Automotive India, by Mike Szudarek

The auto industry in India is undoubtedly on a significant growth trajectory. In fact, the industry is expected to double by the year 2010… And then double again by the year 2016. The string of recent investments in India (e.g. Honda, Renault, Toyota, VW, Ford, BMW, and others) underscores manufacturers’ confidence in the market.

Despite this flurry of activity and projected growth, however, challenges do exist. Chiefly, infrastructure is disconnected with the country’s rapid pace of growth and expansion.

Development and improvement in the management of the flow of goods and other resources, including energy, people and manufactured parts, are a prime opportunity for both automotive logistics and development suppliers.

The need for significantly better integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, and material-handling is an undercurrent that can be capitalized on by enterprising firms. Extending communication and marketing outreach to this region should be a priority for any logistics or development company well positioned to serve this market.

By Mike Szudarek

It’s amazing at how children today are beginning organized sports at such a young age. Moreover, it is even more incredible just how sophisticated their training, practice and skill development continues to progress. For those born in the 1960s and ’70s, most didn’t get serious about organized sports until junior high. Children today, however, compete at a substantially higher level. And, by the time they’ve reached junior high, they already have had years of both organized sports activity, as well as additional “off-season” conditioning and agility training.

This trend has obviously led to the many, many training clinics and camps, as well as specialized strength and performance centers that we’ve watched creep up during the past several years.

When it comes to business development, the first place most businesses are targeting is the obvious–parents and their kids. The more sophisticated centers, however, have been capitalizing on one of the more recent “micro trends” we are now beginning to see: adminstrators and coaches.

The biggest obstacle today is not so much convincing parents that their children “should” or “need” to sign-up for specialized off-season training and development (everybody’s kid is now doing this and parents realize it ), but rather, persuading coaches that this is not undermining their internal efforts or implying their programs are inferior. Additionally, it’s convincing administrators that this is “okay” in light of the empty school weight rooms across the country.

What these business owners have been able to do is understand that this intense identity group, for the first time in years, now has “competition.” Gone are the days of the shop teacher running the school weight room. While this may still occur, parents today are far too sophisticated (and competitive) to trust anyone other than an expert to help develop their children. At the same time, school coaches don’t want to feel overshadowed or threatened, and, school administrators certainly don’t want empty facilities and wasted tax payer dollars.

Take a closer look at the emotional needs of this audience and its growing influence (as well as this trend of growing uncertainty). Tailor your messages and marketing to work with them (opposed to against). And, above all, seek support and encouragement.

The new business will come. And, the headaches will be far, far less.

“Mass merchandising” in retailing traditionally played on the strength of economies-of-scale in demanding uniformity in merchandise selections across all store locations. Major resources, like Proctor & Gamble and Kraft, geared up to serve these big box operators with only their best-selling SKU’s (stock-keeping units). Predicated on highly competitive pricing and corresponding fast turnover of inventory, mass merchants zeroed in on the most highly purchased products with little room or attention given to fringe items.

This historical approach to assortment planning has experienced a radical move with what is called “micro-merchandising,” that is stocking shelves by individual locations with desired goods particularly relevant to that
market. An example of this new approach occurs in Wal-Mart’s Dearborn, Michigan store, where the presence of diverse customers, like Arab-Americans and African Americans, is largely reflected in the product mix.

With more sophisticated computer systems, assortment planning by region and by store enables merchandisers to fine-tune selections beyond what originally has been mostly a cookie-cutter approach when operating thousands of
locations across the nation.

Micro merchandising is an important marketing tool that we can expect to see more and more of in the years ahead, as our country becomes more diverse in its demographics and savvy retailers take advantage of this important trend.