The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.’
- Peter Drucker
Marketing is a summation of knowledge, intelligence and interpretation. All the three aspects are equally important. It is essential to develop knowledge of your target customers, use the intelligence you have developed over time to process that knowledge and then implement the interpretation in the form of strategy, innovation, communication and delivery of the brand experience. In order to transform the existing marketing, following four steps can direct marketing principles:
Four steps to Marketing Transformation
In order to Reorient, Re-engineer, Rethink and Redesign, marketing would look at this the following way:
Reorient - so that the customers are the drivers of marketing, not the target. It is the most critical point of view – the one that really matters is the customer’s; the customer has the power.
Reengineer - your marketing processes. A marketing process is designed to deliver value to the customer; extraneous activity is eliminated.
Rethink - your marketing organisation. Replace functional specialisation with cross-company collaborative customer value creation.
Redesign - your marketing technology. Marketing is an enterprise system rather than a series of point solutions.
Marketing people do not approach the tasks at hand in a structured way as the product developers do, since they are trained in the scientific methods. Similarly the marketing people need to be trained in utilisation of scientific methods or approaches. It is not part of their professional rigour, as it is for scientists. Marketers usually do not focus on what will be the next big discontinuity; how do we create a network? We think the ‘Connect and Develop’ idea probably will have more impact over time in the marketing area than it has had even in the product development area: there are just so many more assets to leverage in marketing.
It’s a critical part of marketing, but it’s not the entirety of marketing. The commercialisation and go-to-market stages are the other parts of marketing. For innovation to work effectively, every link in the chain must be equally strong.
Nutraceuticals Ingredients Dimension
Nutraceuticals and allied products have already gained a huge popularity in the recent years. Born out of consumer demand for better and healthy life, the Nutraceuticals industry today continues to use consumers for inspiration. The Indian nutraceuticals market is growing worldwide and it also has facilitated the growth and demand of functional ingredients. This industry is expected to continue growing exponentially due to growing consumers' awareness, increase in disposable income and the desire to lead a healthy life and avoid dependence on synthetic drugs.
Nutraceuticals’ ingredients are the key functional constituents of nutraceuticals. These nutraceuticals ingredients have become an essential part of many people’s health or fitness regimen. These ingredients are considered to be effective when it comes to prevention of various diseases that arise as a result of nutrient deficiencies in the body.
In the nutraceuticals ingredients segment, India is quite established, as we have abundance of raw materials and other resources. According to a report by Markets & Markets, the global nutraceuticals ingredients market is expected to reach about US$38.7 billion, at a CAGR of about 7.2% from 2015 to 2020. Asia-Pacific was one of the largest markets for nutraceuticals ingredients and is expected to be the fastest-growing market for nutraceuticals ingredients in the next few years.
Marketing Nutraceuticals Ingredients
For marketing of any product be it nutraceuticals, nutraceuticals ingredients or pharmaceuticals it is very crucial to understand what is more important - product education, therapy education, diagnostics or doctor patient matrix? The focus should be on who is the potential customer whether it is the doctor, the patient, patient’s family or the healthcare insurance providers. Answering these questions will help understand to whom & how should the marketing strategies be targeted.
If we look at all these aspects we would understand that all of them should be considered as customers since they all are interdependent. From marketing point of view everybody right from patient to patient’s family and doctors to the insurance providers should be focussed.
Currently in India, nutraceuticals especially the dietary supplements are marketed either through prescription route i.e. in association with doctors or through direct marketing for OTC supplements, other formats such as powders, functional foods, functional beverages etc. are mainly marketed through OTC route. Now-a-days more and more manufacturers are branching out to OTC products rather than prescription-based products.
Nutrition and dietary supplements cases in India
As of 2015, companies like Heinz India Pvt. Ltd., Amway, and Dabur are leaders in the Indian supplement market. Heinz is one of the leaders in vitamins and dietary supplements with a 13% value share, with two very popular brands i.e. Complan supplement nutrition drinks and Glucon D glucose. The company has been aggressively promoting its brands across various media channels like television, radio, and print media. Another strategy applied by them that aids them in maintaining their lead in the market is coming up with new products or variants of earlier products.
Amway India Enterprises Pvt. Ltd was ranked second in 2015. The major contributor to its value share is Nutrilite, which is the leading brand overall in vitamins and dietary supplements with an 11% share of value sales. The company has a strong distribution network and has been actively promoting their brand Nutrilite thus, making it one of the stronger brands in nutrition and supplements in India.
Apart from this, there has been an increase in foreign invasion in Indian premium consumer products market. The foreign competitors will not only go after the high-end market in India, they will target the middle and eventually the low end of market. In this case, the main defence for Indian companies will be developing stronger skills in innovation, differentiation, branding and service, in another word, marketing!
With respect to marketing of nutraceuticals and allied products, the focus should change towards Developing Business through Marketing by incorporating new and upcoming technologies such as e-marketing.
