VIEWPOINT

E-Advertising: An Astute Way for Brand Positioning

Welcome to this monsoon issue of your favorite magazine. The typical Mumbai rain is on in good measure and hopefully the nation will have sufficient rains for the agriculture to blossom and prosper. Stock watchers do swear by the positive correlation between good monsoon and profitable stock markets. So in all, all of us want a good monsoon and therefore may nature say, "So Be It ".

Talking of more of the issue in hand, we have placed the collection of articles in four knowledge bins—Advertising Issues, Perspectives, Retailing and The Case. The Retailing category to which the cover page article belongs is a collection that has three articles and each one of these three is an evidence of the fast-changing (read evolving) retail sector in a huge economy. The popular idea of private labels is gaining ground on the Indian soil too. The basic objective behind introducing private labels is to offer quality products at lower prices compared to national brands, opines the author. Though there are instances where store brands have been successfully introduced, there are several challenges involved in introducing and sustaining them. The author presents a panoramic view of these challenges and the strategies adopted by some players. The role of in-store promotion has been rapidly gaining a prominent place in the marketing strategies of organized retail organizations. The authors of the article aim to present the key indicators that influence the buying decision of consumers and also the impact of monetary- and non-monetary-based in-store promotion in influencing consumer-buying decisions.

The last article in this section is the article on retailing in air. Retailing in air is all about catching the potential customers while they are traveling. With the galloping Indian retail industry and the booming aviation sector, it's the right time for retailers to think about retailing in air which can provide them a substantial number of customers with deep pockets.

The Perspectives section has a collection of articles that looks more into the near future of the corporate world. The article on consumer protection is a presentation of the issues concerning the rights of online buyers and sellers in the light of the existing laws for the online contracts and calls for certain early amendments to extend the protection to online consumers. The article on cricketainment is based on the recent T20 IPL matches covering the issues and implications for business entities. The new and emerging acronym CEM (Customer Experience Management) is the central context for yet another article in this section.

Three articles, under Advertising Issues—one on women in advertising, the second on Internet advertising and the third on the use of concepts of virtual reality in advertising—make up the third section in this issue of Advertising Express.

Finally, we feature two cases—one on Nano and the other on Pepsi—to wind up this issue. Hope the readers will enjoy this collection.

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– Suresh Garimella