Tanishq: Positioning to Capture the Indian Woman's Heart

Case Analysis Report

Tanishq: Positioning to Capture the Indian Woman's Heart

I. Case Summary:

The case study here provides us with the insight of how Tanishq has adopted different strategies to position itself as a mainstream jewelry brand and differentiate itself from the competitors, in the Indian jewelry market. GoldPlus, on the other hand which was launched nine years after Tanishq had entered the jewelry market, is also a subsidiary of the same holding company, which is targeted towards serving the customers which Tanishq was not serving, plain wedding jewelry in rural and semi -urban market.

Tanishq, first started as a brand name for jewelry watch of Titan, was targeted towards the Indian high end customers. By then it was positioned as an ego satisfier. The reason for failure of Tanishq in the initial phase was that the company followed a selling concept. They made the product first and then tried to sell it. The consumer preference was not considered while designing the 18 karat jewelry. Over time Tanishq has undergone through a lot of changes in its marketing policies and strategies to position itself as a mainstream jewelry firm rather than targeting a small customers of the whole jewelry market. Tanishq, established in 1995, challenged the established family jeweler and introduced new rules in precious jewelry. Tanishq spread awareness to the public about alleged impurity in Gold jewelry across India. Tanishq introduced innovations like Karat meter, the only non-destructive means to check the purity of gold and machine made jewelry. Tanishq was introduced as jewelry for adornment and bore a western appeal; it was targeted towards modern women. But as a largest part of the Indian jewelry market is dominated by traditional jewelries, Tanishq had to move from being modern to being traditional. In its errand, Tanishq adopted different strategies at different points in time to capture customer value, to survive competition from local market, to reduce cost and to modernize the tradition in an innovative way. Today Tanishq has over 80 stores all over India.

GoldPlus, which was solely introduced to reach out the jewelry market in the rural areas, was targeted towards selling traditional plain jewelry, which were perceived by the customers as investment and worn during festivals and weddings. It also adopted different marketing strategies to position itself as a traditional jewel brand. However it has only been serving two localities through franchisees where Tanishq has no presence.

Now having two brands of its own dealing in the jewelry market of India the firm faces a problem; which one should go after the plain jewelry market in the rural areas. As noted earlier 80% of the jewelry market of India is dominated by traditional jewelries