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In Pantaloons, they want to continue to focus on fashion and apparel and therefore build imagery, which is fashion oriented. Keeping this in mind, the vision ahead for PRIL is to look at products and innovations that give the company an edge in the consumer mind space.

According to Pantaloon officials, the total advertising budget (for the year July 2004-June 2005 was Rs. 35 crore. (However, an isolated figure for the creative business alone is not available.)

Price

The desire is accentuated by the hugely popular promotion, which ensured a high brand recall in the minds of consumers. The overall initiative of price, distribution and promotion resulted in number of customers going up by over 50%. Even as the roll out of low price point across all products in the portfolio resulted in rise in volumes, by 2004, the strategy started affecting the margins. The company has assured avoidance of every possible occurrence of roll back on its price as high input costs made the price point unsustainable. They move according to the current market reality as the price is still competitive, and the objective still is to increase the pie. The price point has moved, but it's still affordable, and they are at it when it comes to other aspects of penetrating the market through innovation, distribution and creating occasions.

Positioning

Customer demands have changed with changing lifestyles. Like in clothes, casual wear is now divided into party wear, outdoor wear, and sportswear and lounge wear, something that wasn't there earlier. That's why, after nearly two decades, the flagship Pantaloon store has been repositioned. It has dropped its earlier "family store" positioning to don "the affordable fashion" tag.

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* Contributed by -
Manasi Panigrahi,
Pursuing MBA, Batch of 2006,
ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad.