Twitter on the way to take on Facebook

The news of how Twitter is planning to take on Facebook in social media turf was appeared on www.mashable.com. As the fight to challenge the supremacy of Facebook is heating up, different social networking sites are revamping their looks and offerings to stay relevant to the users. In order to do that, they are borrowing each other’s ideas, albeit with different name. Facebook came with ‘Lists” and “Real Time Feeds”, heavily borrowed from Google Plus and Twitter respectively. Similarly, twitter had added photo and video sharing features. Now Twitter is adding on more features to make it more relevant to the end users, breaking out of their 140 character identity.

Brand Pages: Marketers can customize their headers which makes their logos and taglines more prominent. They can also choose a tweet to stay at the top of their page and that tweet will automatically expand, even if the visitor doesn’t click on it, to show a photo or video.

Profile Pages: Twitter profile page will look more like Google Plus or Facebook profile page with user information.

In Line conversation and video: Along with showing media associated with the tweets in the side bar, same content can now be inserted directly to the feed with just one click. Once user opens up the tweet to view the additional information, it stays open in their feed.

Discovery through connections: A user can know that what connections are retweeting, following and favoriting.

This has been the story on www.mashable.com . But having done so, isn’t twitter becoming more a clone of Facebook? Further, what differentiation a user will have among different networking sites? Marketer may have brand page on every networking sites, but its effectiveness will be seen with the number of users visiting that site in general and brand page in particular. For a marketer, more will be the merrier, but creating innovative content for different sites will be quite a challenge and so will be the analytics of real time feeds.  Too much conversation may create cacophony and positive results may be difficult to filter out.

As far as Twitter is concerned, with more than 200 million active users, it has enough user base to take best benefits out of it, only marketers need to watch out and work hard.

FDI in Multi-Brand Retail In India

 

I need not to write how important food is for all us and so the point, from where we buy it. It is as important, if not less than agriculture, because it provides an outlet to it for value realization. Moreover millions of Indians are dependent on it for their employment.

There has been a lot of debate and criticism, some positive and lot negative about allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail in the country. I personally believe that foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail is very much required due to following reasons:

1. It will help in reducing discontinuity in marketing information: Food inflation, as we all know, plays a very crucial role in bringing or dissipating smile from common Indian’s face. And this inflation is caused by discontinuity in market information about the availability of agricultural produce (Carry Over Stock + Production + Import – Export- Stock Kept for seeds – Wastage) for sale, along with other factors. This leads to frequent floating of rumour in the market and so the increase in food prices. As the organized retail is known to set processes and record of all their activities, the process of collecting the information about stock status will also get structured. Increase in the demand of information will see the investment in intelligence gathering and its use. This will go a long way in reducing volatility in the prices of agricultural commodity and so the inflation.

2. It will help in reducing the post harvest losses: India is one of the largest producer of lots of agricultural items, but at the same time, it is the net importer of various agricultural commodities as well. Capital formation in the field of warehousing, cold storage, logistics etc., has been biggest challenge so far in reducing the post-harvest losses. It requires a lot of money and government can’t play a direct role of investor in entire country due to its vastness. It has to better frame the policy, protect the benefit of common man and let private players put their money and be legitimate partner in distribution channel. Foreign investment in capital formation in warehousing, cold chain, logistics etc will go a long way in reducing the post harvest losses. It will help in increasing the availability of food product, bringing the inflation down.

3. It will help in better marketing of the produce: Some of the produce gets wasted due to unavailability of marketing strength in the hands of farmers and horticulture is the biggest example. It is not the fact that India does not need those things, but small farmers are not able to take their produce to the consumers. FDI in multi-brand retail bring in expertise, money and marketing strength to get the better realization out it.

4. It will help in reducing the food inflation: India is a food deficient country in some of the commodities, but biggest producer in some other is also the reality. Better post harvest availability, better marketing of agriculture produce, streamlining of information and market intelligence will go a long way in reducing the inflation.

5. It will help in increasing the tax revenue: Growth of organized retail has opened a source of revenue for the government. Organized retail players keep their book of accounts correct and pay all taxes as mandated by the rule of land. Growth in this sector will open a new avenue of tax collection from this sector. Better tax collection will mean more for spending on the social services by the government.

6. It will help in improving the quality of food available for common consumer: This is the hard reality but consumers of our country are not getting quality food product due to various reasons and the intention of manipulators in the distribution channel. The rampant practice of impurities in the food products, despite best of efforts by government agencies is putting too much pressure on health of the consumers and so on the available health infrastructure. Organized retail, being associated the big brand and big industrial houses, put utmost importance to the quality of food being sold from their stores. They can easily be compelled to abide by the rules of land and it will help the consumers a long way.

7. It will help in better realization of prices for their produce to the farmers: It is well known fact that direct purchase by corporate sector has benefited the farmers in terms of expertise, knowledge, inputs and most importantly the price. As more players will be in the market, farmers will have more buyers and scope to get even better realization.

8. It will help in creating employment at various levels: It will help in increasing the employment at various level and various locations in the country. It will help in limiting the migration of work force to a certain extent, because multi-brand retail is a local subject and people, who are otherwise migrating to other states for employment will get employment in their state itself.

9. It will not take away the employment of pop-n-mom store owners: As against the criticism, FDI in multi-brand retail will not take the employment of pop-n-mom stores. Due to operational complexities (available space to open the store at good location, on time supply chain problems, trained manpower, etc.), organized retail players can’t open convenience stores at every nook and corner. Further, purchase decision of consumers not necessarily depends on low pricing only. Lot of other factors like customer service, credit and convenience plays a crucial role in the purchase decision. Initially, it may impact the business a bit, but will see stronger local player as well.

10. It will lead to the growth of new breed of entrepreneur in the country investing in food processing: Growth in organized multi-brand food retail will lead to investment in food processing industry and open new avenues for people who want to invest in it. Not only it will have the multiplier effect on creating employment, but it will also help in inclusive growth of the society, because as the business logic and compulsion goes, food processing units will be located near the source itself.