Chinese computer giant, Lenovo has achieved tremendous sales boost and brand awareness in India through innovative marketing strategies which it would replicate in other emerging markets.
BEIJING: Chinese computer giant, Lenovo has achieved tremendous sales boost and brand awareness in India through innovative marketing strategies which it would replicate in other emerging markets, a senior executive said.
"I am very pleased to say that the marketing campaign that we have run in India has been very successful," Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Lenovo, Deepak Advani said.
"There is tremendous success in India and business results show it," Advani said on the sidelines of the '2006 Global Entrepreneur Summit' in Beijing.
Even before the Beijing-based company acquired the personal computer business of American giant, IBM, the marketing team of the company had placed Lenovo monitors on 'Kaun Banega Crorepati', a highly popular TV show which featured Amitabh Bachchan, he noted.
Advani also noted that appointing Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and his sister, Soha Ali Khan has also paid rich dividends for Lenovo in India.
The Khans were roped in to launch a new personal computer product line with innovations targeted to meet the needs of the family just as well as small businesses.
"As a result, we have seen enormous acceptance of Lenovo products in India. Last quarter we grew 75 per cent in a very competitive market," he said.
Another key strategy for Lenovo in India was to identify what the Indian consumer is passionate about.
"We found that the Indian consumer was very passionate about movies and cricket," he said, adding that the company invested heavily on sales promotions in films and cricket matches.
"One of the key things that we did in Lenovo was that the perception of Chinese companies (in India) is that of low quality and low price. So when we launched Lenovo in India, we waited for a very exciting consumer product feature, the Jog Dial," Advani noted.
"So when we launched Lenovo in India, we did it around innovation and design instead of price. I think it was another key lesson that we learned in India," he said.
In the last nine months, we have grown from zero per cent awareness to 70 per cent awareness in India, Advani claimed.
Lenovo's international business is mainly based on its Think brands acquired from IBM in 2004, but the Think products are considered premium while its strength lies mainly in so-called relationship customers.
In the second quarter Lenovo's shipments of computers rose by 12 per cent year-on-year, but it was mainly driven by growth of almost 30 per cent in China.
In Europe Lenovo's shipments fell by 12 per cent and in the United States its growth was 5.3 per cent, below the industry average of 6.7 per cent, according to research company International Data Corp (IDC).
The major factor behind this was that Lenovo does not have a strong presence in the fast-growing small and medium business and consumer markets of Europe and the United States, 'China Daily' quoted Advani as saying.
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