Haldirams Group Analyzing Consumer Behaviour Essay Example

Haldirams Group Analyzing Consumer Behaviour Essay Example Haldirams Group Analyzing Consumer Behaviour Paper Haldirams Group Analyzing Consumer Behaviour Paper Haldiram’s Group – Analyzing Consumer Behaviour Haldiram’s group is a true rags to riches story, which has expanded from being a small shop in Bikaner in 1937 to being one of the largest smart food chains in India and the world today. They are today a Rs. 10 billion company with multiple outlets across rural and urban India as well as a tremendous presence outside the country. Brand Haldiram’s is renowned for its superior product quality and supreme manufacturing processes which have been developed through tremendous research over the years. As the company continued to grow, they faced tough competition from local sweet and snack food vendors in the unorganized market. Their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) against the unorganised sector was the level of hygiene and product quality they maintained without any compromise in taste. This resulted in a shift of the utility curve towards the right, whereby consumers got a higher level of satisfaction, by consuming products from a bigger brand which believed in far better hygienic procedures (Ref graph). With this in mind, they evolved a competitive pricing strategy to survive and grow in the market dominated by smaller players. INDIFFERENCE CURVE ANALYSIS Haldiram’s has a huge product portfolio and sought to customize its products to suit the tastes and preferences of consumers from different parts of India. It has launched products, which cater to the tastes of people belonging to specific regions of the country. However, they maintained concentration on their core products such as ‘namkeens’, which contributed to almost 60% of their revenue mix and was also the first company in India to brand namkeens’. : At every stage of their business, Haldiram’s developed new innovative ways of pricing and marketing their products. They pioneered new ways of packaging which increased the shelf life of their products from less than a week to more than six months, thereby catering to the needs of hygiene conscious non-resident Indians and other foreign customers. At the same time, they were aware of the price consciousness of the typical Indian consumer who constituted the bulk of the market. Thus they managed to exploit the best out of the diverse consumer base by offering something for everybody. HALDIRAM’S – CAPTURING MARKET AND CONSUMER SURPLUS To exploit the best of both market segments, Haldiram’s did the following: -The company launched products in different packs with prices varying according to their weights. (Ref table below) PRICE RANGE OF NAMKEENS OFFERED BY HALDIRAMS PACK WEIGHTPRICE (IN RS)PRICE PER GRAM 30 gms50. 16 85 gms100. 11 180 gms 250 gms18-350. 13 400 gms 500 gms40-700. 12 1kg95-2000. 15 PRICE PER GRAM AT VARIOUS QUANTITIES OF DEMAND With the above table and graph in mind, Haldiram’s effectively lowered the price per gram in the 200-800 gms segment, which is where the bulk of their consumers were, thereby ensuring higher satisfaction for this market segment. -The company also customized specific products with attractive packaging and distribution concepts specifically for the festive season. -The company offered value-added services like online retailing and sales of Haldiram’s products in train and bus stations for consumers in transit. The company diversified its business by opening restaurants in various metros thereby en-cashing on its huge brand image and offering traditional Indian snack food items. Currently, Haldiram’s is facing tough competition from domestic and international competitors such as Brittania, HUL, ITC etc, apart from the local players in the market. To counter this and retain their market share, Haldiram’s is on an aggressive promotion and marketing spree. With all the above mentioned points in mind, we plotted the Demand Curve for Haldiram’s. Prior to its entry into the unorganized sector, the company focused on niche market segments from where they generated bulk of their revenue. Their demand curve resembled the blue line as indicated in the graph above. Once a conscious management decision was taken to enter the unorganized sector; Haldiram’s adopted extremely aggressive pricing strategies so that they could compete with the local vendors. MOVEMENT OF THE HALDIRAM’S DEMAND CURVE This helped in shifting the demand curve to the left, as indicated by the pink line in the graph, thereby ensuring that they set a foot into the unorganized sector. Having built a base for themselves, and sustaining their brand image in the unorganized sector over a prolonged period of time, Haldiram’s leveraged its position to become the market leader thereby pushing its demand curve above, back to the blue line in the graph. Now with the entry of domestic and international players, the market is going through another competitive phase. Haldiram’s is doing everything possible to hold onto their current position. With their track record in mind, they are focused and determined to tide over the current competitive scenario, so that they can offer additional value to their customers in the future, thereby pushing their demand curve further up, to the red line as indicated in the graph above.

The Great Cascadia Earthquake of 2xxx

The Great Cascadia Earthquake of 2xxx Cascadia is Americas own tectonic version of Sumatra, where the magnitude 9.3 earthquake and tsunami of 2004 occurred. Stretching off the Pacific shore from northern California some 1300 kilometers to the tip of Vancouver Island, the Cascadia subduction zone appears capable of its own magnitude 9 earthquake. What do we know about its behavior and its history? What would that great Cascadia earthquake be like? Subduction Zone Earthquakes, Cascadia and Elsewhere Subduction zones are places where one lithospheric plate plunges beneath another (see Subduction in a Nutshell). They create three kinds of earthquakes: those within the upper plate, those within the lower plate, and those between the plates. The first two categories can include large, damaging quakes of magnitude (M) 7, comparable to the Northridge 1994 and Kobe 1995 events. They can damage whole cities and counties. But the third category is what concerns disaster officials. These great subduction events, M 8 and M 9, can release hundreds of times more energy and damage wide regions inhabited by millions of people. They are what everybody means by the Big One. Earthquakes get their energy from strain (distortion) built up in rocks from the stress forces along a fault (see Earthquakes in a Nutshell). Great subduction events are so large because the fault involved has a very large surface area on which rocks gather strain. Knowing this, we can easily find where the worlds M 9 earthquakes happen by locating the longest subduction zones: southern Mexico and Central America, South Americas Pacific coast, Iran and the Himalaya, western Indonesia, eastern Asia from New Guinea to Kamchatka, the Tonga Trench, the Aleutian Island chain and Alaska Peninsula, and Cascadia. Magnitude-9 quakes differ from smaller ones in two distinct ways: they last longer and they have more low-frequency energy. They dont shake any harder, but the greater length of shaking causes more destruction. And the low frequencies are more effective at causing landslides, damaging large structures and exciting water bodies. Their power to move water accounts for the fearsome threat of tsunamis, both in the shaken region and on coastlines near and far (see more on tsunamis). After the strain energy is released in great earthquakes, whole coastlines may subside as the crust relaxes. Offshore, the ocean floor may rise. Volcanoes may respond with their own activity. Low-lying lands may turn to mush from seismic liquefaction and widespread landslides may be triggered, sometimes creeping along for years afterward. These things may leave clues for future geologists. Cascadias Earthquake History Studies of past subduction earthquakes are inexact things, based on finding their geologic signs: sudden changes of elevation that drown coastal forests, disturbances in ancient tree rings, buried beds of beach sand washed far inland and so on. Twenty-five years of research has determined that Big Ones affect Cascadia, or large parts of it, every few centuries. Times between events range from 200 to about 1000 years, and the average is around 500 years. The most recent Big One is rather well dated, although no one in Cascadia at the time could write. It occurred around 9 p.m. on 26 January 1700. We know this because the tsunami it generated struck the shores of Japan the next day, where the authorities recorded the signs and damages. In Cascadia, tree rings, oral traditions of the local people and geologic evidence support this story. The Coming Big One Weve seen enough recent M 9 earthquakes to have a good idea of what the next one will do to Cascadia: they struck inhabited regions in 1960 (Chile), 1964 (Alaska), 2004 (Sumatra) and 2010 (Chile again). The Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup (CREW) recently prepared a 24-page booklet, including photos from historic quakes, to bring the dreadful scenario to life: Strong shaking will last for 4 minutes, killing and injuring thousands.A tsunami up to 10 meters high will wash over the coast within minutes.Much of coastal Route 101 will be impassable due to wave and landslide damage.Parts of the coast will be cut off from inland cities when the roads are buried. Roads through the Cascades may likewise be blocked.For rescue, first aid, and immediate relief most places will be on their own.Utilities and transportation in the I-5/Highway 99 corridor will be disrupted for months.Cities may have significant fatalities as tall buildings collapse.Aftershocks will continue for years, some of them large earthquakes in themselves. From Seattle on down, Cascadian governments are preparing for this event. (In this effort they have much to learn from Japans Tokai Earthquake program.) The work ahead is enormous and will never be finished, but all of it will count: public education, setting up tsunami evacuation routes, strengthening buildings and building codes, conducting drills and more. The CREW pamphlet, Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquakes: A magnitude 9.0 earthquake scenario, has more.