The situation for elsa brand is an existential one. It is like having a hungry man in front of you. Would you give him some money to buy fish to last just few days OR teach him how to fish and get to eat fish every day.
Elsa, the multi-national home appliances brand, is the hungry man here: an MNC brand with hunger to grow in India. What should Elsa be doing? What should Karan Walia be doing? Buy the fish OR learn to fish, that is, quickly grow the inorganic route by buying a local brand or adapt the brand Elsa to succeed with consumers in the Indian market of diverse cooking habits. Karan, the head of product management of Elsa brand, has to answer this existential question.
And what does it mean to ‘Indianise’ an MNC brand, more so in the category of food appliances? Food is not an easy category to work with in India where not only the food that people eat changes every 100 miles but the way of preparation of the same dish also varies by region. Sambar is not one dish but varies across the South, often even from village to village, in its taste and preparation. Therefore, ways of food preparation are more tradition driven where recipes and methods of preparation are handed down across generations through practice and these ways, habits steeped in tradition and culture are difficult to change. So, what then has to change are the brands that seek to introduce convenience into the consumer’s life. It may be presumptuous for a brand to think it can redirect how a food is prepared using its product. After all, it is not easy to change people’s behaviour about food overnight.
Many MNC brands Indianise more often than not through optical means. Some begin with advertising and make the advertising more Indian through Indian celebrities, casting, story situations, idioms or even an emotional song. So, consumers understand the brand and relate to it but may not necessarily accept and adopt the brand as the product may not be entirely suited to their needs. Some brands then go a step forward and adapt the appliance that was developed in Europe or US by making fringe changes to the product — either by adding attachments like chutney jars, larger sizes, or dumbing down a high-end model to make it more affordable to Indian consumers. Few brands go a step forward and change basic specifications of their product for Indian needs, for example, changing the design of motor or blades in a mixer-grinder to suit the demanding, hardy Indian conditions or raising the ground clearance in cars or adding a built-in voltage stabiliser or UPS knowing the pathetic condition of Indian power supply. But all these changes are often made only in the existing models, instead of designing a new one.
Do such half attempts at Indianising MNC brands make them win the hearts of consumers and become a super success? Most often, the answer is NO. So, what does it take to Indianise an MNC brand to really win with Indian consumer and yet not lose its original character? This is what Karan needs to think about.
The answer lies in re-inventing Elsa’s value proposition that goes beyond advertising and product into a complete brand experience. Reinventing this value proposition of a brand starts with deep consumer insights going into better need understanding, pricing, after-sales service, availability/buying experience. But the core brand values and personality of MNC brand must be kept in mind and preserved while reinventing the value proposition for India. The boundaries about what can or cannot change in a brand must be defined by its core values.
To begin with, getting consumer insights is not just about few market visits to get dealer perspective or market research studies that depend upon claimed articulation of consumer needs and behaviours but getting underneath the skin of consumers to understand their articulated as well as unarticulated needs. Of course, one must do market visits, research studies but go beyond that to do multiple consumer immersions (practically living in consumer homes to know about their food habits, pain points) studying cultural and sociological aspects of food, talk to food experts, especially regional and make observations from unrelated consumer behaviours like social life, eating out, etc. Once this is done, brands like Elsa will get to know the real food needs, real ways of preparation of Indian consumers by region. Why doesn’t Karan try this first and see how much Elsa can reinvent herself instead of buying an Indian brand? Don’t forget Elsa is a foreign brand — there are cultural nuances that you need to examine in this proposed marriage.
Then, comes the next step of defining the value proposition. What kind of product is needed to suit these diverse Indian food habits that vary by region? It is not enough to either force a European product on these Indian food habits or just tinker via cosmetic changes like attachments, colours. MNC brands must redesign their products de bono for diverse Indian needs, for example, piano switches may be the latest in technology and ‘in fashion’ in Europe but to an Indian housewife using a mixer grinder with hands in chutney or besan, it is messy and besan/ chutney that gets in the gaps between piano switches is almost impossible to clean; here a simple old-fashioned rotary switch is practical. Other example, most India kitchens are small and lack space to keep and use an appliance, therefore, typical European designs with a large footprint is again impractical, Indian appliances need to have smallest possible footprint so that they can be easily used on narrow shelves common in the Indian kitchens. If grinding coconut or lentils for dosa/idli batter is a daily need, then the product has to be redesigned to deliver that and not just churn out shakes, purees.
Going beyond product, making the price of an appliance attractive for the value conscious Indian consumer is a herculean task. It is not about reducing a good high-end model by reducing features because the Indian consumer wants all the features and benefits but at a lower (read affordable) price. That means, working out the complete, supply-chain to ensure a good value for money product. It is about choosing manufacturing locations, reworking vendors, reworking the materials, adopting to the Indian standards (as against European, US standards that make the product more expensive). And these are not the decisions that are easy to make in any organisation, more so in MNCs where standardisation and following global norms is often the way of working. Going against these ways of MNC working is always an uphill task for Indian managers.
One of the pitfalls of brands is their after-sales service. In the face of Indian power failures and tough working conditions, brands end up needing high maintenance. Often, after-sales service is really an afterthought by most brands. It is not thought of as an integral part of the brand value proposition whereas it is a critical part of the proposition for Indian consumers and they often make brand choice basis accessibility, quality of after-sales service, and cost of spare parts. To deliver an accessible, cheap after-sales service that is good is not an easy task. It requires building an after-sales organisation, investing in people, training and processes and this takes time and money both.
Last, winning channel (read retailers, distributors) loyalty on a sustainable basis is not just done by giving attractive schemes but through two things. First, giving well-designed products to channel that are demanded by consumers and sell faster so that returns on their investment is attractive. Second, Indian channel partners are also emotional, value relationships and will often overlook small foibles by the company if they are attached emotionally to the company and/ or its owner or senior managers. Building channel relationships need money and time; money is ample with MNCs but time is often not. Those MNCs that get this right buy themselves some guarantee of success in Indian market.
Only after an MNC brand reinvents its brand value proposition making a truly Indian product that understand Indian consumer needs, is affordable and comes with a good after-sales service, can it win in the Indian marketplace. And this cannot happen overnight; it takes a few years to do this and takes money as well as willingness for MNC to adapt its ways of working. Perhaps, Karan knows the difficulty in doing these long-term tasks that involve basic changes in Elwoods’ approach to winning in Indian market.
Therefore, it seems that Elsa is hankering for market supremacy. Taking over an Indian brand seems to fulfill Elsa’s dream for the time being. But reality is a tough task master. The cookie will crumble like never before. I am wondering if this is the route to take….
The writer is Chief Marketing Officer, Pidilite Industries. The views expressed are his own
