Invisible, unserved markets
In segmenting and targeting, most sellers tend to be biased towards the 'in your face', visible segments. Take India for example, the 'in your face', loud and visible segments that every one's after are the 'youth', 'metro buyers', 'affluent' and similar such segments. What sometimes even doesn't feature of the seller's radars are the quieter, almost invisible pockets in India that surprisingly grow even faster than the metro markets.Take the case of Vishal retail. A chain that has crafted a strategy of targeting Tier II & III cities, this Retail megamart brand has seen a doubling of revenues every year and will most certainly close 2007-08 with a top line of Rs. 1200 crore. This from an outfit that started as a tiny 100 sq. ft. shop in 1986 in Kolkata's Lal Bazaar area.
Vishal retail has as of now opened 70 stores across 49 small but fast growing cities. For the future, it has an ambitious target of 5 million sq. ft. of retail space by year end, 2010.
Comments
Going towards tier 2 & 3cities is an inevitable happening, and is a healthy trend.
I work with HP, and I do hardware PSG Sales only in Chennai & Pondi. However, the bulk of our business in the last half was from 'up-country', that includes cities like Coimbatore, Trichy, Vellore, Tirunelveli, etc. A lot of our huge notebook deals happen in teh education segment(colleges) across TN. Hence, going up-country and spreading our wings within is the real way to go!!