Direct marketing of a blood pressure instrument
An electronic gadgets manufacturing firm wanted to market in India a small, hand-held electronic instrument for measuring blood pressure at home.
The price of the instrument was fixed at around Rs. 3000 a piece. Being a specialty product, it was perceived to have only a limited clientele. As the firm had no establishment channel of distribution, it decided to take the direct-marketing route.
The product was unique in the sense that it offered the convenience of constant monitoring of blood pressures at home, in office or anywhere, without having to visit the doctor.
It could save a lot of time and inconvenience, especially for busy professional, executives, businessmen and all those who had a hectic work schedule.
Since it was a relatively expensive product, senior executive, professional and businessmen over 45 years of age, having an income of more than Rs 15000 per month were expected to be the prospective buyers.
The firm adopted the following procedure for identifying and enlisting prospects.
In order to prepare a cold list, an advertisement of the product, along with a coupon, was released in two leading newspapers in Mumbai.
Interested individuals were asked to fill up the printed coupon, and send it to the firm within 10 days to get a free booklet on management of blood pressure.
Personal particulars relevant to identifying the ‘qualifying prospects’ such as income, age, profession, residential address and details of any health-related problem were to be filled in the coupon.
A majority of people who responded were found to be suffering from blood pressure, obesity or heart-related problems. A cold list of about 5000 individuals was generated on the basis of filled-in coupons.
This list was further scrutinized and names of apparently non-serious responding who might have sent the coupons more out of curiosity. The residual list of about 3500 respondents was treated as the hot list.
Another alternative to this newspaper ad approach, as suggested by the research agency was to obtain a list of credit card holders from reputed banks such as ANZ Grindlays, Citibank, Canara bank, State bank of India and Bank of Baroda.
The firm could then have sort out the names of cardholders who were above the age of 40 and occupied senior executive positions in private or public organizations. This would have formed the cold list.
Next, the firms could have sent a brochure and a personal letter to them offering to arrange a free demonstration would have formed the hot list. However, this approach was not taken due to some logistic problems.
The respondents were then clustered into different segments on the basis of their health status: those who had only mild blood pressure but no other problem; those suffering from obesity and blood pressure both; those suffering from blood pressure and some cardiac problems; those who had blood pressure and diabetes with or without some cardiac problem; and so on.
This database of all the listed people with their detailed profiles helped the firm in identifying specific needs of the respondents.
An electronic gadgets manufacturing firm wanted to market in India a small, hand-held electronic instrument for measuring blood pressure at home.
The price of the instrument was fixed at around Rs. 3000 a piece. Being a specialty product, it was perceived to have only a limited clientele. As the firm had no establishment channel of distribution, it decided to take the direct-marketing route.
The product was unique in the sense that it offered the convenience of constant monitoring of blood pressures at home, in office or anywhere, without having to visit the doctor.
It could save a lot of time and inconvenience, especially for busy professional, executives, businessmen and all those who had a hectic work schedule.
Since it was a relatively expensive product, senior executive, professional and businessmen over 45 years of age, having an income of more than Rs 15000 per month were expected to be the prospective buyers.
The firm adopted the following procedure for identifying and enlisting prospects.
In order to prepare a cold list, an advertisement of the product, along with a coupon, was released in two leading newspapers in Mumbai.
Interested individuals were asked to fill up the printed coupon, and send it to the firm within 10 days to get a free booklet on management of blood pressure.
Personal particulars relevant to identifying the ‘qualifying prospects’ such as income, age, profession, residential address and details of any health-related problem were to be filled in the coupon.
A majority of people who responded were found to be suffering from blood pressure, obesity or heart-related problems. A cold list of about 5000 individuals was generated on the basis of filled-in coupons.
This list was further scrutinized and names of apparently non-serious responding who might have sent the coupons more out of curiosity. The residual list of about 3500 respondents was treated as the hot list.
Another alternative to this newspaper ad approach, as suggested by the research agency was to obtain a list of credit card holders from reputed banks such as ANZ Grindlays, Citibank, Canara bank, State bank of India and Bank of Baroda.
The firm could then have sort out the names of cardholders who were above the age of 40 and occupied senior executive positions in private or public organizations. This would have formed the cold list.
Next, the firms could have sent a brochure and a personal letter to them offering to arrange a free demonstration would have formed the hot list. However, this approach was not taken due to some logistic problems.
The respondents were then clustered into different segments on the basis of their health status: those who had only mild blood pressure but no other problem; those suffering from obesity and blood pressure both; those suffering from blood pressure and some cardiac problems; those who had blood pressure and diabetes with or without some cardiac problem; and so on.
This database of all the listed people with their detailed profiles helped the firm in identifying specific needs of the respondents.