Positioning strategy of Flipkart
Imagine you have deeply injured your leg and the doctor told you to stay at home for a month. That’s one of the unpleasant feelings in the world, right? So, you decide to order a book and start reading it until your recovery. Of course, one of the convenient ways that can come up to your mind is ordering it via the internet. Nowadays, online shopping has made our life much more comfortable. In 2007, two Indian software engineers Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal realizing that the world was becoming more technologized built a website that could allow society to shop on an online platform. So, it made these two friends made Flipkart one of the giant e-commerce companies globally. To understand the key to their success, it is essential to learn about the effective strategies and positioning choices of Flipkart.
Overall target market analysis of e-commerce companies.
With the outbreak of COVID19, now more than ever, online shopping has been spread worldwide. According to statistics, the number of people who prefer online shopping, hit 2,14 billion by 2021.
E-commerce companies are vastly growing because they have a lot of advantages.
Some of the advantages are listed as follows:
- Convenient
- No crowds
- Easy Price Comparison
- Better prices
- More variety
- Time-management
- No Sales Pressure
Let’s start by discussing a segmentation of Flipkart.
To do so let’s have a look at the following commercial.
The commercial launched by this large Indian e-commerce company calls Indian (and not only) males to start taking care of their children because it is not only a mother’s responsibility.
As penguins are considered to be those children in the animal kingdom raised both by their mothers and fathers, it made Flipkart choose the hashtag #PinguinDad, which can be equal to #AttentiveDad, #ProudDad, #HappyDad, etc.
While throughout the commercial, one can see several males with different professions, all of them are blessed to be a dad. It is noticeable that each of these males takes care of their children in various ways. As a pattern, one of them was making his daughter’s hairstyle; the other was trying to make a pancake for his little daughter; another man helped his son do some math calculations while simultaneously working at the garage.
Indian society has always had straight gender roles when it comes to parenting- keeping the mother as the one who should take care of the child and keeping the father as the one who should bring money to the house.
According to Apuarv Sethi, who is the director of brand marketing at this company, “Business should proactively create policies that enable diversity.” This commercial’s hidden meaning is to reveal the side of Indian dads, which was never explored.
It is about a side that shows love, a side that spends time instead of money, a side that does not keep his emotions inside; it is about a side that can make changes in Indian society. So, in short, Flipkart wants to inspire many more dads to do so.
The characteristics of these dads clearly show that as a target segment, Flipkart has chosen Sharers.
Now, let’s learn more about this segment.
Lifestyle and Values:
First of all, people who belong to this target group give huge importance to their families. These people always take care of their family members, and whenever they want to have a good time, home is considered the best place. What is more, people who represent this target group are fond of cooking and gardening.
Sharers are happy people by nature, and they always seek to find enjoyment even in very ordinary daily tasks. They can turn a usual shopping into a trip for their friends and family.
The people who belong to this target segment like to read books about health, home, gardening, etc. Although they are not going to cultural events, such as theaters, operas, Sharers would watch them on TV or listen to them on a Radio.
Attitude to Shopping
Representatives of this target group enjoy shopping with their family members and friends. They are fond of discovering new brands and products.
These people give huge importance to the product’s quality and prefer to buy premium brands whenever possible.
Other interesting facts
People who are part of this group are usually not informed about the economy or politics as they rarely follow these kinds of news. However, Sharers prefer to read magazines about entertainment, celebrity lives, health, beauty, etc.
Marketing Strategy
It is not a secret that the success of a company heavily depends on its marketing strategies. Marketing is essential to any business because it can help them get connected with their target audience.
Different companies use various kinds of strategies because the type of marketing strategy heavily depends on various attributes of the company.
Year by year, the competition level between e-commerce companies is getting higher and higher because people tend to do online shopping as it is comfortable and time-managing for them.
One of the widely used marketing strategies of Flipkart relies on influencers. This Indian company knows that Indians love Bollywood, so they use this platform to spread awareness about them. Alia Bhatt, Amitabh Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor are among the most famous Indian celebrities that collaborate with Flipkart. This wise marketing strategy of Flipkart shows that the company is well aware of its customers’ preferences.
While Flipkart was spending more money on creating traditional advertisements, starting from 2017, the company has started widely using social platforms to promote their campaigns. Using various social platforms, the company is continuously in touch with its customers and can easily communicate with them. As India is a mobile-first country, this marketing strategy helped the company succeed.
Problem Removal
According to Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who is the CEO of Flipkart, the company seeks to become the largest retailer in India. Flipkart aims to be present in almost all categories, except in groceries and automobiles. As the target audience, the company does not only choose the ones who prefer online shopping. Flipkart wants to show the convenience of e-commerce to traditional shopping lovers and help grow the market.
What is more, recently, Rajneesh Kumar, who is the chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart, announced that “From being a start-up unicorn, we have emerged as a sizeable company, and there is a need to take a long-term view to grow the business for the future. We have been focusing on tier 2 business, but it has become more intense now. We want to be a value player focused on tier 2 locations.”
So, they want to concentrate more on value than speed.
Kumar also mentioned that the company is getting more business because of the value proposition in terms of a slowdown.
Social Approval
These days, social acceptance is one of the key components to become a successful and competitive company in this vast market. The techniques of finding the appropriate strategy for getting the social endorsement vary from company to company.
In addition to being one of the giant e-commerce companies globally, Flipkart is also one of the trusted brands for its users.
Here are two main features that help the company get social approval.
1.Approachable online marketplace
Flipkart’s support team is always on the side of their consumers, and whenever one asks for support, they will always find a time and answer all their questions. What is more, the company’s service is straightforward, customer-friendly.
2. Ease of doing business
The company offers an easy way of building its own business. One should just sign up, list their catalogs, and start doing business.
Message Strategy:
Moving further, let’s understand what strategies Flipkart uses for positioning through analyzing the following post from the company’s Instagram page.
When looking at this post, one can notice a beautiful young couple sitting comfortably on the light-colored sofa. The picture gives very positive emotions to the audience and creates a warm atmosphere.
Flipkart has framed this picture with pink color. Pink is usually associated with love and femininity, kindness and harmony. So, even the choice of color creates a romantic atmosphere. On the pink frame, we can see some sentences, and each of them represents a particular thing.
As a pattern, on the bottom, there is the company’s name that produces furniture, including the sofa in the picture.
On the top of this sentence, this e-commerce company talks about itself by reminding people about the offerings that Flipkart can give. Making own place means that a specific area is being made for some particular purpose. So, it seems that Flipkart believes in the dignity of every person regardless of their abilities.
Finally, in the center of the picture, Flipkart introduces this sofa as a comfortable way to connect people and make life easier and happier.
So, all of the mentioned details clearly lead us to one conclusion- Flipkart belongs to Everyman Brand Archetype. Many famous offline and online commerce companies choose this brand as their archetype because it can provide an everyday connection to problems. As shopping is on the list of our daily activities, that is why it is simple to choose Everyman.
Everyman Brand archetype tries to be as friendly as possible, and that is why it can tell you about daily activities and remind one about its importance in many cases. The Instagram Post of Flipkart mentioned in the earlier paragraphs is an excellent example of it.
What does Everyman brand archetype stand for?
Desire: Connection with others
Goal: To fit in
Strategy: To develop ordinary solid virtues, the common touch
What does Everyman archetype stand for?.
Level one: Feelings of alienation
Level two: Seeking affiliation
Level three: A desire to make new friends
Level four: Believing that everyone has a natural dignity. Accepting friendship.
The customers of this brand archetype seek to connect with others. This archetype fears getting rejected as a result of putting it on the air.
This archetype provides a proper identity for brands:
- That is convenient to use in daily life
- Whose offerings make people believe that they fit in
- That has pricing from a moderate to low
All in all, Flipkart is one of the influential e-commerce companies in the world, and it is undoubtedly worth giving special and separate attention to it. A good marketing strategy, positioning tactics, problem removal, and social approval are the key factors that can lead to the company’s success. As you can guess, Flipkart succeeded in all of these. I hope this post could help you gain some insights into this developed company. In order to read more posts like this, check out the main page of our website.
