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In Focus
Building Retail Brands for Competitiveness
Everything all around us is a brand. You are. I am. India is.
You, India and I are all in the marketplace seeking our place in the sun. The only
reality of significance for the moment is the Buyer-Seller Dyad, made famous by
Henri Tosi many, many years ago. Everybody is a buyer and a seller. And buying
and selling is an image-driven issue. What starts with utility, moves on to price
and what lingers on price moves on higher up in the hierarchy to the brand and
its unique image. The brand is IT!
 India is a brand then. And brand India is
seeking to establish itself a unique
identity. An identity that makes it stand
apart from the rest. An identity that will
create a craving among sets of
consumers who will choose India over all
else in the great ‘Swayamvar’ of
country-brands that decides the future
of many a business.
How does one put the India brand in the
top rung of image-recall among sets of
consumers globally? How does one
leverage what is unique to India’s
distinct credit?
The India brand today is in a lime-light
of its own making. The retail environment of this country is in the spotlight.
The 6 Trillion USD business world-wide sources as much of 330 Billion USD from
the market that is India. 97.2 per cent of this is in the space occupied by unorganized
retail.
As marketers, vendors, entrepreneurs, academics and every one of the stakeholders
salivate at the prospect of modern trade and retail, key challenges have
emerged. Each of these present realities that are quite different from what the
developed nation of the world faced in their transition years.
In comes modern retail and with it comes the need to brand. And brand
aggressively.
Retail is one competence. Branding is another. With the rise of organized retail,
there is a great degree of interest in the category from both sides of the fence.
There is the big retailer and the small. This category interests the brand owner,
the vendor who caters to the retail enterprise development and solutions
providers of every kind.
While the retail environment bubbles over, brand competence itself is on the
morph. Retail branding is an altogether new subject. It is a relatively new
competence that needs to be generated in an economy poised to become an
economy dominated by the shopping revenue and experience.
Generating the shopping experience is a 1:1 expertise. Mass marketers,
spearheaded by the FMCG and durables players of the day, who have specialized
in the top-down formats of selling, branding and marketing find this to be a new
competence arena. The shopping experience and everything that encompasses
the point of retail, is about retail branding. A competence that is a bottom-up
process altogether.
THE RETAIL BRAND 2007 - Building Retail Brands for Competitiveness
is a summit organized by the CII Institute of at the Hotel Hilton Towers ,Mumbai
on 5th & 6th July with the aim to seek out this new competence and focus
attention on building retail brands for competitiveness. In the world’s emerging
markets, an exploding middle class is becoming richer, more aspirational, and
more sophisticated. New retail formats are leading consolidation. However,
emerging markets present questions as well as opportunities.
This conference will address the vital needs of the new subject of Retailbranding.
This conference therefore attempts to offer key tools to use as one
leverages the excitement of the market that is India.
The author of this piece is Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consultants -
Guru on Branding and CII Event Chairman, THE RETAIL BRAND 2007
For details on the Conference :Please Contact Event Chairman :Harish
Bijoor: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com or CII Coordinator :
greeta_varughese@ciionline.org
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