BY JAGDEEP KAPOOR

A long drive by the family in a Toyota. Location Outdoors Occasion Going for a holiday.

Drinking Tropicana by a group of teenagers . Location Indoors Occasion Celebrating exam results.

Using Airtel mobile by an executive . Location In the car Occasion Dictating a note to his secretary before boarding his flight.

If you want your brand to grow, I would recommend use my brand strategy of Location and Occasion of Consumption.

In India and anywhere else in the world, one of the key words sought after by marketeers and sales people is growth. Volume growth is something, which every marketing person is desirous of, but growth can come through in only two ways. One is by getting more customers, newer customers. The other is by ensuring that existing customers consume more.

If existing customers have to consume more, or if new customers have to come in, then a very powerful tool recommended by me are the devices of location of consumption and occasion consumption in the form of a matrix to be able to get the best out of various applications out of one single product, so that you can expand the market, get new customers and new segments, and have existing customers use the same product on different occasions and different locations, so that you are able to increase the applications and thereby increase sales and volume growth. Let us understand through illustrations and examples as to what this entire device called location and occasion of consumption is made up of. My recommendation is that one should be able to analyse a product and its usage in terms of where it is consumed, when it is consumed, how it is consumed and in what form it is consumed.

In marketing, the emphasis should be on usage and consumption and not so much only on purchase or sales. Many a time people buy products or services. They purchase many but they do not consume or use them. If products or services are not consumed or are not used, there is a very low probability of repeat purchase or consumption to take place. But if they are consumed, there is a chance that some may like the product or service and repeat it, whereas others may fall out. Therefore, the stress on consumption and usage is critical in terms of marketing emphasis.

Once it has been decided that consumption is the key to growth in volume terms, one needs to further bifurcate and understand the various locations and various occasions where this kind of usage and consumption takes place.

Let us take the case of a consumer durable like a television set with a remote control. This color television set with a remote control could be used in the bedroom; the kids room; the office or the conference room; the living room or in the parlour of a dentist. The locations of the consuming and enjoying the programmes on a television set are immense.

Similarly, there could be various occasions wherein a television set could be used. It could be after dinner or just before leaving for the office. Once various locations and occasions have been identified, they could then be used in a matrix, wherein certain key location and occasion conversion points could be used as selling points or marketing opportunities or even opportunities for creating new segments.As an illustration, the aspect of watching television after dinner in your own bedroom could be a single point marketing opportunity which could open up large areas of consumption. A home which has just one television set in the living room could be targeted and the couple could be told that while the whole joint family watches television in the living room, the couple could watch their own choice of programmes in the seclusion and privacy of their bedroom and therefore, that location of bedroom and that occasion of after dinner viewing could be a powerful hook for the couple to decide to pick up a second television set.

Many of the concepts being discussed by me earlier would seem to be pretty obvious, but one must quickly point out that these obvious ways of consuming products and services and locations of consuming products and services, if focused on, can lead to far higher consumption and get more people to consume in those conversion points of location and occasion.

In these days of competition and tremendous amount of pressures on marketing and sales-person, it is better than one takes a strategic approach in marketing. It is better that sales-people are made to go through this exercise, and through interaction with consumers, they can come up with a number of locations and occasions of consumption which then the product management and marketing team could sift and choose from and then focus on a new target marketing effort, communication effort in that direction, so that you can get the maximum benefit and increase sales volume and lead towards growth.

It is again to be reinforced that the market for any product or service is as much in the market physically as in the mind of the marketing person. If the marketing person can visualise various occasions even though they do not exist today, he would have created new opportunities of consumption and strategically driven the market further towards growth and increased the category.Often, marketing people believe that if something brilliant has to come up it has to be extremely intellectual and not comprehensible to the common person. I totally disagree with this line of thinking. In fact, simplicity and clarity of understanding is the essence of a good marketing strategy.

Further, being able to understand consumer behaviour in terms of consumption habits is crucial to developing a successful marketing strategy and therefore, it would be advisable to go out and start looking for your products and services location and occasion of consumption conversion points and develop your business and grow into areas that you may never have imagined before.

Copyright © 2005, All rights reserved with Jagdeep Kapoor – Managing Director, Samsika Marketing Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
No part of this document may be modified, reproduced, stored, deleted or introduced in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (Electronic, Mechanical, Photocopying, Recording or Otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of the document.

The author is Jagdeep Kapoor, Brand Guru and Managing Director of the successful Samsika Marketing Consultancy.
Tel: (022) 28477700/7701 (022) 28470214/15
Fax:022 28477699
E-mail : jkapoor@samsika.com