Vinay Kamath

Chennai, Nov. 3

Ms Vinita Bali chuckles as she recalls her days as a marketing executive in Cadbury when the company introduced éclairs in transparent jars and saw the brand fly. Replicating that experiment, the Managing Director of Britannia Industries Ltd got the biscuits major to launch small packs of biscuits, priced Rs 5, in similar jars and says sales are indeed flying.

Introduced in 2008, Britannia’s small-pack strategy is paying off big for the company and is tracking to be a Rs 250-300 crore business this year. Explaining the consumer insight which led the company to adopt this strategy, Ms Bali says, “You see if you’re out of home, and we sell a lot at railway platforms, and bus terminals, and you’re looking for something substantial to eat, and you buy a pack of biscuits, you would get 17-18 biscuits – you wouldn’t want to eat so many, what would you do with the rest? That’s why people were not buying those packs which were designed to be take-home packs.”

As Britannia found out, it wasn’t just about the accessibility of a product such as Good-Day at a Rs 5 price point but also about a consumer spending Rs 5 for a few biscuits which is enough for him to have with a cup of tea and feel satisfied in terms of a healthy snack.

“In a country like ours there are more people at the Rs 5 price point than at Rs 50. It’s the frequency and velocity; a lot of people buying a little at a time, which adds up to a lot. But you also have to develop a business model which can sustain that,” adds Ms Bali.

Now the company’s biscuit brands such as Bourbon, Treat, Good Day and Tiger have Rs 5 packs in different grammages ranging from 42 gm to 54 gm, placed in jars at all vantage points in bus and railway stations, and where an impulse purchase could happen. A Rs 5 pack of Good Day has six biscuits, while a Bourbon brand offers four for the same price.

The other thing that Britannia homed in on is looking at consumption opportunities out of home. As Ms Bali explains, “We asked ourselves the question: If I am a teenager would I eat something that my mother buys as a grocery item … what would we have to do if we wanted to make biscuits an impulse purchase, like chocolate … and that insight led us to some very interesting things.”

For instance, Britannia launched the four-biscuit pack of Bourbon for Rs 5, which actually looks like chocolate bars in a jar.

“That’s what we call a personal consumption pack, which you can carry along with you,” she adds. This packaging has gone down well with its target segment of teenagers.

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