the channel, we ensure that for the better impact we create content as per the channel requirement. We have observed that SMS works best for offers, Emailer has worked for us when we are trying to communicate a new product launch. So we determine the channel based on the business requirements from time to time.
Closing notes
Arpan shared his understanding of customer journey, price-sensitive market and how to deal with it, deep discounting and a lot more in Episode 07 of EngageCast.
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