Product Life Cycle Stage of Godrej Chotukool Essay

1. Introduction: This stage is characterised by Low competition, efforts to educate consumers about the product, trials and free samples. 2. Growth: This stage is characterised by mass promotions and attempts to differentiate the product from that of competitors. 3. Maturity: In this stage, firms focus on finding new target segments and creating value additions. 4. Decline: In this stage, the product class mostly dies due to strong competitors or obsolete technology. Firms focus on sales promotion, tie ups or move on to emerging markets. Godrej Chotukool currently lies in its introduction stage. According to Godrej Appliances Vice-President (Corporate Development) G Sunderraman,the company is currently focussing on: 1. Educating the new end users, training the intermediaries and building the distribution infrastructure. 2. Communicating a distinct value proposition to the emerging consumers is also a challenge. 3. For Chotukool, the Godrej group has junked the traditional model of a proprietary channel with a sales force and a distributor-dealer chain and has joined hands with micro-finance institutions. 4. Chotukool requires demonstration and education which doesn’t happen in the trade, so Godrej was reluctant to use traditional trade channels. The company has entered into a marketing tie-up with the India Post (Maharashtra Circle) to leverage the vast reach of the latter in terms of number of offices and manpower to push sales of ‘ChotuKool’ .The India Post team will not only generate sales leads, but will also book orders and collect payment from customers. For physical delivery of ChotuKools at customer’s doorsteps, Godrej uses Express Parcel Post Service. 5. Apart from this, Godrej also involves village girls in selling the products at a commission of Rs 150 per product sold (something that the company claims will reduce the distribution and marketing costs by 40 per cent). For Chotukool, the Godrej group has junked the traditional model of a proprietary channel with a sales force and a distributor-dealer chain and has joined hands with micro-finance institutions. This new distribution ecosystem is just one of the unique experiments that Godrej is trying out to make a splash in the bottom of the pyramid refrigerator market. There are many more. But the clear winner is its cost. At Rs 3,250, it costs almost 35 per cent less than the cheapest category of refrigerators available in the market today. Apart from involving village girls in selling the products at a commission of Rs 150 per product sold (something that the company claims will reduce the distribution and marketing costs by 40 per cent), Godrej has gone in for several engineering innovations to keep the price low. The size is small and the number of parts in Chotukool has been reduced to just 20 instead of 200 that go into regular refrigerators. References: 1. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-22/news/29571277_1_rural-markets-godrej-appliances-infrastructure