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COVER
STORY: CONSUMER PRODUCTS
Sold
On Sales
Discounts,
freebies, lotteries and loans. Riding on the festival season, companies
are using every conceivable marketing trick to lure consumers. On offer
are houses, cars, gold, TVs, refrigerators-and more.
By
V. Shankar Aiyar
»Shobha
K. Inani, a Mumbai housewife, went shopping for a Videocon Bazoomba colour
television set and came back home with 100 gm of gold.
»R.
Kannan, a company secretary, took an Air Sahara flight from Chennai to
Delhi via Bangalore and walked away with two tickets for a world tour.
»Venkatram
Srinivasan, an exporter based in Calcutta, picked up some clothes at the
shopping plaza, Pantaloon, and won gold jewellery worth Rs 1 lakh.
»Ram
Prakash, superintending chemist working with ONGC in Mumbai, recently
bought himself a pack of Manickchand Tea and returned home with a Kenstar
super mixer.
It
is a perilous task these days to shop during the festive season, swamped
as you are with options and deals. In fact, one of these days they may
just fashion a statutory warning: shopping during the festive season could
be infectious for the buyer.
Let's say
you want to buy a refrigerator. First, you have 233 models to choose from.
And as you ponder over which one fits your bill, you also have to think
of the surfeit of festive offers. If you choose Videocon, you could walk
away with anything between 1 gm to 100 gm of gold and stand a chance to
win Rs 1 crore or one of 31,660 other prizes. If you choose Godrej, instant
gratification comes in the form of a thermos flask, a toaster or a watch
and the lucky raffle could take you to an exotic locale or add a hundred
thousand rupees to your bank balance.
Buying a
colour television is an even more exasperating task. There are 2,690 models.
Then there are the multiple choice deals strewn across the marketplace.
Videocon wants to make you a crorepati. BPL offers a discount of Rs 3,000
plus a shot at a million-rupee weekly raffle. If you bet on Philips, you
could be adding an iron on your shelf plus a chance at winning a car or
a bike or a CD system. If you are a Sony-faithful, you could be driving
around in a Honda City. And if you go in for Sansui, you could well be
going home with a fridge and washing machine.
To get an
idea of the magnitude of the schemes, consider this. Between August 15
and October 10, Videocon has given away 135 kg of gold worth Rs 6 crore.
Similarly, others are sharing their profits with the consumers. Dealers
too get attractive offers with foreign trips and bigger margins.
Companies
from virtually every segment of industry, for every one of their brands
and in every city across the country are offering some deal or the other.
Discounts, assured gifts, scratch-card gains, weekly raffles, monthly
draws-there is a deluge of deals in the market. Even those offering services
are in the race. Jet Airways has tied up with Citicard for a bonus-miles
scheme, Air Sahara has been wooing consumers with a Benz. Vimal dealers
have formed a cooperative to ensure maximum sales by putting up the gold
scheme. Even the government-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd has jumped
on to the bandwagon offering a free account for every new subscription
or renewal.
Pg.2
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Relics
of old empires exist everywhere. Why can't the Mani Shankar Aiyars of
India let them be? asks INDIA TODAY Senior Editor Ravi Shankar in
