Abhishek Ganguly, MD, Puma India, on how retailers can integrate the consumers’ journey by deploying out-of-the-box ideas
What are the prime growth drivers for Puma?
We are bullish on the Indian market. Our prime growth drivers will be innovations and launches. Category wise, we are extremely excited about the women’s products, running and sport style products.
How consumer behavior is changing with the growing access to mobile and social media?
Consumer has the access to information on the go and that’s completely changing the way they are deciding what to buy, when to buy, how to buy, and at what price to pay. So that’s a huge revelation in the way they are discovering products, deciding a product, and buying the product.
In the past five years, a massive amount of change has happened in India and it is not just because of e-commerce but because of mobile and social media.
How do brands need to rework on their consumer reach out strategy?
Today it has become imperative for brands and retailers to actually integrate the entire consumer journey right from where the consumer discovers the brand and the product, till coming to the store and trying out the products. At times consumer try products at offline stores and may buy it online, or from different stores. Consumer is consuming brand’s content and communication in various marketing and social media platforms.
Also there are different communities that are getting built around the brands. These communities include loyal customers with the loyalty programme or a social handle which people follow. Consumer anyway is active across different platforms and challenge for the brand is to enable this to happen seamlessly.
Do you think there should be focus on differentiating offline-online presence or consumer convenience?
The brand and the retailers should endorse omni-channel integration. They cannot say I am a pure offline retailer and I don’t want to digitally access consumers. A lot of online players have also realized that they need to have physical store, or consumer interaction.
The entire activity will help consumer. Like a consumer buys anything from an online store and instead of returning it through the online channel he/she can return it in the store next door. These are the various ways of integration, which is imperative for brand and retailers to do.
Who will stay afloat with the change in the consumer behavior?
The fastest will survive; and those who can adopt and change fast will thrive in this condition.
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