The Marksman September 2019 Edition by The Marksman

Dear Readers, We proudly present to you the September 2019 Edition of our illustrious magazine, The Marksman. For this edition we have put together a corpus of marketing that every reader will thoroughly enjoy and learn from. Our cover story in focus this edition is a question we have all been asking, but not really found an answer to – Is Marketing Losing The Human Touch? Digital innovation has given marketers heaps of data at their fingertips. It has put them in a powerful position to understand their customers more intimately. However, it all comes down to how marketers utilise the data to create a personalised experience. It is this part of the digital conversation – the personalisation and human element aspect – that, as leaders, we must now focus on. A very hearty congratulations to the winner and the runner up of this month’s Call for Articles, Sakshi Gupta (NMIMS, Mumbai) and Kritika Agarwal (K.J. SIMSR), respectively, whose articles have been featured in this issue. We are overwhelmed by the response that we have received from all of you and encourage you to write to us with the same enthusiasm for the upcoming editions as well. We would also like to hear back from our esteemed readers on how you found our September edition. We value your feedback as it helps us to constantly improve and write better ! Enjoy Reading! Stay connected with us on https://theinterfacesimsr.com/magazine/ Follow our Facebook page for more updates.

SEPTEMBER EDITION

INDEX Kickstart

Tweets

Marketing Faux Pas

Cover Story

Pioneer

Special Story

Brand Markive

More Than Marketing

Hall-Mark Campaign

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s All About Ad-itude

Bookworm

Featured Articles

Squarehead

KICKSTART -Yash Sancheti

ZENDRIVE Each year, approximately 1.35 million people die as a result of road accidents. Now imagine a world where the roads are safer and better. Zendrive is a San Francisco and Bengaluru based company, founded in 2013 to make road travelling safer by using data and analytics. It was co-founded by Pankaj Risbood and Jonathan Matus.

With increasing reliance on mobile technology for travel and autonomous cars becoming a near reality, Zendrive, through their product suite, leverages mobile sensor data to provide actionable insights that improve safety for all road users worldwide. The company believes that the data on the how and when of usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; driving can help make the navigation apps better and in turn help increase safety. Zendrive has been analysing billions of miles and millions of drivers, thus creating the largest and fastest growing data set for mobile driving behaviour tools. It has collaborated with various associations and proved the difference it can make. Their product team in partnership with Gasbuddy, a car companion app and consumer engagement platform which helps customers make smart decisions and save money, has helped users be upto 40% fuel efficient.

Recently in Series B funding, the company managed to raise $37 million. In February 2016, it had secured $13.5 million in Series A funding led by Sherpa Capital. Their investors include XL Innovate, Hearst Ventures, ACME Capital, BMW iVentures, NYCA, SignalFire.

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KICKSTART

The goal is to continue building on its mobile driving safety solution and grow across five continents to deepen its focus on the global insurance market.

Zendive has also announced the launch of FullStop, a mobile powered risk solution offering predictive capabilities that are not achievable with traditional telematic factors like speeding and aggressive acceleration. It shows that drivers who are found violating at least one stop sign per month are upto 5.8 times more likely to crash and have higher rates of T-bone and head on collisions.

With the future promising more automation, the use of data analytics will hold the key in creating overall road safety and thus it'll be interesting to see where Zendrive will reach.

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TWEETS TWEETS - Mohit Nagdev

NETFLIX INDIA: Entertainment Everywhere Netflix, being one of the biggest online video service provider, has a really active social media account on twitter. It has a very humorous and entertaining way of tweeting. It aims at entertaining its audience in every way possible not only through its content but also through its tweets. It adds a very friendly tone to its tweets. Unlike other platforms, Netflix releases all the episodes of series in one go which allows it to plan its social media campaign very strategically. It keeps teasing its fans with little bits and pieces of upcoming shows. It usually uses popular quotes like it did for Sacred Games. Before its release, “Sacred Games will go live at 12 AM tonight. Matlab neend ka balidaan dena hoga.” was tweeted which kept fans guessing what’s its all about.

Netflix India has adopted an entertaining twitter strategy to increase the hype for the shows it has to offer by tweeting content of its shows in a very witty manner.

Not only that, they are also very attentive to their audience. Adding to that, they use social media influencers to promote their shows on twitter to reach to a larger audience. This strategy helps in creating a constant buzz around Netflix and it is a great social media strategy.

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TWEETS

TWEETS DISNEY: The King of Entertainment

Disney knows how to use its resources to their best way in terms of social media marketing on twitter to get attention to its various products and services in a very grand and entertaining way possible.

Disney has been the biggest player in the entertainment industry since ages and also owns a lot of entertainment houses. From Marvel Studios to 20th Century Fox , they have them all. What do you do when you own the biggest and most famous entertainment houses? Well, Disney used them for promotion on twitter. They recently launched their online video streaming service known as Disney Plus and used twitter in a very unique way to market the service. As it owns other entertainment accounts on twitter, it started a full on frenzy replying to itself from its various twitter accounts. It became so hilarious that it also mocked itself through its another acquired account of Simpson replying â&#x20AC;&#x153;Worst. Corporate Twitter stunt. Ever.â&#x20AC;? The whole charade of tweets was planned in advance in a very witty and creative manner. No wonder Disney rules the entertainment industry.

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FAUX PAS FAUX PAS

-Siththardhan.T.R.

NESTLE’S POLAND SPRING WATER: Reel or Real? Ever heard of Nestlé's Poland spring water, famous for being 100% natural ground water? Well what if I tell you that not even a single drop of it is what it promises? Recently, a lawsuit that was filed against the company’s infamous Poland Water two years ago, got ruled by US district judges in Connecticut that it can be pursued again.

The case claimed that the company was deceiving customers by selling them “ordinary groundwater” that Poland Spring “collects from wells it has drilled,” and marketing it as “100% natural spring water.” The suit called Poland Spring’s water “a colossal fraud perpetrated against American consumers.” The US is the second-largest consumer of bottled water just after China, and consumers around the world are drinking more than 200 billion US-dollars of bottled water annually. Giant companies like Aquafina owned by Pepsi, Dasani owned by Coke, and Evian owned by Danone exist in this profitable sector.

The company was deceiving customers by selling them “ordinary groundwater” that Poland Spring “collects from wells it drilled,” and marketing it as “100% natural spring water.”

Poland Spring, owned by Nestlé, is also up there. The brand has been selling to 13 million Americans every year, selling approximately one billion gallons of water. 5 MARKSMAN

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FAUX PAS

Nestlé bought the Poland Spring company in 1992. Currently on its website, Poland Spring identifies eight bodies of water as “our springs.” The lawsuit, however, accuses Poland Spring of creating six “phony, man-made ‘springs’” to keep its back-story going. Further the lawsuit argues that the firm has been collecting waste from regions like Hollis and Fryeburg in Maine, where it claims it is near "former human waste dumping, waste pit, waste disposal site, ash stack, salt mound, pesticide farm, hatchery and oil dumping site."

In 2003, according to the Washingt on Post, it paid $10 million to charity after it was hit with a similar class-action lawsuit regarding Poland Spring and false advertising. This is not the first time Nestlé has been accused of false advertisement. In 2003, according to the Washington Post, it paid $10 million to charity after it was hit with a similar class-action lawsuit regarding Poland Spring and false advertising.

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COVER STORY -Hardik Trivedi

IS MARKETING LOSING THE HUMAN TOUCH? Remember the good old 90’s and 2000’s, when the internet had not penetrated our daily lives to this extent; when people were not trapped by the entangling web of this digital lifestyle; when people were still connected with each other, albeit more emotionally than digitally? Similar was the scenario of marketing during those times, with a completely different definition to it than what it has right now. Brands used to involve the audience in a more interactive way, and customers used to be connected with the brands in a better way. In today’s digital world, marketing has become more complicated than ever before. This shows the complexity that we have reached in today’s markets and customers. With global reach easily possible now, marketers are responsible for innumerable things, ranging from attracting customers, increasing market

The human touch is the key part, it is invaluable. It is something that makes a customer feel like it has a real connection, something valuable with the brand.

reach, to deepening client relationships, driving sales and bringing sustainable business outcomes. In marketing, digital innovation is alive, booming and doing incredibly well. Digital marketing is slowly replacing the traditional form of marketing in today’s age. It has changed how brands and leaders think about approaching the markets and how they prepare campaigns for their product.

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COVER STORY

From voice applications to voice biometrics, social media and the digital medium is the star face of modern marketing. Now-a-days, according to reports, almost 25% of marketing investments are being utilized in marketing technologies and digital workhorses. With the aim of increasing the market reach and improving the brand identity with respect to their competitors, companies have sunk deep into gathering huge databases,

making paid and organic searches, using AdWords and AdSense like thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no tomorrow. While digital technology has given marketers more data on their fingertips than ever before, it all comes down to how the brands create a better and more personalised experience for the customers, especially in this competitive market.

Rather than focusing on

capturing customer data, brands should build relevant communications.

Digital medium opens up a whole new world for the marketers and their customers. It gives the brands wider audiences, reduces the cost and the time invested.

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COVER STORY There are some key pointers that should be kept in mind while using digital marketing without losing the customer touch: •

Know your customers intimately;

•

Avoid spamming. Develop content that is timely and relevant;

•

Make the digital experience more personalised;

•

Use social media smartly to personify the brands;

•

Use digital medium to connect more with the customers, e.g. starting a conversation with the audience. Ultimately, the brand should always keep

the

human

element

connection in mind. After all, how the digital data is used in the right manner for the right outcome is all that matters.

Price

Trust is the number one value championed by the brands. Brands are built on the pillar of trust. There are companies who don’t have the capability to handle huge data the way they should. Mass marketing is something that brands could use to talk at people. But real friendships and relationships come when audience can talk back. For companies to remain at the top choice by their wide range of audience,

Nothing, including technology, should replace personal interaction.

maintaining a seamless, interactive and trustworthy experience for the customers is a key-point.

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COVER STORY

In the past decade or so, brands have invested heftily in creating and improving digital and mobile experiences, with an aim to let the customers do more on their terms. Today its possible to use technology to perform operations ranging from huge steps to smaller tasks like booking a cab using Alexa. Yes, with the advancement of technology, the usability

The first rule of

and ease for the customers have improved. But in this time of mobile-first, digitally-driven experiences, and

marketing is

quick results, there are brands that have forgotten

ensuring that those

that people still need a helping hand. By neglecting

who encounter our business whether online or in person,

this point, companies tend to lose their audience to their competitors. Customers today have become accustomed to the trend of self-service.

According to a study by

leave feeling good.

Accenture, around half of the customers who face a

Give customers

poor experience with the brands tend to stop doing

control, make the experience

business with that brand entirely. E-commerce and

self-service is a strong bond now, something that will be there in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time. But to make a real

interactive. Be

connection, the human touch should be there when

there when they

customers need it. For example, a website of tax

need you.

filing should have a more personalised experience for the user so that he could use it online, sitting at

home without having to personally visit any expert. 10 MARKSMAN

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COVER STORY

Be it a live chat, a video conference or a simple call, human interaction can never be replaced by even the most sophisticated AI in the market. For hitting this gold spot, marketers should create experiences that not just close the sale but also build a strong lasting trust between the customer and the brand. Majority of the companies know the importance of managing the expectations of their customers. It makes the customers happy which in return increases the sales.

Brands should focus on strategies that are easily

connected with the Price

customers – like Stories.

One of the strategies that have been successful over the period of time is stories. Stories are an integral part of culture and society. People relate and connect through stories. To put it in simple terms, stories give the human touch that brands are starting to miss these days. We have seen multiple examples in past, like the #MeriMaggi campaign that reinstalled the faith of million families, the entire campaign of Paper Boat that takes us back to childhood memories and then there’s the decades’ old famous Amul advertisements that connect customers with the current affairs in a quirky way. Yes with increasing global level competition, brands need to invest in increasing their audience reach and ultimately sales figure, but without the right connection with the customers, the end goal cannot be achieved. What’s required? The Human Touch. 11 MARKSMAN

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PIONEER -ABDUL MANNAN

RITESH AGARWAL Ritesh started coding at the age of eight. By the time he reached tenth grade he was so obsessed that he made his mind up and took up coding.

It has been rightly said that “age is just a number”. Nobody is a bigger testament of that proverb than Ritesh Agarwal, the 25-yearold founder and C.E.O of the world’s third-largest hotel chain – OYO, which basically means “On Your Own”. Ritesh Agarwal was born in a business class family in Bassam, Cuttack in Odisha and completed his schooling in Sacred Heart School in Rayagada, Orissa. He then moved to Kota, Rajasthan to prepare for the IIT entrance exam. Describing his journey, he said that each weekend, he waited for the chance to sneak out to Delhi to meet different entrepreneurs who were building amazing new ideas. At the same time, he had started writing his book which was later published under the name ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’. It turned out to be a huge hit on Flipkart and was sold out in a short span of time.

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PIONEER

Ritesh Agarwal was selected for the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship in 2013. During those days, Ritesh used to travel a lot and stayed in PG’s and budget hotels. In a very short span, he realized that the problem for these facilities was that they were not standardized and didn’t even meet the very basic needs of a budget traveller. Keeping this in mind, he started building an idea to provide a standardized facility to travellers at an affordable rate. In his initial journey, he describes, he failed 6 times before launching OYO. Taking this failure in a positive way, he quoted “If you have not failed, you have not exhausted yourself.” Ritesh embarked on his entrepreneurial journey in 2012 when he launched his first startup ‘Oravel Stays PVT. LTD.’ at the age of 17. Later in 2013, he transformed Oravel to OYO with the primary goal of providing standardized accommodation at an affordable rate. Toady, companies like Hero MotoCorp, Soft bank, Airbnb, Didi Chuxing, Grab Holdings and Huazhu Hotel Group have invested in Oyo. Today, Oyo's market value is around $5 billion with a total of 8,50,000 rooms in it’s company portfolio. It is currently functional in India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, United States, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Indonesia,Vietnam, and Japan. According to Forbes, Ritesh Agarwal could feature among the richest Indians in the future.

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SPECIAL STORY t

- Vyom Bhatnagar

TEACHER’S DAY – A MARKETING TOOL It is kind of what social media influencers do. They make us believe in a brand or company. They place, position and promote their knowledge.

On 5th September every year, we celebrate Teacher’s Day to mark the birth anniversary of Dr. Sarvpalli Radhakrishnan. We all remember our teachers for so many reasons. But from a marketer's perspective, a teacher plays a very important role in one’s life as they are the ones who shows you the path, help solve your problems. In short, they are what we call these days “influencers”. It is like what social media influencers do - they make us believe in a brand or a company.They place, position and promote their knowledge. On similar lines, this past Teacher’s Day, few companies chose to display what they thought about Teachers and posted them on Social Media. Two companies which really caught everyone’s attention were Nature’s Basket and Zomato for their imaginative thinking.

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SPECIAL STORY 1.

Nature basket: There slogan was “Is this a fish market?” Well this was the most famous line our teachers had used in our school time. It is quite popular these days too. It brings a lot of memories alive subsequently it the company has placed it products “fish” on the creative. In this way it has bring you back that memory lane and the placing of the product was apt. Zomato: This is the company which always remain in news and here it pays homage to teachers in a rather brilliant cum mathematical fashion. What they did they thanked the teachers for telling us about pie and cones. Mathematics or science students can easily co-relate this and Zomato relate it to their dessert segment. This ad place and promote a very peculiar kind of their product in a niche category.

Good or bad with this both companies have given us nostalgia. The life of a teacher is not so simple, they problems they face every day but still irrespective of the tantrums of students they are always there to help and make their students. Teacher: Being one is a privilege and having one is a blessing. We at Marksman thanks to all our teacher's for guiding us through every problem and the lessons we learned en route.

The life of a teacher is not so simple, but irrespective of the tantrums of student, they are always there.

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BRAND MARKIVE - Shivani

EPIGAMIA: HEALTHY GUT FOR HAPPY LIFE Epigamia – A delicious solutions to your daily snack cravings, is a subsidiary of Drum Food International, the new age FMCG startup founded in the year 2008. It first launched a super premium ice cream brand ”Hokey Pokey” and thereafter introduced Epigamia - India’s first and only natural Greek yogurt.

With a diverse product portfolio, Epigamia managed to efficiently pentetrate the market and gain substantial market share.

Led by their CEO and co-founder Rohan Mirchaandani, Epigamia efficiently penetrated the market and had a soon achieved a remarkable market share with sales of 3 million units in March 2018. Within such a short span, it was successfully able to position itself towards the core value it wanted to display - nutritious, high in protein, low fat, less sugar which was vital for the consumers health along with finger licking taste. They have a diverse product portfolio which includes Greek yogurt, mishit doi, yogurt smoothie, all in a variety of flavors. They also have a product for the lactose intolerant - their lactose free yogurt called the artisanal yogurt.

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BRAND MARKIVE

Epigamia raised â&#x201A;š 182 crore in a Series C round of funding from Danone Manifesto Ventures, which is the top ranked in its niche in the dairy industry. While a giant like Amul provides ample substitutes for Epigamiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s products, Epigamia has still managed to make a mark in the market. This is mainly due to changing consumer taste and the quality it delivers. There is a very elastic demand for Epigamia and they follow Guerilla marketing techniques to increase demand. Epigamia roped in Deepika Padukone to represent the brand and help position the brand to the targeted audience, i.e., urban working professionals that are health conscious. The brandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes are set over the next two years. The company plans to ramp up its distribution to 50,000 outlets across more than 25 cities.

Epigamia roped in Deepika Padukone to represent the brand and help position the brand to the targeted audience, i.e., urban working professionals that are health conscious.

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MORE THAN MARKETING - Harneet Singh Ghatehora

P&G – Marketing Beyond Ads

As a brand, they will now look to target digital media and web services which include Amazon Web Streaming Services, Netflix and other steaming networks by investing in Creative Partnerships with them.

MARKSMAN

Procter and Gamble has always been considered as one of the aces when it comes to marketing. Every product of P&G gets a distinct touch in their advertising at every platform. This signifies its power to differentiate from other competitors. But these marketing strategies come with a lot of cost and always strike the budgets. The consumer goods company, whose product line includes Shampoos, Room Fresheners and washing powder is one of the world’s largest advertisers, spending $6.75 billion on advertising in the 2019 financial year. Rather than putting caps on the expenditures caused by advertisements, P&G thought it would be better to infuse its advertising budget to a whole new segment of market. And this latest marketing move was named as “Marketing beyond Ads”. This strategy majorly differs from the traditional strategies in the way the product placement is done. According to the Chief Brand Officer of P&G, Marc Pritchard, P&G intends to move away from “annoying” ads and wants to move towards funding shows and other types of content that are “creative” rather than cluttering. As a brand, they will now look to target digital media and web services which include Amazon Web Streaming Services, Netflix and other steaming networks by investing in Creative Partnerships with them.

SEPTEMBER EDITION

MORE THAN MARKETING Their first funding under this strategy was for a show called as “ACTIVATE”, a sixpart show which focuses on poverty, inequality and sustainability. It was partnered with Radical Media. The company aims to have an editorial rather than a purely promotional marketing throw by this. P&G’s newest project is called Queen Collective, a documentary series in partnership with Tribeca Studios and Queen Latifah, giving with a focus on diverse women in filmmaking. “The reason why it's important is because over-the-top streaming is growing exponentially, resulting in the need of a whole new level of creativity, and that is how we're adapting to it is creative partnerships like we've done here with Queen Collective.” said Pritchard in an interview.

Queen’s collective doesn’t market P&G’s products directly, instead associations do the ads as shot. This is more of a “Back to the future” style campaign, as it will target the younger audience who generally prefer streaming which makes this a viable market play.

Though P&G has taken a different way to reshape its ad model, there are still some brands under the banner who are skeptical. But Pritchard has his own view on this, he said, “We've usually found within our company that when one brand does something really innovative, then other brands want to try it.” Let’s see whether this ideology will bring in a new revolution to the market of advertising or not.

The reason why it's important is because overthe-top streaming is growing exponentially.

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HALL-MARK CAMPAIGN - Amit Gupta

JIO UNLIKELY TO DISRUPT BROADBAND MARKET It all started in 2017 when the price of mobile data was Rs. 320 Gb/day. It was the time when the industry fought over voice call rates, and data consumption was still a dream for many users. JIO came into the market with new technology and an investment of Rs. 2,50,000 crore. JIO understood that DATA was the new oil, and brought up The Digital Revolution.

JIO understood data is the

new oil. And brought on a Digital Revolution which disrupted the whole telecom industry.

After disrupting the telecom industry, JIO has entered the market with some action. JioFiber will launch broadband plans from Rs. 699 to Rs. 8499. Airtel Broadband plan ranges from Rs. 799 to Rs. 8499. If we compare JioFiber Platinum with Airtel Xstream, they both offer unlimited plans at Rs. 3999. But Platinum offers free Set Top Box while the Home Gateway device Xstream offers free NETFLIX and Amazon PRIME.

According to analysts, Jio is unlikely to disrupt home broadband space and may not even affect Airtelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business in terms of customer churn rate. It is believed that by FY23 Jio will become a sizeable player in the market with 8 million subscribers as compared to Airtel with around 3 million subscribers (currently 2.3 million subscribers). 20 MARKSMAN SEPTEMBER EDITION

HALL-MARK CAMPAIGN

India has 18.42 million broadband customers compared to 576.17 million mobile Internet customers as of June, 2019. In short, analysts believe that the way JIO disrupted the telecom industry by adding millions to the mobile subscriber market, the same may not be possible in the broadband market. The Industry is expected to grow at a fixed rate and JIO might take up the share of BSNL in near future. Goldman Sachs reported that free TV may not be a big draw for JIO as huge chunk of homes already have compatible TV sets. Further, Indian customers prefer to go for large 32-43 inch TV screens, compared to the 24-inch sets offered by Jioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gold plans. Also lack of aggressiveness in their pricing will prevent a repetition of bloodbath that the wireless market suffered.

Indian customers prefer to go for large 32-

43 inch TV screens, compared to the 24-inch sets offered

by Jioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gold plans.

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It’s all about Ad-itude - Yash Poddar Burger King- Escape the Clown With the release of the horror movie “IT-2” which has a clown as the prime character, Burger King Germany has taken an interesting dig at rivals McDonald's. It started in 2017 when they put their ads in the end credits, turning the movie into the longest running burger king promotion. The Moral: ”Never trust a clown” . Burger King has now sneaked into an ad in a cinema-themed magazine that McDonald's publishes and is available in its restaurants.

Burger King’s One cent “burger detour” got 37-to- return on investment.

Geo-targeting is used to invite McDonald's Visitors through messages on Facebook or Twitter to scan the ad, and are then directed to their own rival’s cinema magazine to read a review and scan the page with Burger King app. A red balloon floats up on clicking "Escape the Clown" coupon for a one cent Whopper offer. To heighten the scary experience they used “flee and run” route wherein customers would be asked to reach the nearest BK outlet as a countdown clock starts simultaneously.

Burger King has uniquely used a movie’s as its launch-pad accompanied with AR to engage the customers and then lure them with a good offer. This was surely a good way to attract and earn the loyalty of their own rival’s customer base. MARKSMAN

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BOOKWORM - Harpreet Singh

VALS FRAMEWORK HistoryThe term was coined by Social Scientist and Futurist Arnold Mitchell. It was developed to determine different classes of people who had varying lifestyles, attitudes and values. The determination of these people is done by the resources and the amount of innovation they could accept or create. VALS stands for Values, Attitude and Lifestyle. It helps in performing psychographic segmentation. Segmentation is used basically to target a certain group from within a population. Psychographic segmentation uses peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lifestyles, their activities, interests as well as opinions to define a market segment.

VALS stands for Values; Attitude; Lifestyle. It helps in performing psychographic segmentation.

VALS framework works differently for different people and helps determine the right target audiences for the marketer of a particular product or service. For example, a product with snob effect (luxury item) will be targeted towards people with high income and their lifestyle will be categorised under section A. If the product is something of a reasonable and daily need, then it may be targeted towards a person with mid-level income and lifestyle of section B. 23 MARKSMAN

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BOOKWORM

Different classes of consumers includeInnovators Thinkers Believers Achievers Strivers Experiencers Makers Survivors

Innovators – They are high resource and high income people with their own individual tastes and are motivated in achieving the finer things in life. Thinkers – Well educated professionals are thinkers in the VALS framework. They have high resources and are rational decision makers, they are well informed about their surroundings because of their knowledge level. Believers – Believers are more social in nature and hence also believe other consumers. They have a lower resources and are word-of-mouth consumers. Achievers – These individuals want to excel at their job and in their family. Thus they are more likely to purchase a brand which has shown its success over time. Strivers – Strivers are achievers with low resources. But as they have values common to an achiever, they fall under the striver category. Achiever can be termed as striver with high income. Experiencers – They are the group of consumers who have high resources but also need a mode of self expression. These are young adults, hence experiencers spend heavily on food, clothing and other youthful products and services. Makers – Makers are consumers who also want self expression but have limited resources. Hence, they act more like the middle income level consumers rather than high income ones. They are more family oriented when it comes to spending. Survivors – Survivors have least resources in the VALS framework and therefore the least likely to adopt any innovation. An example can include old age pension earners living alone for whom the basic necessities are very important and they are least likely to concentrate on anything else.

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