A practitioner's guide to marketing

Book review of Pragmarketism: Pragmatic Marketing Insights For Winning Indian Consumers

How well do the classical western models of marketing management — such as the 4Ps framework of Philip Kotler (Product-Price-Positioning-Promotion) or the STP framework (Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning) — fit the Indian market? Is our country too different from western markets? What do the product successes and failures of India’s most prominent companies teach marketers about the Indian market? 

Trupti and Arvind Bhandari seek to address these and other questions in  Pragmarketism – Pragmatic Marketing Insights For Winning Indian Consumers.  The authors have 45 years of marketing experience between them. Trupti has been associated with Reckitt Benckiser, Pfizer, Bausch & Lomb and GSK Consumer Healthcare. 

Mr Bhandari, currently with Nestle India, has worked in ITC, JWT and Pepsico. 

The book is a sort of practitioner’s guide to marketing — juxtaposed with the theoretical frameworks and a review of the techniques and tools available. It examines how the Indian society — and by extension, the Indian market — is very different from western societies and why that creates challenges for marketers who try to apply lessons learnt in classrooms to the field when they are working out the marketing mix.

It is an ambitious effort and the authors largely do a great job, offering excellent insights about segmentation, positioning, targeting and society in general. Some chapters  — such as the one on Indian society and another on market segmentation — sparkle with insights. Some, such as the one titled Consumer Insight, essentially reviews the research tools available to the marketer, and the pros and cons of each approach. Chapters like these are very useful but not very interesting to read.

The chapters on Positioning, Communication, Brands, Cult Brands and Digital Marketing raise relevant issues, look at both western examples as well as pure Indian brands and see what are the best lessons that can be learnt from each.

I found the chapter on segmentation the most interesting. The Indian (Desi) Segmentation for Sharper Marketing provides a very different way of looking at the market segments from the traditional ones based on geography or psychographics. The chapter on society points out how the concept of the family being all-important in India can change things dramatically for the marketer used to thinking about segementation or positioning in western terms. In India, the grown-up son and his wife may live with the parents who may help raising the kids — unlike, say, in the US where the children will move out once they reach college. 
 

Pragmarketism: Pragmatic Marketing Insights For Winning Indian Consumers
Author: Trupti Bhandari & Arvind Bhandari
Publisher: Harper Business
Pages: 308
Price: Rs 599

Similarly, the chapter on consumer needs looks at why Maslow’s hierarchy does not neatly fit the Indian context and why there are some uniquely Indian needs —ranging from the fear of being outsmarted to the need for spiritual endorsement. The chapter on Brands and the next one on Cult Brands offers great insights and a new way of looking at branding in the Indian context.

Because the volume is perhaps primarily aimed at the marketing professional and not the overall businessman, there are some places where the authors take too narrow a view when examining an issue. For example, while discussing the failure of the Tata Nano in the marketplace in the chapter on Innovation, the authors conclude that it was primarily the case of poor presentation. They ignore the fact that Tata Motors’s reputation for reliability and customer service was not great at the time when the Nano was introduced. It became far better later on but the initial Tata cars in India had, despite excellent pricing and comfort levels, not been accepted by consumers used to the reliability of a Maruti.

Similarly, in the chapter on Business and Vision, the authors compare the Mahesh Dhaba selling Chole Bhature in Gurugram’s Cyberhub with the McDonald’s. The absence of a sharp vision prevents Mahesh Dhaba from becoming a multi-outlet Quick Service Outlet, say the authors. This is partly true. But because of constraints of space perhaps, the authors do not go into the McDonald back story. The original McDonald Brothers single outlet was the US equivalent of Mahesh Dhaba. If Ray Kroc had not taken it over, it may have remained just that — a single-outlet burger joint. In India, several food entrepreneurs who sold traditional fast food have set up their chains — the Haldirams and Bikanervalas or even Bitto Tikki Wala (BTW) for instance. The authors could have examined if they are doing things right — or getting it wrong in terms of vision statements. 

There are several chapters, including the one on Business and Vision, where one wishes the authors had examined the issues in greater detail. Similarly, the chapter on Innovation seems a bit rushed. 

But these are minor quibbles — the insights in the book, especially the way it looks at brands from the Indian perspective is excellent and this is a must-have for any serious marketing practitioner. For academics, it is an interesting way of looking at alternate explanations and frameworks that fit the Indian context.