Dr. Rajeev Ramachandran

Most marketing companies today are VC funded.

They get their first round of funding by showcasing fabulous ideas.

They spend most of their funds in acquiring products and widening their product base.

This leaves the consumers in lurch and they fail to build “Loyal Customers”.

This leads to a collapse in the second round of funding.

Online companies need to target a niche set of customers.

They fail to do so and confuse their TG in trying to appeal to a larger set of audience, resulting in lesser visits, fewer clicks and trickling revenues.

They fail to understand that it’s tougher be the “Wal-Mart” of the virtual world, than expected as they have to manage a huge set of consumer issues.

What is different in your portal from the hundred others?

Why should a consumer visit your portal to buy a product or avail a service?

What make you unique? What perceived brand value does the

consumer get as an add on? Companies often fail to come up with

satisfactory answers for these questions.

The offers given are sometimes too complex for a consumer to comprehend.

Some offers are not explicitly communicated and the consumer get to know of the “Catch” only after spending prolonged time on the site.

Offers often some with an inherent clause. All these lead to loss of time for the

consumer and the experience of online shopping takes a beating.

Pricing and packaging are directly co relational. The better the packaging the higher the value perceived and more the pricing.

Some companies ask consumers to buy too much to avail an offer.

Others under cut so much that the consumer starts suspecting the product.

Some companies just cant identify the “Sewwt spot”.

Most of the online companies are thrown with so much of data that they fail to identify the most important ones.

Some insights about consumer behavior are ignored so much so that they fail to get repeat visits.

Research shows that if a person purchases thrice from the same site, he is likely to hang on to it for a long time.

Most online portals invest huge sums in durables with smaller shelf life that they believe they can sell.

They refuse to change according to market dynamics and seem immune to price changes outside.

This lends them incompetent and they keep selling obsolete products.

For a start up it is more desirous to sell a trusted product than to put all your money on an angel you have never experienced.

Banking heavily on un trusted products, rather than making them a small part of the portfolio sometimes ruins the whole idea of selling especially when the product fails to deliver expectations.

Companies just fail to understand what the consumer wants and tend to push products that it feels has better margins.

In case of bundled offers, in more than 90% of the cases, the second product of the bundle is sometime the consumer would never buy otherwise.

Consumers are smart enough to interpret product representations. He knows that whatever is coming free is just a bonus. Bonus consumers do not stick to you and switch loyalties the moment they find a smarter buy.

This is a common phenomenon associated with online companies. They are not willing to put their money on the road less taken.

I am not of the opinion that they be adventurous, but of the opinion that every business should take a risk to see more returns.

A new business should ideally spend 15-20% of its revenues in testing new products with consumers, and most importantly taking their feedback.

THANK YOU.