Branding is losing its mojo
Not so long ago, the only way to tell how reliable something you intended to buy was by checking if the brand was a reputed one. Those were the times when if you wanted to buy a TV, you couldn’t go wrong with a Sony. The Sonys of that era knew this, charged a hefty premium for their brand, and customers paid it unquestioningly. But the coming of online shopping has upset the old order.
I experienced this myself when I had to recently buy a TV, and realised how different my whole approach to shopping had become. It all began a couple of months ago, when my mum’s TV began to crash randomly. It was a Samsung, one of those ancient 29" CRT monsters that seem as big as a baby elephant and probably weigh as much. The TV was a much sought-after one in its era, which was around the time Samsung had usurped Sony’s throne as the world’s top selling TV. But in a time of 4D TVs, the CRT was a dying dinosaur.
My mother put off fixing the TV as she felt she was wasting too much of her time on melodramatic TV serials, which is the staple diet of most Indian TV channels. But since she lives alone, I convinced her a TV would keep her company, and in touch with the world. Once that was settled, I just had to figure out what TV to get her.
Personally, I was tempted to get a smart TV as it appealed to the geek in me. But it didn’t make sense for her as she doesn’t even use a smartphone. She didn’t mind what brand it was as long as it looked good, and was more concerned that it fit on top of her TV stand, as she disliked wall TVs.
It’s been ages since I bought a TV as I had been making do with an old 32"Philips flat TV that my sister had passed on to me when she upgraded to a 50" Sony. It seemed to me most of the current breed of TVs look identical, basically sleek flat rectangles with narrow black bezels. The next day, I dropped in at a TV showroom, gave them my budget of ₹20000 ($300), and asked for a 32" TV (it’s close in size to the old 29"CRT).
The salesman showed me a bunch of reputed international brands like Sony, Samsung, LG and a few Indian ones like BPL. The problem is none of them were full HD, and that bothered the geek in me. The salesman said that wasn’t going to affect viewing as most channels being telecast are in standard definition.
But I was aware the local service provider had begun telecasting a few local channels in full HD, and I wanted my Mum to enjoy the experience of watching her favourite channels in HD. The salesman tried to dissuade me from going for full HD by pointing out those TVs would be out of my budget. On my pushing, he did mention he had a few unknown brands that came at a lower price but he seemed pretty unenthusiastic about the whole idea. However I felt uncomfortably boxed in by the lack of choice after having been shopping online for the last few years.
In fact, the only reason I was not shopping online for TVs was because I feared the online giants like Amazon were becoming too powerful. I felt that if everyone shopped online for everything, offline merchants would be forced to shut down wipe out turning the Amazons into monopolies and leaving us at their mercy. In fact, I had even blogged about my worry here.
But offline shoppers needed to do better if they want my custom. At the very least, they need to give me what I want, instead of trying to push TVs that give them higher margins. But you can only lend a helping hand if the one being helped stretches out to take your hand. I gave up, told the salesman I needed some time to decide, and left the place.
Once I got home, I got back into my comfort zone, the Internet. The hot news on TVs was Xiaomi. The Chinese company behind India’s top selling phone brand, had come out with a smart TV at non-smart TV prices. That appealed to me. By pushing my budget a bit higher, I could get a smart TV for ₹23000 ($350). But there was a catch, Xiaomi only sold its Mi TV in online flash sales. There was one scheduled for the next day at noon.
I was ready at noon the next day but the Mi TV sold out in a couple of seconds, and the next sale was only on after a week. Seems like I was not the only one angling for a smart TV on a small budget. I was reluctantly forced to accept that my chance of getting a Mi TV was remote. I had been through this circus to get Xiaomi’s phone last year, and had been able to snare one only on my fourth attempt. In that case, it didn’t really matter to me as that was my backup phone. But I didn’t want my Mum to be TV-less for so long.
So I checked out the other TVs available online in my budget. The one that stood out was VU, a brand I had never heard of. Flipkart was offering the VU’s 32" full HD TV with the newer LED screen for less than ₹16000 ($240). They even had an exchange offer where they would pick up the old TV and reduce the price of the new one by ₹750 ($12). I googled VU, and found it was designed in California, and made in China. Was this an Apple wanna-be?
I checked the customer rating. It was 4.3/5. All well, but fake reviews were a possibility. I recalled a friend saying he had picked up an unknown brand for his Dad. I called him, and he confirmed it was a VU. He had been using it for over six months, and said it was good value for his money. He also confirmed that VU did have local service support. The gambler in me didn’t need any more persuading, and I clicked ‘buy.’
The TV was delivered a couple of days later, and it was a bargain for the price. Clear difference in quality on full HD channels, wide angle viewing from almost any corner of the living room, acceptable sound, connectivity for USB drives, HDMI, audio systems,, and low on power consumption. The only area I have an issue is the user interface is complicated. But this is a generic issue as the UI is pathetic across all TVs, especially when compared to slick menus in modern cellphones. And anyway, it’s fine for my Mum because once the TV is set up, she doesn’t fiddle around with the TV’s settings, and only uses the set top box’s remote, which was a different story.
However I will deviate a bit to discuss the set top box, to illustrate how a bad service provider can mess up your TV experience, regardless of the quality of your TV. I had to upgrade the set top box for ₹2000 ($30) to enable the HD channels. But my Mum had a few issues figuring out the menu on it because it wasn’t intuitive. One positive was I was able to get the set top box remote to control the TV, which meant just one remote, and that much less confusion for my Mum. Besides, the set top box came with a ‘record’ facility which meant I didn’t need to miss the NBA playoffs when I visited her. The negative was the set top box is glitchy. I created a list of ‘FAV’ channels for my Mum, but it disappeared a couple of days later. I did this again with the same result, after which I gave up on ‘FAV.’ Scheduling recording of shows also sometimes didn’t work, with it either not recording as programmed, or not allowing me to set a record timer. The poor quality of the set top box may have been because the service provider (Asianet) had the monopoly of selling to its customers. This forces them to take whatever the service provider offered. In this case, it was a Chinese manufacturer who must have been doing it on a very tight budget as the set top box didn’t even have an instruction manual. The service provider gets away with it because most customers are like my Mum. They don’t use the advanced features like ‘scheduled record’ or ‘favs,’ but are fine with the box as it works fine for their basic needs, like channel changing and volume control.
Looking back on my whole TV buying experience, I could not help noting how different it was from the last time I bought a TV. Apart from the online shopping aspect, the major change was how branding had become irrelevant to my buying decision. The last time around, I went out looking for a Sony. Everything else was secondary. This time around, TV specs, price, recommendations by friends who had tried the product, online reviews and service support were the many factors. Branding didn’t come into the picture.
However I doubt if I would have bought a big ticket item like TV without the assurance of someone I actually know having tried it. That way, brands still serve the same purpose of offering a means to determine reliability. My last big ticket online purchase was a washing machine. It was a replacement for my six year old IFB (Bosch), which was showing its age. I spotted a slighter larger version of the same brand going at a bargain price on Flipkart with an exchange offer as a clincher. So I went ahead and ordered it. The IFB brand played a key role in my purchase decision, and it turned out to be a good buy.
Or take a look at India’s cellphone market. Xiaomi, a virtually unknown brand a few years ago had India’s top selling phone in the Redmi Note 4 last year. The brand who lost the top spot was Samsung. Of course, Samsung and Apple still rule the high budget phone market, but the numbers in the budget market can add up. Xiaomi had 31% of the Indian phone market in the first quarter of 2018, as against Samsung’s 26%. Xiaomi’s phones offer great specs, good design, a sturdy build, acceptable service, and online reviews were over the top. Samsung didn’t have the same mix of features in that price range, and there’s only so much branding can do.
To sum up, branding is still relevant in the high end of the market. But with price-sensitive products or markets, it’s definitely becoming a secondary or even irrelevant factor, and my TV buying experience confirmed this.
