business

Is India ready for Customer Advocacy?

I have always believed if every business starts focusing honestly on their customers then they are not only on success track but also don’t have to waste lot of money of marketing channels. I also believe that acquiring customers may not be very difficult but making them buy from you regularly and making them your brand advocates is most important. I always advocate that major portion marketing budgets shall be spent only on this and not for acquiring new customers.

business

Courteous staff can make shoppers stick around

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine in the consulting business invited me to attend an event on customer experience. His company was presenting its new set of framework, CINDEXDS and CINDEXBQ – which basically quantify the level of delight customers feel for a particular brand and also measures a bottom quartile score that indicates

business

Olympics eye-opener for retail practices

About a year ago, I had made up my mind to attend the Olympics in London, knowing fully well that I was going to witness a great sporting spectacle. But I had little idea then what an amazing retail experience it would turn out to be as well!

business

Brick & mortar to click & mortar: Convenience steers sales

Food has always been one of the largest segments of retail. As much as 42% of the Indian retail industry is dedicated to food. It holds similar market shares internationally and is also the largest growing segment. After all, we think about food at least three times a day, if not more. We wonder what

business

Add a dash of tech to retail loyalty

One of the better known hypermarkets is aggressively advertising its new partnership with a loyalty programme. It’s also offering bonus rewards. It seems a very attractive scheme and I wanted to know what sort of impact this had made on customers. So, last Friday I decided to visit one of these stores in Pune. There

business

A personal touch to retail can work wonders for sales

Replicating similar experiences to shoppers over the Internet, however, remains a tough challenge for players Last weekend, I was in Mahabaleshwar, and on the way back, my wife realised that the trip would be incomplete without any Strawberry Cream. We had just had breakfast and were quite full, but knew we couldn’t leave without having