st
Publish by Global Vision Publishing House
Edited by
M. Ganesh Babu, G. Vani and Dr. N. Panchanatham
*Uma Gulati
Abstract
Consumer researchers have endeavored to develop measurement instruments to gauge the level of consumer innovativeness, because such measures of personality traits provide important insights into the nature and boundaries of a consumers’ willingness to innovate. Innovative marketing is a essential tool in the market. The companies adopting innovative marketing strategies for survival and avoiding competition in the market. Changes in demographic, social and cultural factors changing the behaviour of consumer. Consumers are expecting innovation or up gradation in their product because of technological innovation. With the inevitability of change looming large over the horizon, Indian companies must learn from their western counterparts; to upgrade the technology to produce innovative products to satisfy the customers
INTRODUCTION
Slinging in touch with changing consumer needs and with their response to your products and services will be vital to a company’s success in the coming years. Changing demographic information, markets, family structures, alternative lifestyles, household sizes and life-cycle stages (such as teens, young adults, seniors) have altogether changed the today’s consumer and his behaviour. They will also need to identify differences in buying behaviour. Innovative marketing methods will be required to more narrowly define target audiences into highpriority consumer segments. The dictum of innovative marketing should be, “consumer adores his brand and you should adore consumer.”
The key business inventiveness of the past decade has been the re-engineering of companies to make them the accurate size for global competition. So focused have been on improving profitability, that investing in innovative products and new marketing approaches has been much lower on the priority list for many. As a consequence, product and service differentiation has battered. Since market share is not secure these days, and product life cycles are getting shorter, there is a greater need than ever for product and service innovation. New product development can no longer take a year or two from concept to execution - six months is becoming the maximum. Here, the need is to first of all define innovative marketing and innovative consumer. It is not easy to define the both terms.
* Visiting Faculty, New-Delhi. Email: uma_gulati_del@yahoo.com

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INNOVATIVE CONSUMER
Innovative consumer is not only an individual who determines what, when, where, how and from whom to purchase goods and services but much more than this. Today the buying trends and habits of consumers in the purchasing and usage of goods and services are changing drastically.
A firm can be innovative only if it is clear about innovative consumer. In fact innovation itself means much more than generation of new idea. The past decade has seen major changes in the behaviour of consumer. They just not want value for money; rather they drive value from product, process, people, marketing and technology. Today, they want everything new and it is very difficult to define this new. They would like to purchase the potential and augmented product or in simple words they would like to have tomorrow’s product.
Consumers want innovative quality, with not only real benefits but also multibenefits.
He wants to purchase one product but would like to derive multi benefits from that. This is the reason that companies have started positioning the products on the basis of multi benefits and here the best example is of dettol antiseptic liquid which has been positioned and promoted as an antiseptic for cuts and wounds usage of the household market for years and now it has been promoted on multi usage of the brand. Take a bottle of dettol antiseptic and one can find the multi uses on its label apart from cuts and wounds like mouthwash and gargle, as dandruff shampoo, for shaving and washing baby’s nappies. This is just an example of innovation on the basis of usage; otherwise it can be on the basis of any plank of marketing.
Number of times, author has thought about brand loyalty. The question which is associated with thought is- Should brand loyalty be removed from marketing? Are consumers not loyal to their brands? If not, what is the solution to make them brand loyal? This concept has changed in recent times. Consumer has number of issues with him related to brand loyalty. Some of the important issues:
Œ I am the owner of the brand, so I own the brand, the brand doesn’t own me.
ΠI want to have everything that respects the money I utilized to purchase a product/ service.
Œ If I don’t get it …. I will switch over to another and I will convey this to others.
ΠWhy should I be loyal! If at all my brand will not loyal to me.
ΠAnd Yes, I am supposed not to go for any change in my brand; if my brand does the best to me.
All these views say brand loyalty is all about the best satisfaction from the product/ service they consumed. But is it possible for a business organization to skip always on the consumer’s track. Yes, it has to because consumer has become very innovative in his ideas and expectations. The loyalty of people towards brand is not dead; rather they have become very careful. The problem is not brand loyalty but rather why companies and brand director have abandoned their brand promise and original values and downgraded the graded the brand with questionable quality and still except to have the same level of attraction and name recognition. Many brands have cheated consumers and now consumers are cheating them. “Do not forget your customers, keep tab on hanging needs of the customers.”

Innovative Marketing for Innovative Consumer An Innovative Perception of Indian Market 187
INNOVATIVE MARKETING
Innovative marketing means solving consumer problem through creative solutions. The firm has to be innovative right from idea generation and innovation goes on till creation of corporate culture, which means ensuring top-down support and getting right people on board. Yes, this will surely foster innovation. The past decade has seen major improvement in consumer behaviour as consumers are not just happy with line extensions, product updates, and new services. What they want is something transformational, revolutionary and daring creativity is required.
Marketing today often starts with, “What do we want to sell?” instead of tackling, “Who is the customer and what does he want?” It is aimed at getting people to buy things that the company wants to sell when it should be aiming at, “How can I provide things the customer wants to buy?” Marketing has also dangled around to support selling, instead of the other way around. In addition, there is the problem of companies separating their sales from their marketing efforts. Marketing is really the planning function that impels all the other tactics you use in your business. It is not easy to make marketing plan and even if you have a good plan it is not easy to make marketing plan work.
Actual defect in today’s marketing is continuing to do things the way we have always done them or believing that one piece of the plan is more important than another. The question we should ask about our marketing is, “Why? Why do we do that? Why do we do it that way?
How does that help the customer?” What we are more worried about is, “How that does helps the organization?” The thought is to recognize not only why you do things the way you do them, but to further ask questions about your results. “What are the results we get from the way we do it?” If we are not customer oriented, then we won’t be successful. And success means more customers, higher sales, and higher profits. Our plan must begin with consumers and end with consumer. “Understand consumer to give value and avoid consumer myopia”
CONCLUSION
Today consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and knowledgeable about products.
An important challenge for large companies is to gain an understanding of consumers. You cannot just work on pre conceived ideas about consumers. Peter drucker said years ago that the purpose of a business is to create value, and the reward is profit. Yes, we have been doing manipulations to generate profits and lost the sight for creating value. Firms are still under perception that their brands are giving utmost value to consumers and consumers are satisfied. They never had a thought as,” how a brand can give value without understanding consumer. They are suffering from consumer myopia, which is narrow view of consumer.
The new marketing approach is, “Innovative marketing for innovative consumer”. This is an innovative perception of Indian market. Consumer has become so creative that he can ask for anything. This anything can be everything for you with the help of innovative marketing.
Understand the pain of consumer and add emotions to product and services you are offering, they will buy benefits as they will get peace of mind that comes out of these benefits.

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