Customer Value Perception

Customer value can be generally defined as the attributes or usp`s of a product/service that generally encourage customers to choose one product over the other. These attributes can be product related or service related, tangible or intangible.

For ex. A person X can choose a kissan tomato sauce coz he liked the taste or less price or simply because he buys all other products such as jams, pickles etc which are made by Kissan itself. Of course its a known fact that a successful brand never relies on just one variable to generate most of its customer value.

Usually such techniques/methods are used to generate customer needs from customers to understand customer value

·         Research methods

·         Feedback forms

·         Suggestion box 

·         How can we improve ?

Now keeping all this in mind lets see how Kinley generated its customer value :

Kinley entered the bottled water market when Bisleri ruled with a share of 34% . So understanding the customer needs was a very crucial step.

The company took 4 major steps to do this:

Product: Kinley was launched in 2000 with 500ml pack. By 2002, the packs were available in different sizes each of which catered to different Customer needs such as:

Place: Banking on the existing strong distribution of Coca Cola India, Kinley was first made available in Southern metros and later rolled out nationwide. 200ml cups were initially introduced in Chennai and Gujarat keeping in mind that these places had marriage halls which served individual serving of food in rows and after their success they were launched in other states consecutively. The 200ml pouch for rural areas was first test marketed in selected places in Ahmadabad for test marketing.

Price: For 500ml pack the company offered an introductory price of Rs.4 as compared to that of Bisleri which had priced the same for Rs.5. In rural areas it launched 200ml pouch with a shocking price of Rs. 1. Simultaneously it launched 200ml cups at Rs.3. We see here how Kinley made use of the price factor to introduce and create customer value for itself.

Promotion: This is one of the major factors of Kinley. Coca-Cola India positioned Kinley as a brand based on “ Purity” and “ Trust” under the communicative initiative “ Boond Boond me Vishwas” In other words it meant  Kinley brand personifies trust, which is a key attribute in the packaged drinking water segment. Then again in 2009 it rebranded and launched the new campaign “ Vishwas Karo” which was also aired i non-Hindi speaking areas. Result was that Kinley became number one packaged drinking brand in retail segment in the country in 2002.