Are Indians Price Conscious??
Recently, I read that Apple’s sales in India have grown significantly and interestingly, this growth is not due to the launch of newer models albeit was driven primarily by Iphone 5s, as they had reduced the pricing.
This brings an interesting question - Are Indians price conscious?
I pondered on this for a while, looked at other instances and came to the conclusion that Indians are NOT price conscious but they are VALUE conscious. Indians are Value conscious people and they always look for a combination of right value at a right price.
There have been several other products in distinct categories where people have preferred Value over price. One distinct company which comes to mind is Jockey. Jockey is a big hit in India, especially with the urban population. If you look at their pricing, all their products are priced at a premium (they charge at-least 1.5 times of the other brand) and yet have lot of takers. If you look at the market before the arrival of Jockey, you had only VIP and few local brands. No one thought that there was a need for premium product, however people accepted Jockey as they found value even at premium price.
Thus my submission would be that we are Value conscious…..
(Valuable) Thoughts, comments, solicited…
Director at Twona - Making Artworks Great Again
8 年We are SaaS company in Europe. We just started to work with some resellers in India. The reason for resellers is simple: the cultural change was too great for us to overcome initially. I think we Europeans are spoiled with all the funds floating around. This means we have somewhat lost the understanding of Value vs. Price. We are an aggressive company. Right now, we are offering our AMS for free to pharma companies if they make a decision within 1 month. This is a potential huge saving. When we tell this to people in Pharma in Europe, they don't even flinch. It is as if they just don't care anymore. Price is only a process. Get a proposal, send it upwards to get it approved and keep moving. Nobody seems to ask the question you are posing: does the price justify the value? They only ask to fill enormous RFP documents, sometimes even before a demo. Now when we deal with leads in India, the process is significantly different. They do care about Pricing, but only in the context of Value. So the first question they ask is: do the benefits justify the expense? If that equation is unbalanced, we wont make a deal, which makes sense. So even though we still don't know how to bridge the cultural gap with India (that's why we use a local reseller), I do find the conversation much more grounded in reality and less of a simple long bureaucratic process.
Chief Operating Officer - Rhei Life D.O.O
8 年Mr. Iyer, first of all thanks for initiating a talk on the hot potato “price vs value acceptance in India”. Just going with your example that Apple sales has grown in India significantly, it’s growth is viewed within the window of “total market share for devices priced over ….. (say $ 300.0)”. Hence it’s imperative to see the overall figurative picture that Apple's total market penetration in India is still under 2 percent (Ref: appleinsider.com). I am not here to disagree with your statement but agree that we are becoming value conscious however the current thrust may be more on the “price factor”. In our nation, the third biggest smartphone market, the average selling price of a smartphone is <Rs. 13,000. Indeed it’s interesting to know that Freedom 251 (the cheapest phone) got a booking of 73.5 million units in just 3 days. Price is extremely crucial everywhere however in our nation it’s more as our purchasing power parity factor remains the lowest among all countries. As you know that’s completely true in pharmaceuticals, price still remains a big hurdle for exploring our nation’s consumerism.
Business Consultant
8 年Liked your Analogy of Jockey & VIP to put across your point of view. However i believe we are Value conscious but more oriented towards Price..
Business Coach| Management Consultant | Marketing Strategist| Founder Director - ACT Solutions (P) Ltd
8 年Not just Indians, world over Customers look for value, price is only a number. Look at walmart!
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8 年Indians are very price "sensitive"....