Philips evolves strategies to conquer Indian market

Philips Sound Solutions (PSS) is evolving out strategies to make a big splash
in the Indian and the Chinese market. The PSS team, which is still studying the
market, declined to give a clear picture as to their stra-tegies, which it would
be evolving shortly. But in the product category, it has decided upon laun-ching
one model per month in audio-video and multimedia. "Our intention is to be
one of the top three vendors in which ever market we are," said. Hans van’t
Riet, Manager (Audio-Video and Multimedia), Philips.

India and China market are different from Europe and US, remarked Riet for
these mar-kets use the same speaker system for PC and DVD. Secon-dly, the way
things sold here is totally different. "Here you have different players
like the dis-tributors and the dealers for selling a product. We have to
understand what each player requires in order to be succe-ssful. So we are in
talk with the dealers currently," he said. PSS proposes to make it presence
felt in each and every city of India through it national distri-butor Priya.
Accordingly, it plans to expand its network by appointing one dealer per
dis-trict in every State.

If in Europe and US, PSS has to compete with just few big brands, the
scenario is completely different in India, where the market is flooded with
local and Chinese brands. So according to the company’s third strategy, it
will be reworking on the pricing factor. In the products cate-gory besides
launching unique sound systems, PSS will also launch consumer electronic
products like the home theaters, which it believes will be more power-ful when
compared to the PC. "We will be introducing consumer electronic products
with convergence of various other technologies and me-diums," said Riet.

The company is optimistic that its blueprint on product, pricing and
promotion will double its sales in India within two years.

Nisha Kurian

Chennai (CyberMedia News)