simple marketing strategies

I visited the city's main market today, T. Nagar.I needed to purchase household footwear and some fruits and snacks.I boarded the govt. transport bus outside the campus( Bus stop being the IIT)and purchased a ticket for T Nagar.It cost me Rs.3.Collecting a ticket is important. Sometimes the municipality inspectors do random checks for tickets while unboarding. There wasnt much crowd in the bus when i boarded, but my oh my, when I unboarded,the bus was fully flooded with the humans.It was normal as the time was around 10 am which is when most of the shops and offices open up and hence the resulting rush.

After unboarding I walked along the market road and it was then my mind started observing some things and relating them.As I walked down the road, I came across a few temples with some shops and street hawkers,just in front of them.What was interesting about these shops and hawkers was that they all sold things somehow related to temple. Things like photos of Gods w/o Calendars,wood and incense, flowers, mud lamps and other things that may be offered in the temple were being sold.As I passed the temple region, the scenario changed and I found hawkers and shops selling a wide variety of retail items from comb to TV. The market has both huge malls and small unnoticeable shops.The most crowded regions in the market are supposedly the most popular.

however there is a great concentration of shops selling fruit juices in some areas.I thought it was totally absurd. Why have so many shops selling the same item at one place when they can be dispersed in different areas? The simple answer to this is that different regions have different concentrations of buyers. And as a result these juice making shops marked the boundary of the region where they can access many potential customers.These localities may include Bus terminals and Extremely popular shops. However one disappointing thing was that sparing a few, these shops did not sell bottled water.

So as I went deep into the market, I felt hungry, I had my breakfast in one of the most popular fast food store " Saravana Stores" ( the Indigeneous Wal Mart)in the market.What makes it popular?
Well this store goes by the rule of sell more charge less.This simple logic has not only attracted the customers but it has also created a mark on customers.This ultimately leads to high popularity and enhances the companies prestige and profits. This strategy may not be suitable for the low budget shops, so an ingeneous idea they have adopted is to locate their shops near the fast food store.Also some shops appoint salesmen for selling the things.This gives them greater penetration and chance to lure the customers.

Finally,a funny but very tactical observation.The malls are mostly air conditioned and they are always crowded by customerss and relief seekers. It is in such places you find hawkers selling snacks and simple 'on the way' items, making most of the time the potential customer stands there for seeking the cold air from the air conditioned mall.These hawkers rely on the " product pheromones".
Showcasing and manipulating items to ensure their quality in a way to tempt the customer. Temptation yields most of the time and it is there the profit comes in.

Simply put, you dont need to be some hard core marketing strategist to understand some basics, simple observations and the desire to learn from them can make you understand the perennial market.