Survey of the room coolers market; Crompton Greaves Limited

Abstract

Crompton Greaves, a Rs.1000 crore turnover company in its efforts to diversify from its strongholds in industrial products has launched electrical consumer durables. It launched room coolers in Calcutta in March 1995. The sales of coolers were not satisfactory and dealers were not ready to store this product. The company conducted market survey to find out the reason for the lack of success of the product. The survey was conducted at two stages - one by interviewing the dealers and two by . conducting a consumer survey. The survey was conducted in Calcutta and the townships of Asansol, Durgapur, and Jamshedpur. The dealers felt that the consumers were not aware of Crompton Greaves selling room coolers. The fact that the awareness level was low was also testified in the consumers survey. Increased efforts have to be made to advertise the product so as to create a consumer pull. This will act as an incentive to dealers to store the product as it would turn in their money much faster. Tt was also found out that consumers preferred light weight coolers with either wooden finish or fibre finish as it would be just in place in his or her well kept room. TV ads affected buying decisions a lot and it should be promoted. The Thapar Group which normality keeps a tow profile would do well to promote themselves as producers of quality consumer goods. People generally perceive them to be producers of quality industrial products. Newspaper ads too would be a good place to promote the coolers as well as the group as a whole. The dealers felt that the replenishing of stocks was not on time and improvements have to be made in this area. They also felt that the products did not always have the attributes that were mentioned in the brochures. This too has io be sorted out.