Brand Musings

Kerala has just witnessed the worst flood in a century. Large parts of the state have been devastated and some of its best known tourist destinations like Munnar, Wayanad and the Backwaters were affected. Tourism is a major revenue earning sector for Kerala, contributing over 12% of GDP. The main tourism season is from September to March. The Government and the people of the State are working hard and many of the tourist facilities and sightseeing spots are back to functioning as usual. However, going by past experiences globally in places that have suffered natural disasters, it can be expected that visitors will have apprehensions to travel to Kerala and tourist inflow will be limited this season. This would mean that much of this year’s tourism business would be impacted. However it is necessary for Kerala to assure tourists that the State is safe place to travel to. Millions of people in the State make a living from tourism activities either directly or indirectly and it

Small Business, Big Brand Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) form a major part of India’s industry as well as employ the largest number of the country’s workforce. Yet the contribution of SMBs to overall GDP remains small largely because SMBs have so far focused on serving local markets without aiming to expand markets and grow. With liberalisation of the Indian economy many multinational companies as well as imports from China and South East Asia have entered domestic markets. How does this bode for SMBs in general? Why do they need to focus on building their brands now more than ever? And what can they do? Leveraging their strengths  Branding is a long-term and ongoing process. Ideally, the process of creating and building a brand should begin at the stage when the business is conceptualized. However, it is never too late for existing businesses. SMBs benefit from simpler decision making processes compared to larger corporations making the process of brand development much f

What is wrong with customer experience in the Indian retail industry? There is no doubt that the growth of e-commerce has  affected the traditional brick and mortar retail industry. Retailers in India haven’t begun closing down physical stores like JC Penney’s have done in the US but there is no denying that a big chunk of retail business has moved online. It is not just the better discounts that are attracting customers to e-commerce. In India, more and more customers are beginning to shop online without comparing prices. The main reasons for this are the convenience and the customer experience.  Yet, it is surprising to see how little importance is paid to customer experience by Indian offline retailers still. Forrester’s India Customer Experience Index 2017 shows that customer experience has improved in comparison to the report of 2016. However, that improvement has largely been in the banks and financial institutions. In the traditional retailers category most retail

The importance of customer experience to the brand Early last month, Interbrand released its rankings of India’s most valuable brands. But in today’s business scenario are these rankings relevant? Some of the biggest brands in Indian industry are on that list, and yet they are not necessarily brands that customers would associate as the best. In 2016 brand valuation specialists, Markables,  reported that between 2003 and 2015, the contribution of brand valuation to the total valuation of a company had come down by as much as  50%. In that period the value of customer relationships more than doubled. The study covered mergers & acquisitions over the period and compared the respective values of brands (trademarks) and customer relationships to the total value of the companies. What this means is that enterprises seeking to merge with or acquire other enterprises now place much greater value on the customer relationships the enterprise has than the value of its brand