The changing trends in biscuit consumption pattern: a study of McVities digestive biscuits in Jaipur.

Narula, Anupam ; Taneja, Shallini ; Tyagi, Abhishek 等

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Introduction

Cookies dominate the market space, with Britannia leading the game with its Britannia Good day Cookies, which are one of the most expensive of all cookies in market. In terms of value, Parle is ahead, by providing more amount than other brands with a promising quality and taste. People of higher income segment are more inclined towards high end health biscuits as compared to moderately priced glucose ones. Packed healthier food usually costs more and the people in a particular segment are ready to pay for consuming healthier biscuits.

As a result of opening up of cross country trades and businesses in the last 15 years, the taste preferences and consumption styles which get developed in one country seem to be developed in other countries as well. Biscuits are one of the most popular snack-food because of their ready to eat nature. The Indian biscuit industry has become crowded with competition and the fact that consumers have fallen in love with foreign brands, like the British brand 'United Biscuits'. The company has biscuits in many different packing's available all across India, especially north. It also has manufacturing unit in India.

If we talk about the consumption composition of biscuits in India, rural accounts for around 55 percent of total, with states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh being the states that consume maximum biscuits in India (Dutta, 2015). It is interesting to know how, when more than 30 big companies have come up on large scale for organized biscuit production, India still remains a country where around 70 percent of the biscuits are produced by small scale sector. The estimated consumption of biscuits in India (Per capita) is around 1.8 Kgs, which has a high disparity in terms of locations and economic classification (Dutta, 2015; Technopak, 2014). In India, Biscuit industry currently contributes around 33 percent of the total production in Bakery industry. Within the biscuit industry, there is a broad classification among 3 major categories: Glucose, Cookies and Cream biscuits. There is a fourth new emerging category of Digestive biscuits, which is gaining momentum in the economically stable segment.

Cookies are the anchors in the category of premium offerings, like Britannia's Good Day (Leader in cookie segment).Even when it may cost as much as Rs. 500 per kg, people in some segments do buy them. Within this category, Nutri Choice Heavens, Sunfeast Delishus are the players which claim their cookies provide both health and taste. Parle's Hide & Seek and Milano are also a part of this category, with Parle itself dominating the glucose segment.

In the glucose segment, Parle is ahead of all, by providing more amount than other brands with a promising quality and taste. The trust level of Parle is too high to be beaten in this segment when compared to other brands. Sunfeast's glucose biscuits are the challenger to Parle G in this category.

When it comes to the cream biscuits, ITC could be called the leader in this category. Among the premium biscuits in this category are Sunfeast Dark Fantasy (Choco Fillz and Choco Meltz) and Mondelez, which entered India with Oreo. Due to huge investments in marketing and very appealing campaigns (for instance, Oreo's bus campaign around 450 small towns in India), there was an increase in sales, for a time period of around 2 years. The overall share of creams would be around 20 percent, and the year on year growth rate has been on a decline recently. As per a media planner on condition of anonymity, "This category is seeing disproportionate marketing outlay accounting for nearly 40 percent of ad spends even though the market share is just about 7 percent (Advertising Age India, 2015). Among other segments, the health biscuit segment, which is around 2-3 percent of total biscuit industry, is very promising. Players like McVities and Britannia have introduced categories of digestive and Marie biscuits, which offer promising future in India.

Britannia and Parle have approximately the same market share of around 28 percent, placing both of them as the market leaders, with ITC's Sunfeast as the next closest competitor claiming around 11 percent market of the total biscuit market share in India. (Economic Times, April 8, 2015).

People with higher income level tend to spend more inclined on high end health biscuits as compared to moderately priced glucose ones. Due to increase in the awareness level regarding the healthy consumption options, people in a particular segment are ready to pay for consuming healthier biscuits.

Vijay Udasi, from Nielsen India, says: "In an average household, biscuits typically come like a repertoire of various segments and categories. The challenge will be to find relevance in that basket." The real challenge now for the major biscuit players in India is to move cream biscuit consumers to higher priced variants or to expensive cookies, and also to bring back the healthy options with more nutritious offerings.

Digestive is less than 1 percent in the market today. Also, in modern trade, McVities has a 40 percent share in the digestive category within India-Excerpts taken from an interview of the CEO of United Biscuits, Mr. Jeff van der Eems, published in Economics Times, India, April, 2013.

'Marie', as per industry reports, is a Rs. 3,000-crore category, growing 9.5 per cent a year. On the other hand, in the digestive category, with estimated sales of around Rs. 150 crore, McVities' all-India share in the digestive segment is around 15 percent.

Various attempts have been made by many companies to enrich the taste and nutrient content of their biscuits, and McVities has been one of them. It has been experimenting with launching different flavours in the Indian market, and Indian consumers have given a mixed response to these experiments.

Literature Review

There has been a good deal of academic research focusing on buying behaviour of consumers which directly affect their repurchase decisions (Yi, 1991). Due to the globalisation and changing preferences in recent years, consumers demand for convenience food including biscuits, snacks and healthier alternatives have been on the riser side (Kitson and Michie, 1998). In India, biscuits are the most common snack along with tea and coffee. It continues to be one of the fastest moving packaged food categories from various retail channels. According to Bloemer and Kasper (1995) the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty could be moderated by respondents on the evaluation of the brand choice. Consumers and retailers are closely connected when it comes to consumption of goods (Bowman and Narayandas, 2001).

While growth of this segment is expected to slow down as manufacturers are offering discounts to push volume sales, which in turn has slowed down the value growth of the industry (Wilson, 2000), still the biscuits are expected to grow by a value Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6 percent at constant prices during the period of forecast (2014). Companies have worked explicitly towards diversifying their distribution in the retail sector while improving the bottlenecks i.e. factors like type of channels, number of new variants and volume, etc. They have out of both necessity and demand, maintained a competitive price in order to enjoy a healthy growth during past few years (Dumond, 2000). Digestive biscuits are the latest addition to the portfolios of all major biscuit companies in India, especially with the rise of health consciousness and need of healthy snacks suitable to the health pattern among people of all age groups. Biscuits no longer remain an impulse purchase in some brands, while they are for others (Berry and Clark, 1986). The average consumer rarely comprehends the amount of thinking that goes into his basket of biscuit purchase. Expectations, generated by information provided, are reported to have an effect on hedonic ratings in the case of health and nutrition claims for biscuits (Carillo, Varela and Fiszman, 2012a; Carillo et al., 2012b).

Consumer satisfaction has been considered very important from various angles, especially in food industry where taste and health are two major issues people consider before making a purchase (Gyrna 1988). It becomes imperative to ensure that consumer behaviour is known in order to make strategies aligned to those behaviours (Cooper, 1990). Bloemer and Kasper (1995) talked about the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty that was moderated by respondents on the evaluation of the brand choice. The acceptability of the new choices in any brand depends upon the past experience of the product and the factors affect the satisfaction of the consumer and it becomes more crucial when comes to make a health choice (Keaveney, 1995).

Biscuits constitute major component of human snacks in most part of the world. It is an unleavened crisp, sweet pastry made from wheat flour, shortening (hydrogenated fat) and sugar, and is usually made light by the addition of baking powder (a mixture of sodium carbonate, sodium bi-phosphate and cereal flour). Wheat flour constitutes the basic ingredient for biscuit production because of its gluten proteins, which are not present in flour of other cereals. Gluten protein forms elastic dough during baking and gives high organoleptic quality to the finished product (Dumond, 2000). Bakery industry is the one of the largest food industries in India with an annual turnover about Rs 3000 billion. The biscuit industry has been growing at an average rate of 15 percent during the past 3 years and this is expected to be maintaining in coming years (IBMA, 2010).

Biscuit consumption per capita in India is 2.1 kg, compared to more than 10 kg in the USA, UK and West European countries and above 4.25 kg in South-east Asian countries, e.g. Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. China has per capita consumption of 1.90 kg, while in the case of Japan it is estimated at 7.5 kg (Pathak and Srivastava, 2009). "If we talk about the organized segment of the biscuit market which is estimated to be 0.44 mn tons whereas the unorganized sector accounts for the balance 0.66 million tons. Within the biscuit category, cream and specialty biscuits are growing at faster pace as compared to the other categories" (Goswami et al, 2013).

Biscuit industry in India in the organized sector produces around 60 percent of the total production, the balance 40 percent being contributed by the unorganized bakeries and United biscuits, being an international company, has made tremendous growth in India in past 6 years after its launch in 2010. Companies like Britannia, Parle, ITC, etc. have created spaces in both the minds of consumers and shelves of retailers in past many years of their operations in India. The hybrid model, what most studies do not highlight, is the need of studying both the consumer and retailer behaviour together, in tandem. The inference would not only help the retailers to gauge the customer's preference but both could be made and utilised for growth of the companies in a more strategic way.

The range of launches in biscuits industry is expanding: While United Biscuits has launched a wide assortment of products under brand McVitie's, GSKCH has introduced Horlicks biscuits in animal shapes, targeting very small kids. It has also extended the Horlicks range to new options like bubble-gum flavour and crunchy cornflakes. Britannia has also expanded the range of its Nutri Choice brand from plain vanilla digestive biscuits to spice- flavoured and diabetic biscuits. ITC has also come up with new variants, such as Marie Light Orange and Marie Light. United Biscuits being world's fourth-largest biscuits maker, is now focusing upon growth in the revenue of India, and not just chasing market share. India is the largest market of McVitie's digestive biscuits in Asia for the company, just after three years of its entry. Also, it's really tough for company to stand up against rivals such as Parle, ITC and Britannia.

Rationale for the Study

Digestive biscuits, as a concept, have evolved in India only in past few years. United biscuits, despite being the harbinger of it, have not been able to cash upon its first mover advantage. Other competitive brands have come into picture, especially Britannia, which have occupied the largest share in the digestive segment along with other segments of biscuits like cream, glucose, etc.

Therefore it becomes critical to study the factors, at the end of both retailers as well as consumers, which have affected the buying behaviour of the consumers and the sale of digestive biscuits. This segment is one of the newly emerging one among all the existing segments, hence it would be beneficial to study it from both an academic as well as corporate point of view.

Jaipur city is an appropriate choice for research, given has a population of 6.6 million and stands as 10th most populous city of India. In cities like Delhi, a stud will reveal the picture at a metro level, which might not be generalised for all other parts of India. Any new concept is very popular in big metros, but this might not be the case with relatively smaller cities. Also, choosing geography like a small city of 3-4 lakh population would not be beneficial as digestive as a concept is not a all popular there. Hence, research could not take place with appropriate data. Digestive biscuits have scalable market in Jaipur and the picture would be much more relevant on a general front.

This study could be helpful in studying new trends in biscuit (or food) industry in order to analyse the changing preferences of consumers. At the same time, it would reveal factors that affect the retailer: decision of keeping a particular category of brand or prefer it over another. It also links the consume behaviour and retailer choices of brands, which forms an essential part of marketing of any commodity especially FMCG.

Problem Statement and Research Objectives

Research agencies and companies do various studies on biscuit industry, but digestive as a concept is not specifically touched upon by many, given limited knowledge among consumers and retailers both. The purpose of this study is to understand the awareness level of Digestive biscuits in Jaipur- From the point of view of both retailers as well as consumers.

In particular, the study has been conducted based on the following research objectives:

* To understand the buying behaviour for digestive biscuits among consumers in Jaipur (India).

* To examine whether people know the difference between 'Digestive' and 'Sugar free' biscuit categories.

* To determine the reasons for retailers keeping/not keeping digestive biscuits of both McVities as well as competitive brands

* To understand retailer perspective of consumer behaviour in case of biscuit purchase

Research Methodology

The practical approach of this study focussed on the buying behaviour of consumers of Jaipur. It aimed at determining why they buy digestive biscuits of a particular brand, how many times, when do they decide to buy it, and what are the factors that they consider important while buying them. Also, it aimed at finding out the availability of all brands of digestive biscuits on retail counters. Hence, the current research is exploratory in nature. The sampling frame used comprises of two segments:

Segment 1: Young age people below the age of 30, who are either college going students or working professionals. These people belong to the geography, Jaipur. A total of 150 responses were collected.

Reason for selection of above target segment: The reason for selecting this sample was to understand the level of awareness of digestive brands among young people, as they are most likely to understand the concept of digestive biscuits, and are the target segment of most of the companies. It would therefore be beneficial to know how the target segment perceives the brand and why does it buy (or not buys) them.

Segment 2: Important retailers across Jaipur city- Out of 943 counters visited, 120 major retailers (On basis of size of retail point and approximate sale it does, including canteens) were selected and interviewed (Qualitative) to understand their perception of McVities and other digestive brands. Also, data of availability of other competitive brands and sub brands of McVities was collected at all these 120 counters.

Reason for selection of above target segment: Since digestive is a relatively new extension in biscuits, it's logical to interview retailers who at least know what McVities and/or digestive mean, or keep them on shelves already. This however doesn't mean that all retailers had knowledge of the brand and category, but selecting the largest of all retailers/ canteens did increase the chance.

Data Collection and Analysis

The self-administered semi- structured questionnaires was designed i.e. for the consumers. The questionnaire for consumers comprised of mostly closed ended and a few open ended questions. Other questions were closed ended, inquiring about the available brands of McVities and other competitors. The Questionnaire of the consumer was intended to yield nominal and ordinal data, so that a quantitative analysis could be facilitated. This was done using the following techniques:

1) Cross Tabulation- Chi Square test

2) Percentage Analysis

3) Factor Analysis

The factor analysis technique was applied on the consumer responses and two factors were extracted. The questionnaire was prepared by taking the factors from the literature review and the expert opinion both from the academicians and practitioners in the FMCG and biscuit industry, and the major factors affecting the buying decision of consumers. A detailed study of distribution system of Jaipur was conducted in order to get idea of the retail scenario of the city. Since the current study has been conducted for the United biscuits so the contact details have been provided by them. The data collected from various set of respondents.

Apart from the data collected from the consumers the preliminary interviews of retailers have been conducted to understand the consumer's perception in an intensive way.

Analysis and Finding

Consumer Survey

The survey floated to consumers yielded many results regarding their buying behaviour.

Demographics

Most of the people surveyed were youngsters. Out of the 150 people surveyed, 102 were between the age group of 15 to 25 years and 48 lied in the age group of 25-30 years. Around 40 percent of the respondents were female and rest were males. In order to know the awareness level of McVities, consumers were asked whether they had heard about McVities or not. Around 90 percent consumers responded with affirmation, which shows that the brand is quite known, even though the concept of digestive is not very clear to all.

Factor Analysis

To understand the nature of the Consumer Demand and Awareness, an exploratory factor analysis is done to understand/explain the factors affecting the consumer awareness of McVities brand.

Extraction Method: Alpha Factoring, Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.

b. The value of Chronbach's Alpha is much above than the required, i.e..895

A scale was developed to understand the crucial factors actually affecting the buying decision behaviour and awareness of consumers. The respondents were required to rate the 9 statements/variables on from 1-10, as least important to most important factors affecting your biscuit purchase. As per the factor analysis, the given 9 factors have been categorized into 2 major factors. Factor 1 is Brand Knowledge and the other is the Product Features. Promotion, advertising, packaging and schemes lie in the Brand Presence, the other 6 factors like flavor, price, quantity, availability, etc. lie in the Product features.

There is one exception of 'Brand name' in Factor 2.

Factor 1: Brand Knowledge

This factor includes all the factors that relate to non-physical aspects of the brand, like promotion, awareness, advertising, schemes, etc. Packaging is lying in this factor as it is a part of brand which appeals the customer from the perspective of brand appeal. Schemes are shown as factors shown in advertisements as well, to make the brand more attractive.

Factor 2: Product Features

Five factors like Price, Quantity, Flavor, Availability and Brand Name are a cluster within this single factor. Four of them are closely related to the physical buying behavior of consumers, while Brand Name is also a part of it. This is due to the fact that brand name is not strongly correlated with the knowledge of brand, probably due to not so strong correlation between Advertising (0.552) and Promotion (0.430).

Buying Decision (For All Biscuits)

It can be observed that buying decision is predominantly made at the retail store itself by majority of consumers.

A chi square cross tab correlation test was run in order to find if there was any correlation between the decision making point (Store/Home) and Actual buying of biscuits.

As per the results of the test, [chi](1) = 0.659, p = 0.417. This tells us that there is no statistically significant association between decision making point and actual buying action of biscuits; that is, it is not necessary that a consumer who makes an on the spot decision of buying is more likely to buy biscuits or vice versa.

Action in case Brand of Choice is not Available (For All Biscuits and McVities- Comparative) I

In case the brand of choice is not available to consumers, 64 percent of them prefer buying any competitive brand within that category of biscuits, instead of looking for it at another retail store. Only 28 percent are loyal enough to look for their preferred brand somewhere else. This shows that convenience is an important factor for consumers and availability of own brand at maximum number of counters is very important. Also, biscuits still are a low involvement product, enough for making consumers change their preference at last minute. Competitors come into play in this case, as lesser availability of McVities as compared to Britannia, which has a very wide distribution network, leads to change of consumer's mind at the retail store itself.

Availability of McVities and other Competitors Across Retail Counters

Following are the availabilities of both McVities and other competitive brands in Jaipur: Total outlets visited: 150 (117 retail shops and 33 canteens)

[FIGURE I OMITTED]

Parle, as can be seen in figure 1, has the highest penetration among all the competitive brands, followed by Britannia and then ITC. Among the competitive brands analysed, McVities has the least penetration in Jaipur.

Perception of 'Digestive' and 'Sugar Free' as same

It is very clear from the chart in Figure II that 36 percent of the people think that both digestive and sugar free are the same categories. This shows that level of awareness of digestive biscuits as a concept is very less. This is a major reason of McVities lagging behind other companies which dominate the market scenario due to their explicit command over other mass-aware categories of glucose and cream biscuits.

Retailer Survey (Field insights)

Retailers have mixed opinions about McVities. While most retailers who were surveyed felt that there is no pull-factor in the brand McVities, very few said so for the digestive category as a whole. Therefore, McVities as a brand was found weak in attracting consumers to retail outlets, and most of them had to adopt a push strategy for selling the same. Push strategy of companies like ITC played an important role in retailer decision making, wherein some retailers were given extremely high margins/extra benefits to keep a particular company's products and display them on the front shelves. Also, some companies pushed digestive brand along with other brands even when the retailer did not require them as per the consumer demand.

McVities as a brand is still new, despite been launched in 2010. Retailers were initially very excited about the brand as they were given freebies like silver coins for promotion. Retailer also said that the brand can survive very well only if it continues with schemes. Many retailers who did not keep McVities biscuits were not aware of the concept of digestive as a whole different category. Some retailers confused it with sugar free, another variety within the McVities portfolio of products. It was very difficult to make the new retailers in relatively smaller retail counter locations understand what digestive is all about.

Majority of the retailers considered McVities as a very high quality product as compared to other competitors like Britannia and Parle. Few mentioned in an interview that certain specific people are regular and loyal customers of digestive brands, who are not ready to compromise with any other product than what they wish to buy. Thus, they felt that retailers, in a way, have lost control over influencing the buying and decision making process of a consumer. Despite of being a low involvement FMCG product, people think twice before spending Rs. 50 or Rs. 100 for biscuits. This is a major reason why McVities had to launch smaller packs of as low price as Rs. 5, which are mostly sold in canteens. Such (Canteen) retailers feel the need of smaller packs of lesser price in order to keep them on shelves and maintain a regular flow.

Retailers require simple procedures of dealing with returns. A couple of retailers said that return and damage form the biggest part of strain in relations between company distributor and them. Products have a shelf life of 9-12 months, and consumers do not want to buy biscuits even 3 months away from expiry. This kind of consumer behaviour has a bullwhip effect on the company, which ultimately bears the loss of revenue.

Retailers display the biscuits as per their own wishes, unless they are given a 'Window', which is a monthly payment given by the company to make sure biscuits are displayed in a particular shelf with display tape of company given to them.

Many new retailers recognized the brand by advertisement- "Morning evening, kya kha rahe ho, biscuit ke naam pe, maida kha rahe ho". This showed how brand awareness is extremely important to improve penetration of a brand. The McVities advertisement, till 2015, has been the one featuring Bipasha Basu. Probably, the company wanted to associate the product with the healthy star image of Bipasha Basu and wanted to encash upon it. However, lately, retailers have started saying that the advertisement has become old and that the company needs to change it in order to create higher brand recall. This is probably the reason that there is a new advertisement for Whole Wheat Marie recently launched, with Kajol in it. They are trying to portray the brand as a very responsible one, just like the mother of two kids featured in the advertisement.

There is a general perception among retailers that customers are becoming health savvy, and hence the consumption of Digestive biscuits is increasing. Few retailers mentioned how half of the customers are those with age 40 and above, which means that a particular segment of population is being targeted by the company and the digestive segment as a whole.

On the whole, the retailer perception of McVities as a brand is that of a quality trusted yet sales-risky venture due to less awareness among people and heavy competition within the digestive space. Retailers feel that Britannia's Nutri Choice has eaten up a considerable share of the digestive segment in which McVities used to be pioneer. Schemes, margins and awareness are the three factors that have led to this shift.

The main objective to approaching the retailers was to get the understanding of the perception and viewpoints of the consumers, with whom they used to deal.

To substantiate the inferences, the retailers of Jaipur have also been approached for the interviews. Since these retailers are the focal point of interaction between company and consumers, their responses would be beneficial for restructuring and rebranding of McVities as a brand and as a product as well.

Some interesting sharings' from the field itself:

Retailers have mixed opinions about McVities. When asked the question "What's the reason of low sales of McVities brand, as compared to the other brands?" Following was the reply of a retailer:

"There is no pull-factor in the brand McVities. It is weak in attracting consumers to retail outlets, and we have to push the product to sell whatever stock we order Companies like ITC push their new and low selling products along with their higher selling and more popular brands. They give us very high margins/extra benefits to keep their products and display them on the front shelves. Why should we then keep other low selling brand with no extraordinarily high margin or demand?"

XYZ Retailer, Bani Park Area, Jaipur, Excerpt from the field.

Upon asking another retailer the same question, he said the following:

We were very excited about the brand, when it was launched in 2010, as the company gave freebies like silver coins for promotion. The brand can survive very well only if it continues with schemes.

ABC Retailer, Tonk Road, Jaipur, Excerpt from the field. A very important aspect that was a part of retailer interview was the fact that what can be done by the company, from retailer's perspective. When asked the question

"What according to you should be the revamping strategy for the company to establish a better share and image in market?"

One of the retailers said the following:

"It is important to display McVities products- They would sell if they would be seen. We would not sell until we are given a 'Window' (It is a monthly payment given by the company to important retailers to make sure biscuits are displayed in a particular shelf with display tape of company given to them)."

PQR Retailer, Mansarovar, Jaipur, Excerpt from the field.

Another retailer

"They should change their advertisement- It's still the one with BipashaBasu. Other brands keep launching new advertisements in a year or two, McVities should do that too."

XYW Retailer, BadiChaupad, Jaipur, Excerpt from the field.

A retailer gave the following insight:

We receive a very handsome amount from XYZ company (One of the leading FMCG players in India), to keep the entire biscuit section filled with only their products and to not keep any other company's biscuits at all. We have to sell other company's biscuits secretly to the consumers who ask for them.

LMN Retailer, Amer Road, Jaipur, Excerpt from the field.

Field Insights and Interpretations

United Biscuits, being a late entrant in Biscuit market of India, has taken various strategic steps to increase the level of consumer awareness. All of the following measures suggest how unlike other industry giants like Parle and Britannia, company has smartly made noise in the otherwise loud biscuit landscape of India. The measures are:

1) Hiring interns from various B-Schools of India. As per discussion of researcher with a current employee, around 30-40 interns are hires annually to conduct market research and gap analysis in various parts of India. This move helps company to save money in terms of compensation, as they do not have to hire full time employees for the work. Also, this gives them a comprehensive insight of market within a time period of 2 months.

2) The company provides biscuit stands to big canteens with sale of more than around Rs. 15000-20000 per month or more. These too, are regularly monitored for proper use and display by the sales representative. The older stands are repaired and not thrown away, and sometimes this responsibility lies with sales representative.

3) Company provides 'Window Payment', a certain payment to some selected big retailers only for keeping their products in sections covered with tapes of McVities wrapped on the border. This ensures visibility and hence, increased awareness.

Conclusion and Discussion

Biscuit industry, being a very big part of the FMCG food and grocery sector, has evolved with time to a scenario where both consumers and retailers expect different yet overlapping things that the companies need to take care of. While consumers still do not consider it a very important thing to decide before buying a low involvement product like biscuit, some brands do take a lead as they are at top of consumer's mind. Hence brands like Britannia and Parle take the lead when it comes to this Top of Mind Awareness, while those like ITC make use of push strategies to ensure availability everywhere. By taking McVities as a reference brand, it has been concluded that absence of any such strategies and other schemes/incentives result in not only lower sales volume but also lower awareness and clarity. People are largely aware of McVities brand and that doesn't pose an issue. The clarity of the concept of digestive and its differentiation from other categories is an issue which company needs to resolve. People are not willing to switch from regular glucose biscuits/butter cookies to digestive for a very crucial reason of taste. There's inertia among people that they develop the first time they taste the biscuit. Also, it was found that Britannia's brand name and Nutri Choice's better taste than McVities has resulted in more sale of Nutri Choice shortly after its launch. The company (United Biscuits) should adopt a rigorous advertising campaign to educate people with the concept of digestive and sugar fee, which many are not clear of. Indian consumers look for value.

Brand awareness and concept of digestive have been found to be varying among consumers, but the fact which remained persistent was that even when people were aware of the brand, the concept wasn't clear. Upon visiting all the retail counters, even when people know that McVities as a brand existed, they were not aware of what McVities Digestive biscuit was all about, and how it was different. Many retailers asked the questions like 'why we should keep it when we already have a sale of other categories and no special demand for digestives from consumers?. Hence, among both retailers and consumers, there seemed to be a difference in 'Brand Awareness' and 'Category Concept'.

As per the authors' observation and interpretation, re-strategizing and analysing the gaps will help the company in gearing up in its own ways, while the new marketing campaigns will be a boon for their brand awareness in future, for catering the needs of health conscious consumers.

Jayant Kapre, president, United Biscuits, says, "We are using the advertising route to promote the popularity of our product and create awareness in the market. In the last three years, we have done four television campaigns, but our latest ad campaign was extremely targeted. We aim to propagate our USP that is rich presence of whole wheat instead of wheatflour in the biscuit, which is good for health."

Retailers are reluctant to keep McVitieson their shelves, which make it imperative for the company to realise that more than the distribution, the perceived brand value is weaker. The company salespeople are ready to go to inner parts of city and the adjoining areas, but retailers are apprehensive of trying McVities, resulting in low presence at retail shops despite company making many efforts. Company needs to be more active in promoting at retailer level. This promotion could be in form of either incentives like banner and racks for keeping biscuits (which the company already does, but is not doing at a very extensive scale), or increasing margins for selected retailers. The company also faces the issue of damage from retailer end, who are guaranteed a return of expiry/damaged biscuits. This situation has two possible outcomes-Either a toll over revenue of company on one side and loss of customer on the other.

The company, therefore, should make sure that it works in tandem with both consumers' and retailers' point of view for the company and products. Company is at the beginning phase of expansion in India, and currently is the right time to take cues from both these segments and make a smart move to grow in a country like India, and to fight the rivals across biscuit industry in order to achieve business sustainability at large.

Limitations

Following were the limitations of study:

1) The geography of research was restricted to Jaipur, Rajasthan only.

2) The customers surveyed were under the age group of 15-30 years.

3) Retailers of selected retail counters (out of the total counters visited) were interviewed. These might not give a comprehensive but a general view of retailer perspective in the region.

4) Due to unavailability of retailers for filling up of quantitative surveys, interviews were conducted by researcher.

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Anupam Narula

Associate Professor, FORE School of Management, New Delhi.

Shallini Taneja

Assistant Professor, FORE School of Management, New Delhi.

Abhishek Tyagi

Inside Sales Account Manager, Dell International Services, Bangaluru.

Table I

Rotated Factor Matrix

                   Factor

                 1       2

Advertising    0.260   0.669
Brand Name     0.719   0.324
Flavor         0.953   0.049
Price          0.520   0.545
Promotion      0.132   0.949
Packaging      0.335   0.683
Schemes        0.176   0.584
Quantity       0.692   0.393
Availability   0.736   0.316

Source: Analysis from the Author's Research

Table II

Inter-Item Correlation Matrix

               Advertising    Brand     Flavor    Price   Promotion
                              Name

Advertising       1.000       0.522     0.305     0.482     0.707
Brand_Name        0.522       1.000     0.761     0.463     0.430
Flavor            0.305       0.761     1.000     0.585     0.216
Price             0.482       0.463     0.585     1.000     0.511
Promotion         0.707       0.430     0.216     0.511     1.000
Packaging         0.677       0.506     0.367     0.479     0.686
Schemes           0.345       0.234     0.112     0.535     0.604
Quantity          0.321       0.546     0.666     0.643     0.387
Availability      0.358       0.679     0.633     0.520     0.436

                Packaging    Schemes   Quantity   Availability

Advertising       0.677       0.345     0.321        0.358
Brand_Name        0.506       0.234     0.546        0.679
Flavor            0.367       0.112     0.666        0.633
Price             0.479       0.535     0.643        0.520
Promotion         0.686       0.604     0.387        0.436
Packaging         1.000       0.399     0.413        0.510
Schemes           0.399       1.000     0.531        0.271
Quantity          0.413       0.531     1.000        0.703
Availability      0.510       0.271     0.703        1.000

Source: Author's Research Analysis

Figure II

Are 'Digestive' and 'Sugar Free' the same thing?

Yes                 22%
No                  42%
Not clear of the    36%
difference

Source: Author's Research Analysis

Note: Table made from pie chart.