Freedom equal to no free lunch, water and air?

Posted by Angshu on March 2, 2010 in Featured, Marketing Practice, Marketing Theory, Videos 0 Comment

X Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic. Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin Water is a must for living. But even a decade back none really bothered much about it. India being a land of rivers water was never scarce. But as they say resources are always constrained. And, here comes a time when you need to pay for a basic entity of living called water. In last few years we have seen hordes of companies jumping the bandwagon of water business. Bottled water has become an omni-present phenomenon. With the huge success of initial brands like Bisleri, companies like Pepsi (with Aquafina) and Coca-Cola (with Kinley) also joined the competition. And of late, even Indias largest FMCG company went to the limit of changing its industry to enter the lucrative water market. With Pureit HUL enters the business of water and also the consumer durable category. It is a water purifier targeted to the mass market. The water purifier market in India is valued at INR 9 bn in 2009. And it has to be when 80% of diseases in India are water borne diseases like: jaundice, diarrhea, typhoid and cholera. Ultra Violet (UV) based Purifiers, Reverse Osmosis (RO) purifiers and storage / resin based purifiers. UV based purifiers controls two-third of the market with Eureka Forbes Aquaguard being the clear leader with 68% market share. But there is enough room for other players as well. 80% of urban population dont purify tap water and most of them being low or middle income people cant afford UV or RO purifiers. This is the market which Eureka Forbes and HUL wants to tap with their chemical based purifiers Aquasure and Pureit. The target segment for Pureit is Indian households who need safe drinking water. The positioning of the products is: The worlds most advanced in-home water purifier. The product provides the benefit of drinking pure water and thereby avoiding water-borne diseases. The product also promises unmatched convenience and affordability. The product is offered at very affordable price of around Rs. 2000 and it doesnt need gas, electricity or continuous tap water supply. At it is at the introduce stage of product lifecycle most of the marketing efforts of the brand is targeted towards creating awareness and generating interest. The ads of the brand focuses mainly on technical and functional attributes of the products like: affordable price, the benefits, Germkill BatteryTM technology, comparison with other existing water purifying methods etc. It also makes an emotional appeal: Protect your loved ones with a Pureit today!. Till now, across India boiled water is considered as the safe drinking water and hence the tagline of Pureit is:

As Safe As Boiled Water. The official website of the brand is: www.pureitwater.com. As changing the consumer behavior and getting people to try the product was the biggest challenge for Pureit they used a aggressive campaign which said if anyone can locate a purifier which has the advanced features which Pureit has Pureit will pay them 1 crore rupees. Who thought that someday we will pay for even drinking water! Someone rightly said: Luxury of one generation (buying water) becomes necessity for the next generation. With the commercialization of water may be the only thing left is free air and with the proliferation of industry and increasing pollution levels buying fresh air does not seem to be a wild imagination. Of course, it creates huge opportunities for our esteemed opportunistic companies. HUL are you listening? Is not it really ironical that something that makes living so difficult for some also becomes big source of revenue for someone else! With all these one key question that comes to my mind is are we really free citizens in a free world? We knew that there is no free lunch, now we dont have free water, and I doubt how long we will breathe for free!!

(Image Source: http://www.time.com)

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forbes 2010, pure it intella, PURE IT MARKETING MIX, Buying Behavior of Urban Consumers Towards Water Purifiers: Awareness about Pureit Purifier, hul water purifier india, tagline for water purification You might also like: