Its All about Strategy

Rasna has gone international without significant market share in India. I really don't that its a great idea to go for market development when you don't have a stable market in your domestic.

Well, if we look at the competitors that took the market share away from Rasna are packaged juices and carbonated drinks. Kids no more want to buy Rasna, as it is tedious to prepare it and they may even not be satisfied with the taste. There can be other factors too.

Well, if we see through BCG matrix concept, the brand is a dog with low market share and low potential. As such, the only way is to diversify.

Rasna can enter into other categories  like juices, etc and invest on all P's of marketing mix. It need to innovate the product, manage the distribution channel to enable accessibilty of the product, price competitively and promote. It may take up a different brand name altogether as Rasna as a brand doesn't have great equity to leverage it to the diversified product. Conversely, if the company uses Rasna as the brand name for diversified product, it may require less efforts to lead the brand to evoked set of customers as the brand is known to customers and recall is quite high. 

Ponder for a While...

Marketers know how to tap in each and every emotion of consumers. One such powerful emotion is that of parents' inability to say no kids' wishes which marketers refer to as pester power. 

Parents are well aware of harmful effects of burgers loaded with  fats or chocolates loaded with calories, but still they fall helpless before young kids. They finally give them whatever they want. Marketers do understand the force of kids in buying certain products and they have well capitalized on it. All they did is allured these young kids and thereby used pester power to sell their products.

Let me come to the crux of this post. I was thinking of a strategy to reposition Rasna which has almost enervated in terms of its image and also sales. You must be thinking why Rasna. Actually Rasna came to my college a few days back for placements. The profile was that of sales. Sales can be enhanced by sales promotion, otherwise there is no differentiation in the product. Kids do not want it anymore. So I was just thinking what can be done to enhance sales.

Well, here the primary target are kids and secondary target are mothers. The product is meant for kids and as such they are the primary target. Mothers are the buyers of the product but may not be consumers of it, hence they are the secondary target.

Now how do you think pester power would work for Rasna? The major point is there is no Point Of Difference (POD) for the product. As such, product must be differentiated to lure kids and then use pester power.

Can you suggest some ways to differentiate the product to gain Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA)? Your comments are awaited and would be much appreciated.