Philips to open 60 Arena outlets

Philips India, a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics, plans to open 60 more 'Philips Arena' showrooms by the end of the current year. So far, Philips has launched 40 Arena showrooms in various parts of India.

Philips Arena outlets showcase the company's entire consumer electronics products "" television, home theatre, hi-fi music systems, DVD, digital audio, mobile phones "" under one roof.

"The company is opening at least one Arena showroom a fortnight and plans to touch the figure of 100 by the end of the current year. The experience with Arena has been excellent. At present, we are generating about seven per cent of our consumer electronics sales through Arena outlets. The share is likely to rise with the increase in the number of exclusive showrooms," said K Ramachandran, vice chairman and managing director of Philips India.

Meanwhile, the company has launched a campaign to give customers a distinctive image of a sharper, more focused enterprise.

"We are interacting with our customers directly through our exclusive brand showrooms. We want to project ourselves as a solution provider rather than a technology provider. We will project ourselves as a trustworthy brand through the campaign. Meanwhile, we will stick to our pricing policy, where Philips stands as an inexpensive solution provider for consumer electronics," said Ramachandran.

Philips has a consumer electronics' sales turnover of Rs 200 crore in India.

The company is also expanding its service centres along with the Arena network. However, Ramachandran said: "The service centres will not be expanded as fast as Arena. We would like to do away with our service centre network. We would prefer to work on the quality of product so that consumers do not face any problem at all."