As a brand Santoor managed to stay relevant to consumers by innovations on product form, packaging, fragrance etc. which have helped the brand grow and garner a contemporary and relevant loyal user base. Santoor was re-launched with the promise of everlasting beauty and a superior, longer lasting perfume which left the skin softer. Today Santoor is present in categories like face wash, talc, deodorants, hand washes etc., in the soap category it has variants like Santoor Sandal and Almond Milk, Santoor Glycerine & Santoor Chandan.

In the year 2006Santoor became the third largest selling soap in India. During this time Santoor steadily became synonymous with younger looking skin. An image enhanced by a series of extremely catchy advertisements, where the protagonist, a married woman with a child was often mistaken for a college girl. The times changed and so did the Indian woman. She was no more the simple housewife who stayed at home and looked after the kids. As the years went by she became more educated, more outgoing and career oriented. However the brand imagery of mistaken identity stayed constant even while the Santoor woman moved on from being a homemaker to a woman who excelled in her career as much as she excelled as a mother.

Through the years, as the brand grew, so did the imagery. The Santoor woman now rubbed shoulders with celebrities Saif Ali Khan and Madhavan in the ads. She had a glamourous career- where she was not only appreciated for her beauty but was acknowledged for her achievements, both in her career as well as a mother. It was an image that not only made Santoor extremely popular in its core market of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra, it became aspirational for women in newer markets in the north and east of India. Through the years the Santoor woman has been both irresistible and aspirational for every Indian woman and has grown to aRs.1000 crore brand which is now exported to 15 countries.

1) Research –  If you want to launch your own company or a product what will you do? The first thing that you will do will be market research. You will like to determine what the market actually wants. Similarly, during marketing too, market research is needed to determine what message should the company adopt and which medium will be best, what positioning needs to be achieved to target the right segment. By doing market research, we can gather data which can help us in analysis and action.

2) Strategy –  Once you have your data ready, you know where your product stands and also the standing of your company in the market in terms of strengths and weaknesses. You also have an idea of what strategies will need to be implemented and what factors will need to be adopted by the company to beat competitors and succeed in the market. Thus, after research, strategies decide the vision of the company, its goal, its mission and in general where the company wants to be. The strategic plan needs to be well thought of by realistically considering all possibilities.

3) Planning –  Now that you know, Where you want to be, naturally you have to plan How you are going to reach there. That is the job of the marketing planning department. The marketing plan involves sales forecasting, financial planning, communications strategy and many such benchmarks which define how the company is going to achieve its strategic goals in the future. The planning department also keeps a track of the timeline so that time to time we can determine whether we are on track with the strategic plan or not.

4) Tactics –  Where planning happens at the topmost level, tactics are the street smart, short term plans you implement to attract customers, beat your competitors, increase sales, provide a better value for your customers or for any other short term objective which needs to be achieved. Giving an offer such as “Buy 1, get 1 free” is a sales tactic. Lessening the price of your product during festival time is a promotional tactic. Several such tactics can be implemented by the company to make sure that it is inline with the planning done in the earlier stage. Some industries, such as FMCG and consumer durable, mainly survive on time to time tactics that the implement. Due to the competitive nature of these industries, smart tactics ar absolutely necessary to achieve good revenues and for customer acquisition.

Thus overall, there may be 100′s of marketing activities such as branding, advertising etc. But all these marketing activities are a part of the four key elements of marketing. Using these four key elements as base, you can compare where you stand currently, which department are you weak in and then plan your future accordingly.

The internet can be divided in several types of websites. However there are 6 different ways in which you can collect market intelligence on the web. These are discussed below.

1) Social networks –  The number of people using social networks is on the rise and there are sites like Facebook and twitter which have a huge user base. Social networks are the modern example of word of mouth publicity. If you see someone praise a fashion brand, you will definitely have a positive vibe once you visit that brand store. But if someone has said something negative about a product, that too would remain in your mind. Thus nowadays companies are having a dedicated social network team which tries to build a positive brand for the company and at the same time tries to convert customers online. Social networks can become a huge online market intelligence source if you want to know what your customers are thinking about you, your product as well as your competitors.

2) Forums –  Prior to social networks, conversations used to happen through online forums. Forums such as Digital point, Thinkdigit forums, tech talkz.com are places where major technology geeks can be found. Similarly management paradise is a forum dedicated to management graduates. Forums are generally more focused towards one specialty. Thus you may find a banking forum, a real estate forum, an automobile forum, so on and so forth. On these forums, you can find people who are actually interested in using you product, comparing it with competitors, and if they like it, they may even purchase the products. Online forums too can be used as a source for gathering market intelligence online.

3) Blog –  The article which you are reading is on a blog. Blogs are written by one or multiple authors. A blog author generally writes about one area of interest. Blogs such as problogger (blogging), perez hilton (celebrities), huffington post (news) are considered to be the pioneers of their field with millions of pageviews and lakhs of followers. Thus if the author were to publish positive or negative content about a brand, the readers would follow and build their perception accordingly. Therefore marketers keep an eye on strong blogs too and try to introduce their own products through strategically written content which attracts the followers of these blogs. Fashion designers will write on Perez hilton to attract the public followers, a new business software guy will give custom content on huffington post to attract business readers and a blogger will write on problogger so that he himself gets more traffic on his blog. These blogs can therefore become an important source of online market intelligence and they can also help in influencing the potential customers.

4) Review sites / Expert opinion columns –  There is a concept known as “the zero moment of truth” which says that nowadays consumers make their decision even before entering a showroom by doing all their research online. Companies need to keep an eye on what their consumers are searching online and what results are coming up. Accordingly they can influence the consumers or try to adjust their product such that it meets consumers demands. Sites such as cnet.com (technology reviews), gamespot.com (games reviews), tripadvisor.in (travelling reviews) are crucial sites for a marketer as marketers would like to know what message is being sent to their end customers. Many experts too paricipate on such review sites and these experts have their own followers. Thus by giving a sample of the propduct to the expert, you can obtain feedback from the expert, modify the product as per the expert and then launch the product. This does 2 things –  it gives you a better confidence in your product as you have feedbacks from the experts AND it generates a positive vide in the market place thereby increasing the sale of the product. The review sites can show you your strenghts as well as weaknesses.

5) Consumer complaint forums –  If you want to get the post sale feedback from your customer, you cant visit a better website than the consumer complaint forum. On this forum, the consumer might complain about your product, your service, your distributor, your price or anything else which the consumer thinks is wrong and that the consumer has a right to raise his voice. These forums are taken seriously. The Indian government too has an official consumers forum.

6) Polls / feedbacks –  Feedbacks and polls can be found on blogs, forums, social networks or anywhere. This is because recently, the web coding of polls and feedback forms has become very simple and hence many websites are adopting this simple but effective method of knowing what their readers want. Thus, if you were a celebrity marketer, you could start a poll on perezhilton of who the hottest actress is. Or on pagalguy.com, there are regular polls of which is the best management college and which courses would students like to do post management. These polls and feedbacks can become an important source of information for marketers, By using paid poll programs, the marketers can also find out the next plan of action by taking direct feedback from their customers.

One of the best advantages of gathering online market intelligence is that it can subsequently present you with the information of what your customer actually wants. Social networks, forums and blogs, while mentioning the negatives, also unconsiously mention what they would actually like to see in the product. As the internet is spreading in each and every home and through smartphones in everyones life, it can become one of the best ways to gather online market intelligence.

By reducing the rate of customer defection - Acquiring a new customer is always more costly than retaining your existing customer. A defection rate is the rate at which a customer leaves a particular brand / company. Thus by decreasing your defection rate you are indirectly increasing your customer retention. Companies should pay special attention to the way their employees interact with the customer as well as the whole ‘order to payment cycle’ such that the customer leaves with a positive mindset from the company. Once a customer has a positive interaction he will definitely visit the same company over and over again. Thus you are ensuring that the customer does not shift over to the competition by taking necessary measures which reduce your defection rate over time.

By increasing the longetivity of customer relationship - If the customer involvement is more, the customer is likely to stay longer with the company rather than shifting over to a competitor. One of the best ways to increase customer loyalty and their involvement is to take feedback from customers. Many companies, especially the high end engineering companies, take feedback from their current customers so as to make them feel important and at the same time to implement features that are important to the customer. This ensures that the customer is receiving a very high amount of attention and therefore increases the confidence in the customer. What this finally does is that the customer not only sticks with your company but even recommends your company to other contacts. Thus not only are you retaining one customer but you are also getting references because of positive feedback. This ultimately boosts your customer base.

Increasing the value of your existing customers -  This method can be best observed in banks. Nowadays the same customer, a normal average customer, is highly valuable to the bank because he has at least 5 to 6 different products of the bank and he’s using each one of them regularly. The customer might have a bank account, a mutual fund, a credit card, a loan, insurance and might be thinking of several other financial products. The concept of increasing the value of one single customer is that your single customer is quite capable of buying different products from your product portfolio. Thus if your portfolio has 20-30 different products you can be sure that if the customer buys a single product, you can cross promote the other products which are in your product portfolio. Thus the value of your customer base is increasing. For example if you visit any automobile showroom they will also have several accessories which can be bought by the customer. In fact the automobile showroom executive is given incentives on the number of accessories that he sells. Thus in this manner you are also increasing the value of your existing customer by cross selling your products.

Customer base and profitability – If you look at the above explanations, you’ll find that I have measured the customer base against profitability. This is absolutely important for any new company as well as for an existing company. Not only does your customer base need to be large but it also needs to be profitable. Having a very large customer base but having low profitability does not give you a sustainable competitive advantage. Instead you should have a clear look at your current customer base. You might find that you could be better off targeting a smaller customer base which gives a higher profitability. Thus your customer base analysis should be spot on and should be done periodically. You can have a good customer base only if your cash flow is intact.

Many companies have a separate market intelligence and strategy department. In some smaller companies, the product manager will also be involved in gathering market intelligence. This market intelligence is then passed on to the strategy department wherein the decision makers take a right step to counter act such that these strategies are better than the competition and help the company increase market share and acquire customers. This is all possible on the basis of market intelligence gathered. So what are the ways in which you can gather market intelligence?

1) Use your sales force –  Your sales force can be the best source for information on improvement in the products, marketing strategies as well as in finding new products which might be needed in the market. Generally it is the sales force which is the represenative of your company. Thus they have the maximum interactions with the end customer. Hence, your sales force is in a much better position to give you practical and realistic market feedback. Time to time competition and market survey through your sales force helps in gathering a lot of useful markeing intelligence.

2) Use your channel –  Your channel partners are business owners and they too will have a say in the way your company should run. More than your sales representative, the channel partners will be highly interested in the sale of a product as their livelihood depends on it. Thus if it is a matter of new product expansion, you need to involve your channel dealers to know which products they will be confident of selling in the market, which products will they be ready to stock, and hence, which product should the company focus on next. The channel dealer can also suggest improvements in the companies current strategies. The channel dealers are the internal customers of the company and taking feedback from them also keeps them motivated so that they remain loyal to the company.

3) Network –  Not only your own sales representative and channel partners, but competitors sales representatives and channel partners can also be a source of market intelligence. This is the job of product managers in any organization. The product manager should not only keep an eye on his product but he should also be in touch with the competition to know whatever changes in strategy is being brought about by the competition. Off course, this calls for some smartness and coy strategy from the product manager. But hey, if marketing was so simple, then any dumb person could do it right? Building a network and building solid business relationship are defining characteristics of marketers and they need to use this to their best advantage while gathering market intelligence.

4) Seek external help –  External help can be of two types. One can be by hiring a consultant or a market research agency which gathers market research data and competition data from time to time. This method is costlier but more efficient. This method is mainly used by B2C companies wherein the number of individual customers is high and knowing the consumer psyche is very important. The other way is to gather data from resources such as government data or mass market research data released from time to time from organizations such as Nielson and IMRB. This data can also be used for market research and competition analysis. This is a less costly method but then the information is not exclusive. Your competitors too will receive this common domain information as easily as you will. The only thing which may defer is the decisions you take based on the data and the strategies you implement. Both these forms of market intelligence are efficient if you make the right decisions based on the intelligence you have gathered.

5) Use the web –  Nowadays, social media monitoring is being used a lot to know what your customers think of the product and what they want or expect from the company. A simple search on twitter will show you what people are talking about and also what specific things they have to say regarding your product / brand. Thus twitter forms an excellent market intelligence tool. Similarly, there are social media monitoring agencies which map various social media platforms for their clients, they try to find out what are the opinions of the consumers and they might even try to build a brand or change consumer psychology through online interaction via comments, blogs, twitter posts, forum posts or other such actions. However, slowly but surely, the internet is surpassing all other medium in its importance to consumer decision making.

6) Form a customer advisory panel –  A customer advisory panel is made of your most loyal customers, cusomers who hate you, customers who dont like your products or customers who are more loyal to your competitors. In essence, any customer who is brand conscious can become an advisor provided he knows about the brand he is buying and why he is buying it. Even better customers are the ones who know inside out of the industry. Consider a young chap buying a CHIP magazine regularly. He would be a perfect advisor to a company who wants to make new apps. The company can get an insight from the customer of what he wants. If 8 out of 10 customers say they want more games, then the company knows that it needs to build games as people are still hungry for it.

Using the above methodologies, strong market intelligence can be gathered which can then be used in your MIS system such that the information is disseminated throughout the organization to have a holistic marketing culture. This market intelligence will also help you build your image in front of the internal customers and stakeholders, and at the same time, it will help the company thrive in the business market.

1) Covering the market globally and locally – Look at companies like Coca Cola, microsoft, LG and others which are market leaders in their respective categories. You will find that each one of these companies have products which are widespread and are known across the world. However, the marketing strategy of each one of these products is customized according to the market that they are serving.

Thus if you have a business which has numerous competitors, it is important that you look at market expansion along with localization. Dont stay back from the global market, but more importantly, while serving the global market, do not forget your home ground. The simple supporting statistic for this statement is that each and every developing country, after exploring the global markets, is now looking at their own rural markets which will provide the maximum growth opportunities.

2) Expand Smartly – Expanding just for the sake of growth can become disastrous. All strategists know that keeping an eye on the cash flow of the business is the most important thing for the growth of the organization. If your working capital is being used for expansion, this will affect even the business units which are actually showing growth thereby causing you to cut back on essential plans.

Expansion is necessary for good business but it should not come on the cost of a skewed working capital or cash flow as both can affect your survival.

3) Control costs – Look closely at the accounts of any good company and you will find ways being implemented to manage costs. There is one basic equation for profits. Income less Expenses is equal to profit. Thus if you cut down your costs, your expenses automatically come down thereby increasing the overall profit. The important thing here is to know what are the major components in your costing. For example in a product based company, Transportation, Rentals, Labour, distribution margins, etc are some expenses which are costlier even than the raw materials which will be used in making a product. Hence knowing each and every component of costing is crucial.

A perfect example of the importance of cost control can be seen during an economic downturn. Whenever a company faces a tough economic environment, it needs to know where it can control the costs thereby curtailing expenditure. It can be done by basic changes in raw materials, tying up with low cost transporters, transporting in bulk quantity, cutting down on labor and finally cutting down on skilled manpower. These are some methods used by companies to control costs during bad times. However, if proper methods are implemented during good times, the company will have more margins and deeper pockets to phase off the bad times instead of taking drastic measures.

4) Implement good marketing plans – The crux of beating your competitors is to have your own unique position in the mind of the consumers. This position should be highly attractive and profitable. Only then you will gain advantages over time. There needs to be a proper implementation of marketing plans. What should be the message of the company? How to change the message over time to bring more and more customers to your brand? How to alter the marketing so as to expand and gain more market share? What should be the vehicles of marketing communications? How and in which order does the plan need to be implemented? These are some questions which your marketing plan should answer thoroughly.

At this point of time it is very important to take the competitors as a frame of reference and to have a marketing plan which is better than the competitors and helps you in achieving the numbers that you are targeting. The best way to implement a good marketing plan is to do a proper competitive analysis and see where you stand in the curent market. You may not challenge the top competitor in the start. But you can definitely get rid of each competitor one by one by implementing a strong marketing plan and sticking to this strategy. In this case, proper implementation of the marketing plan is the key to marketing success.

5) Get the right people and retain them – In the services industry, you are as good as the talent you have on board. Many software companies keep a part of their margin aside so that they dont have to lose software engineers when one project is complete. These engineers are transferred to another project when the work is complete. A customer service manager would never like to lose their best employee. A CEO will never like to lose his best performing managers. Any company would not like to let go of efficient employees. Your employees and stakeholders are your assets.

There needs to be regular action taken to keep your employees and stakeholders motivated and loyal. Take any company which has a low attrition rate and you will see a company which spends a lot in training and development of its employees. This is because when employees leave a company, they take along a part of the knowledge and experience which they have gained in that company. This knowledge and experience needs to be inculcated in the other employee over time. Thus a lot of time is wasted in training and developing new employees. This is why, the smart companies save time by retaining and motivating their best employees. And this is why they stay ahead of the competition

6) Focus on your customers – Several companies, while making profits, forget that the prime reason they are still working is because the customers like their products. The day a company forgets this principal, it is bound to fail. And hence, you need to be the best in this area. Know your customers in and out. Do regular market studies and consumer buying behavior analysis to determine the mindset of the customer. A new technology which was being underestimated by you, but has been implemented by a competitor, can attract your customers attention and take away even your most loyal customers.

Take an example of Facebook and Google (orkut). Google did not even catch up when facebook rapidly expanded to be such a large social network. And by the time google had implemented its own product (google plus), it was too late. The audience was no longer there to notice it. The product too was poor in its implementation. Thus at all times, know what your customers want and also know how the environment is changing and where you are losing your customers. Do not fear to experiment with your product portfolio. You are bound to fail with some products. But as long as you implement strategies with your customers in mind, you will be ahead of the competition.

7) Be Informed!! – One of the basics of selling against competition is to know your competitors. Consider the consumer durables segment. There would be 10 different competitors in television and refrigerators segment. Furthermore, each of the competitors will have ten different product lines. They would have high end refrigerators and televisions for the Sec A customers and low end and lesser priced models for the price conscious segment. You need to know your competitors and their product lines to launch product variants of your own. On the other hand, you need to know all the products of all your competitors to launch a product which is unique in the market and has the first mover advantage. Thus information is important.

Lets take the consumer durables example even further. Consumer durables works on a channel sales basis. Thus your channel too needs to be informed of the features of your product. There needs to be regular training to keep the channel in loop of the latest strategy being implemented by the company. Imagine if you were to launch a new product and you are advertising that product through ATL and BTL activities. And if your channel dealers do not have information of the product and they do not have the machine available for immediate delivery. This will cause a huge loss of sales along with expenses incurred due to absence of information and proper communications.

Thus in essence, when customers visit your channel showrooms, your marketing activities are not in sync. Even though you are advertising the products, the products are not available in the market or your channel partners are not capable of selling it. Thus you lose out on sales and the initial rush. On the other hand, your competitor might be smarter and might have implemented a completely new product with altogether different features. Now your product completely fails in the market!!! This is why information and its dissemination is crucial to beat your competitors.

All the above strategies will be present in top companies across the world. But even if your company is new, and your are planning on expanding your product, these seven factors need to be taken as a reference point to form a successful company.

Customer satisfaction is the key to customer retention. By implementing measures which keeps the customer satisfied, you ensure that the customer sticks to your brand. He does not shift easily to the competitor. With higher customer satisfaction, the customer is likely to

a) Rebuy your product

b) Upgrade regularly

c) Spread the word about your product

d) In some cases, he can also give a positive feedback as well as profitable ideas for the company.

The Five Levels of customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction of a particular company can also be plotted on a level of 1 to 5. Level 1 stands for least customer satisfaction and the last level (Level 5) is of customer delight which shows maximum customer satisfaction.

1) Level one of customer Satisfaction - A level one customer is a customer who is not satisfied with the company. In this case the customer satisfaction is at minimum. The customer is likely to leave the company and never return. He can also badmouth the company. There are several reasons in which a customer might be converted to a level one customer such as the deliveries not happening on time, the service is not proper, or over commitment being given by the sales force.

Lack of features in the product generally does not result in a level one customer satisfaction. This is because if the features were lacking, the customer would not buy the product at all. Thus when there are a high number of level one customers, you can understand that the problem is from within the company and not from outside.

Level 2 to Level 4 of customer satisfaction –  Most of the companies fall in this level. This is because this is the average level of customer satisfaction. In this case the customer might be happy with the brand but there is no guarantee that he will stick back with the brand. The customer does not badmouth the company but at the same time he does not also spread a positive word about the product. The customer would not be brand loyal but he would be ready to switch brands whenever there is a new offering the market. Thus these are not the customers on whom you can rely for a long term. Obviously each and every company will have at least 60% of the customers who fall in this level of customer satisfaction.

5) Level five of customer Satisfaction - Level five of the customer satisfaction level represents a group of customers who are highly satisfied customers. They are unlikely to shift the brand or the product and they have a high emotional bond with the brand. Take shoes such as Adidas, Nike or Reebok. These are companies which try to increase the number of highly satisfied customers as much as possible. This is because the highly satisfied customer is likely to spread a positive word of mouth.

Customer Delight –  One variant of high customer satisfaction is customer delight. This happens when a particular company exceeds customer expectations. Thus the best thing a company can do is provide services such that the customer is delighted and this ensures that you reach the level five customer satisfaction.

The important thing over here is that the reason for customer satisfaction may very. You should know the factors responsible for customer satisfaction in your product. Say for example you had a manufacturing product. Naturally the logistics, good quality of service and the features in the product would result in customer satisfaction. If your service is done within the first 24 hours it will result in customer delight which is the topmost measure of customer satisfaction.

This is why the bigger manufacturing companies have been able to show growth over a consistent period of time. This is because they give service which results in customer delight. On the other hand if you have a service product then you need to understand customer requirements accurately. Timely delivery of service is another factor which is very important for customer satisfaction.

Thus whatever be your product, reaching the correct level of customer satisfaction should be the goal of your organization.

Kingfisher airlines (KFA), a brand known for its luxury; glamour and its premium class positioning in the airline industry. KFA acquired Air Deccan which is a LCC (Low cost carrier) and Air Deccan has been renamed Air Deccan as Kingfisher Red. 

The article focuses on the reasons and the major areas where KFA failed to focus and they have been summarized below.

Increasing Debts

Though Kingfisher Airlines had a luxurious positioning in consumer’s ‘share of mind’, it always failed to attract good investors since its inception. KFA suffered from huge debts and it failed to pay back AAI (Airport Authority of India) around Rs. 840 crore in the year 2008, currently it owes around Rs.3000 crore to AAI. The downtrend in the aviation industry started only since 2011, but Mallya failed to pay debts even since 2008, shows his poor commitment to the stake holders. KFA owes Rs.2000 crore to its vendors and suppliers which further worsens the situation to continue its operations.

Employee Retention

With increasing debts and the declining trend in the aviation industry, KFA failed to deliver its services and it was not able to pay back salaries to its employees. In the past few months over 60 pilots have resigned their jobs which crumpled their operation leading to reduction of flights from 400 to 170 flights per day.

Declining Trust

The KFA failed to deliver the trust among the customers, shareholders, suppliers and even the government authorities. Even the government was not willing to bail out KFA from the financial crisis.

Brand Conflict

Kingfisher airlines, a premium class category in the airline industry acquired a low cost carrier Air Deccan. This led to brand conflict among the customers, and brand association miserably weakened since acquisition. People failed to differentiate the services of Kingfisher Red and Kingfisher which diluted the existing brand equity.

Acquisition during poor financial health

Decision to buy Air Deccan which was already suffering from low customer turnover was a wrong move. Acquiring a company with weak balance sheet and a flanker product brand led KFA to further suffer from financial losses.

Economic Slow Down

The global economic slowdown, where companies trying to cut flight trips and cut their costs were one of the major reason for industry to collapse. The increasing fuel costs and the operational costs slowed down their high end services to customers.

Failure to focus on ‘Points of Parity’

The ‘points of parity’ for an aviation industry is to deliver services at affordable cost and maintain punctuality. KFA failed to deliver both, KFA focused only on higher order needs of the customer like travel delight and in-flight experience and failed to deliver common services like safety, comfort and economy pricing to cater Indian customers.

It was year 2010 when after a successful marriage for more than 27 years Hero and Honda split their ways and Hero Moto Corp Ltd (HMCL) was born. People waited like hell for the new bike of the Hero which is going to serve the premium segment customers and their wait was over when HMCL launched Hero Impulse. It brought with itself new dimension of biking to Indian customers and it was India’s first Trans Road Bike in 150cc Segment a premium segment which was doing good with bikes like Hunk, CBZ-Xtreme and Karizma in its pocket even facing tough competition from bikes like Unicorn and Pulsar.

Nothing is permanent but ‘change’ and it has to change. Share of Hero Moto Corp has being declining since September 2011 constantly. Possible reasons for the same can be one or all of them.

1. Yamaha launched three bikes in premium segment with SZ-S, SZ-R and FZ-S. Yamaha with their smart pricing strategy, radical looks /styling and youth appeal are slowly and steadily eating up market share in premium segment.
2. Honda also launched new version of Unicorn named Unicorn Dazzler which is packed with new looks targeting youth of the nation.
3. HMCL took a brave move and removed ‘kick starter’ from Hunk and CBZ-Xtreme. This has resulted into shift of customers into bikes which are of same price range and with kick start.

Even Yamaha removed kick starter from its Fazer bike but when its sales started dropping it again launched bike with kick starter. HMCL bikes comes with tough and long lasting battery which requires least maintenance cost but it is the perception of the Indians which needs to be changed and it will take time. A kick by a ‘kick’ has been observed in the market share of HMCL in premium segment after its removal.

A stitch in time saves nine, HMCL needs to quickly take measures to save its share in premium segment by understanding the perception and need of the people before it’s too late to recover.

• HDFC bank is the second largest private banking sector in India having 2,201 branches and 7,110 ATM’s
• HDFC bank is located in 1,174 cities in India and has more than 800 locations to serve customers through Telephone banking
• The bank’s ATM card is compatible with all domestic and international Visa/Master card, Visa Electron/ Maestro, Plus/cirus and American Express. This is one reason for HDFC cards to be the most preferred card for shopping and online transactions
• HDFC bank has the high degree of customer satisfaction when compared to other private banks
• The attrition rate in HDFC is low and it is one of the best places to work in private banking sector
• HDFC has lots of awards and recognition, it has received ‘Best Bank’ award from various financial rating institutions like Dun and Bradstreet, Financial express, Euromoney awards for excellence, Finance Asia country awards etc
• HDFC has good financial advisors in terms of guiding customers towards right investments 

Weakness

• HDFC bank doesn’t have strong presence in Rural areas, where as ICICI bank its direct competitor is expanding in rural market
• HDFC cannot enjoy first mover advantage in rural areas. Rural people are hard core loyals in terms of banking services.
• HDFC lacks in aggressive marketing strategies like ICICI
• The bank focuses mostly on high end clients
• Some of the bank’s product categories lack in performance and doesn’t have reach in the market
• The share prices of HDFC are often fluctuating causing uncertainty for the investors

Opportunities

• HDFC bank has better asset quality parameters over government banks, hence the profit growth is likely to increase
• The companies in large and SME are growing at very fast pace. HDFC has good reputation in terms of maintaining corporate salary accounts
• HDFC bank has improved it’s bad debts portfolio and the recovery of bad debts are high when compared to government banks
• HDFC has very good opportunities in abroad
• Greater scope for acquisitions and strategic alliances due to strong financial position

Threats

• HDFC’s nonperforming assets (NPA) increased from 0.18 % to 0.20%. Though it is a slight variation it’s not a good sign for the financial health of the bank
• The non banking financial companies and new age banks are increasing in India
• The HDFC is not able to expand its market share as ICICI imposes major threat
• The government banks are trying to modernize to compete with private banks
• RBI has opened up to 74% for  foreign banks to invest in Indian market