Philips Brand RE-Launch in India - TV Market

Glimpse of Philips Journey especially in TV Segment in recent past:

·        Philips brand LEDTVs were positioned in Indian market as far below the prominent Brands, which is no where near to Sony/LG/Samsung/Panasonic and it was mainly operated at high volatile price point.

·        Keeping high MRP and selling at lower price in market, most of the times deal based push was quite visible across all markets in India.

·        Unlike Videocon in this brand “Philips” we have never seen any stable performance neither in distribution nor in key accounts.

·        In particular, the maximum pushed quantities were below 40” only and it never considered as a preferred brand in bigger sizes.

·        Even though Brand “Philips” got a very high customer acceptance in our market but unfortunately it was always sold like a product “TV” not like a brand.

·        There was absolutely no progressive investment was done to reinforce brand image in LEDTV segment.

·        Most of the trade partners in distribution market for Philips are same as for Videocon and Sansui and it was never given due treatment.

·        Lack of stable market approach and quick fix solutions to liquidate stock in market detonated the free fall of Brand Image starkly in India market.

All the above mentioned observations are past and now we need to revitalize the brand image of Philips to regain the consumer confidence.

Big Question is HOW……..

As everyone knows in today’s scenario FPD segment is not a healthy growing category like appliances. This happened mostly due to two reasons one is obvious new technologies in LEDTV segment were become affordable and got price correction and other reason is so many private label brands were introduced in recent past which were like come and go for short time and mainly operated in price point rather than a brand approach.

First we need to adopt disruptive strategy to position this brand in consumer preference set for LEDTV segment.

1.      Product Range

2.      Consumer Offer

3.      Brand Positioning

4.      Distribution Channel choice

5.      After Sales Service

Product Range:

We need to focus on higher range rather than small size

OLED SMART – 65/55/50

UHD SMART – 55/50/43/40

LED SMART – 32/40

LED BASIC – 32/40

Note: As such in India market no other BRAND is having OLED Panels except LG & SONY and in Europe market Philips already have OLED Range in 55” & 65”. Since TPV is very big company they can crack the deal with LG and get OLED for Philips brand for India market as well and premium features like OLED gels with brand image.

Having premium OLED range of highend FPDs are going to be game changer for this Brand in India for their second innings.

Along with OLED we need to give a top up feature like Infinite sound series tag to these panels where we need to have Branded Sound bar in-built from “Bowers & Wilkins” Brand. In Europe they have tie-up with “Bowers & Wilkins” Brand for Highend OLED segment.

We need to be very careful while concluding the features and quality of these OLED range from tip to toe i.e, magic motion remote, sound bar to User interface in OLED TV (Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, HLG and HDR 10+e) every aspect should be crafted to enhance richness and Our aim is to make end-customer feel proud to place this product in his drawing room.

Consumer Offer:

Till now most of these TV brands are offering freebies like speaker, Home theatre, extended warranty, swivel bracket etc in Diwali season but we shall do it differently from them instead of physical gift we shall give Customer 6 months’ free subscription of Web content like Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, web series channels etc.

For this Customer should register in our website along with serial number of TV to get subscription code to his mail id.

Product Positioning:

In year one we shall strategically place this brand positioning in market at par with Panasonic to achieve this we shall increase our spending in Brand Image re-building activities and attractive trade schemes and No Cost EMIs for secondary sales at dealer counters.

Note: We shall have strict MOP maintenance for one year which will help us to infuse confidence in trade about brand stability then only big retailers will give prominent place for our brand in-store display.

We shall track the Serial number tracking of secondary sales on daily basis from Trade partners on daily basis and we shall run incentivize them to maintain the accuracy of data.

Right Selection of Channel of distribution:

It is tough choice to make for any brand because everything boils down to sales only and it purely depends on how firmly one brand implements it’s “Go to Market strategy” what they drawn in conference room.

Now it is correct time to enter India market with big bang because there is no stable brand with premium image other than LG/Samsung. Even though Sony & Panasonic posses strong brand presence in market but lost ground to LG/ Samsung because of weak or less product portfolios.

Now Big Retailers are keeping mid segment brands like Sharp/Haier etc in their display to fill gap because choice of brands in premium segment is shrinking and lower price segment options are increasing. 

We shall build our market presence in both Offline & Online channel, to hear it is weird but that’s how our strategy should be molded because in today’s scenario we cannot sacrifice one for other. But approach should not be a cannibalizing one because we want a deep penetration into Organised sector of retailing i.e, both national retail chains & regional chains, which may proves to be bit costly initially due to higher margins but it will give us better mileage in enhancing the brand perception in the minds of the end-customers.

In online market place like Amazon & Flipkart we shall have a tie-up to setup a special landing page in their website to promote our brand presence, here our intention is to reach millions of people in one shot without compromising the brand image but not to push volumes at cheaper price. 

By maintaining MOP in market we may struggle for volumes initially but it will help us to regain the confidence of Trade Partners and to promote the brand presence we shall incentivize the dealer salesman for secondary sales and uploading the serial number data in our website.

After Sales Service:

We shall offer quick installation for all big panels and every customer needs to register his details in Philips website for extended warranty for one more i.e., one-year manufacturer warranty and one year extended warranty on Panel. In return customer will get free access code for 6 months’ subscription of digital content as inauguration offer.

Road-map for Brand Philips:

Every brand in this market wants to provide basket full of Product range with multiple segments to cater the different customer needs like in current scenario Appliances segment is leading growth factor for many brands. To penetrate deep into India market we need to have support of other categories as well in Philips brand like Smart Phones, Appliances, Audio etc.

We need to remember Smartphone category is highly volatile and shelf life is very small and trade margins were squeezed and it also attracts higher GST burden when compared to earlier, it is purely viable when you are into a volume game with high ATL & BTL expenditure to compete with other Chinese brands like XIAOMI, VIVO, OPPO etc for this we need to have deep pockets to spend on marketing campaign at global scale. It is not advisable to enter into this segment in initial phase. We need to wait for right time to take decision over Smartphones for this we need to have the peak consumer confidence on Philips brand and that should touch high note in Brand trajectory graph.

For Audios, so many Regional & Modern retailers previously used Philips brand Audio sound bars & home theatres for Freebies and Combos as their regular offer to customers and made it like a free add-on product not like a standalone product. So we need to have specialised products which will cater to the specific customer segment who are music lovers.

Now only goldmine left over is Appliances category which we can used like a weapon to penetrate and stabilize the Brand Philips in India market. We need to acquire the expertise from market who can help us to maneuver our strategy to offer quality products with limited range to start with and later on we can expand it based on the acceptance level and seasonality.

Here we no need to build any R&D expertise for this appliances segment, we just need to develop a team of expertise who can able to source ODM (Original Design) products with assured quality to match the Philips Brand image.

This specific move of introducing Appliances in Philips Brand will have better leverage in market in terms of developing strong mutual bonding with trade partners to promote brand in win-win situation.

IMPORTANT NOTE: 

If you observe closely I have not mentioned anything about Marketing Module purposefully because it needs to be debated and brainstormed to bring a disruption in market to pave way to Brand Philips in the minds of Customer and Trade partners and for this project, we need to hire professional marketing partner to build this.

Disclaimer:

This article about relaunch of Brand Philips is purely views, thoughts and opinions expressed by author and it was made for education and research purpose only and it doesn’t mean to infringe any brand sentiments and intellectual property rights of any kind and author is not liable for any losses and damages in connection with the use of this article.