Establishing True Lifestyle Brand in India: An Integrated Marketing Mix Framework

Humongous size of Indian retail market, evolution of modern and external brands friendly retailing formats in addition to attracting many Global lifestyle brands has also prompted many Indian exporters, manufactures, conglomerates and entrepreneurs to launch Indian lifestyle brands. It is evident that only few Indian brands are able to create true lifestyle brand image in their employees, investors, competitors and consumers mind and trueness level of majority of Indian lifestyle brands is still a question. Majority of developing and developed Indian lifestyle brands assume that the success of a lifestyle brand is measured basis the revenue or profit they generate and are impatient and unaware of implicit long- term strategical benefits of creating a true lifestyle brand image in consumers mind. It is true that India is one of the countries with consumers belonging to widest range of Religions, Regions, Languages, Sub-Cultures and Economic backgrounds which makes it very difficult for any lifestyle brand to own a true lifestyle brand image at National level and makes it furthermore important for them to be more careful and efficient in ensuring adaptation of right Marketing Mix. It is observed that majority of Indian lifestyle brands believe they have adopted right Marketing Mix and it is yielding best possible revenue and profit. This belief / assumption always distracts them from working on their existing Marketing Mix and they rather spend most of their time in finding elements which are new or latent in nature to be added to the existing Marketing Mix. In this research work we have evaluated existing Marketing Mix of few select Indian lifestyle brands across various product categories and consumer target groups to design a new Marketing Mix by just rationalizing and re-prioritizing all the elements and sub elements of basic “4P’s” of McCarthy’s original ‘Marketing Mix’ proposition along with taking clues from Lavidge and Steiner’s original ‘Hierarchy of Effects Model’.

predominantly from India, competitive pricing remains one of the key challenges as far as their sustainable success in Indian market is concerned. Liberty, Paragon and few more. Only few names from the list of more than 5000 brands possibly indicating that in spite of humongous population and the retail market size in India, majority of Indian lifestyle brands have failed to establish themselves as true lifestyle brands. We attribute this failure majorly to the Marketing Mix being adopted by these brands in addition to unorganized brands and retailers still having majority of the share in Indian retail market. Figure 1 depicts product offering of typical lifestyle brands in India. Dominantly majority of lifestyle brands in India offer just one of these and a very few cater to multiple product offering to multiple consumer groups.

LITERATURE REVIEW:
2.1 Marketing Mix concept in literature can be traced back to 1940's and can be attributed to Borden, N.H. [6] as the first one to mention such a concept in general. Later in 1960's Edmund Jerome McCarthy gave a framework to basic elements of Marketing Mix which is globally known as "4P's" of Marketing Mix of which, the first one being 'Product', second one being 'Price', third one being 'Promotion' and the fourth one being 'Place'. Many researchers through their studies have criticized the "4P's" Marketing Mix concept arguing that the framework has shortcomings and only suitable for traditional marketing strategies [7 to 10]. However, many studies have provided their consensus that "4P's" framework of Marketing Mix is a powerful tool in marketing till today and they have been used by majority of management practitioners and researchers [11]. Many researchers across domains such as Marketing Theory, Relationship Marketing, Services Marketing, Retail Marketing, Industrial Marketing and Online Marketing, whether or not agreeing to the "4P's" framework have continuously suggested many additional elements to be added to the original "4P's" framework and proposition of Marketing Mix of which few key elements are; Political Power and Public Opinion Formulation [12]; Customers, Competitors and Corporation [13]; Capabilities [14]; Mapping of Marketing Mix Elements [15]; Services and Staff [16]; Value, Viability, Variety, Volume and Virtue [17]; Performance, Penalty, Perceptions and Process [18]; Marketing Triad Marketer, Employee and Customer [19]; Customer Orientation, Customer Needs, Convenience, Customer's Cost and Communication [20]; Product Extras, Reinforcing Promotions, Sales-Force Connections, Specialized Distribution and Post-Purchase Communication [21]; Relationships, Network, and Interaction [22]; Relationship Marketing [23]; Personalisation, Personnel, Physical Assets and Procedures [24]; Communication, Customisation, Collaboration and Clairvoyance [25]; Relationships, Neo-Relationship and Networking [26]; Participants, Physical Evidence and Process [27 to 28]; Concept Mix, Cost Mix, Channels Mix, Communication Mix [29]; Intangibility, Inseparability, Perishability and Variability of Services [30]; Differentiation, Customer Contact and Unique Vision on Quality Parameter [31]; Personnel [32]; Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 consumer [59]; (d) sales person's efforts to understand the consumer brand preference and showcasing products/SKUs/models in relation to the preference [60]; (e) sales personnel's capability to explain the features of products showcased to consumers and their confidence level while explaining the differentiation among a variety of products showcased [61] and (f) the range of products/SKUs/models showcased by the sales personnel in relation to price and utility expected by the consumer [62]. Another important aspect in retailing which has a significant impact on consumer repeat visit intention and loyalty for a retail store is the sales personnel's perception and predisposition about a consumer who he/she is attending to. The majority of sales personnel develop their mindsets to segment consumers into preferred consumers and non-preferred consumers and this mindset play an important role in the way the consumer would get treated by the sales personnel [63 to 65]. Few studies believe that the way in which sales personnel interact with consumers needs to be customized to each consumer and this could possibly be able to determine their success. The customer orientation is said to happen when the sales personnel and consumer together practice the marketing concept. They have clearly stated that just the interaction between sales personnel and consumer does not yield to this orientation, it needs to encompass most of the marketing concepts driven centrally by the company [66 to 67]. Later, this definition of consumer orientation was further narrowed down by coming up with two key constructs, the first one being sales personnel's tendency to ensure consumer needs are met and the second one being the level of sales personnel's enjoyment in doing so [68]. It is also believed that what can lead to sales personnel enjoy the process of interaction with consumers and ultimately selling a product is their strong orientation to learning [69]. It is also important to note, various studies have shown that 70% of the purchase decisions are made in-store by most of the customers [70]. Researchers have also defined price image as "buyer attitude towards price on the assortment level" [71]. Studies find that, the zone-level pricing among stores at different location belonging to a same retailer or brand is mainly motivated by price discrimination [72], overall store / brand price image is developed in consumers mind by combining general price perceptions in relation to individual product / brand available in a retail store [73] and multi-location retailers can continue to have differential pricing strategies for different locations and geographies but at the same time they need to clearly understand that this differential pricing strategy has an impact on both overall profitability and consumer welfare [74]. It is true that store location plays an influential role in consumer store choice decisions, at the same time store location being a long-term capital lock-in decision plays an important role for retailer's overall strategic planning. Any location Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 which has inherent properties of attracting consumers is the best location for any retailer and having a store in such locations brings both strategic and competitive advantages to the retailer, whereas, it will take longer time and huge store losses for any retailer to come out of a bad store location. Good store location could also be analysed by; (a) the amount of relevant consumer traffic flow, be it pedestrian traffic or vehicular traffic; (b) parking facilities; (c) store composition; (d) specific site; (e) terms of occupancy, (f) accessibility, (g) travelling time, (h) location convenience, (i) other complimentary stores present in the catchment [75]. Researchers have argued that it is no more just merchandising, which is important for successful retailing, what is becoming more and more important now a days is other aspects of store operations which includes various other aspects including inventory management [76]. We have also noted that, for many, the choice of store format was and is one of the important research subjects among many researchers beginning from the 70's of the 20th century.
The authors of many of earlier studies have attempted to rationalize store choice using different approaches, models and frameworks with respect to internal and external factors to the consumer such as (a) store attributes (b) situational factors, (c) consumers' households, (d) consumers' demographics, (e) consumers' shopping patterns, (f) consumers' attitudes toward stores, (g) implied importance, and (h) weightage of price levels and (i) the brand. It is also noted that most of the store choice studies were carried on same store formats viz., i) supermarkets, ii) discount stores [77 to 85]. It is imperative to understand the existing literature, theories, models and frameworks on retailing across formats, as a significant proportion of lifestyle brand's success in establishing itself as a true lifestyle brand in the consumers mind is moderated by brand's and consumer's choice of retailing format also. Retailing in India has gone through many stages of evolution such as liberalization, organized retailing, globalization, digitalization, and urbanization. Retailing in India was and is heavily driven by unorganized retailers and the same is evident by the sheer market share it owns even today in spite of Indian retailing have had gone through various stages of evolution. Various studies report a favourable and improving market share for organized retailers. Organized retailing in India is expected to have approximately 25 percent of the market share by the year 2021 which was at 12 percent in the year 2017 [86]. We believe that the unorganized retailers also have evolved over a period of time in modifying their Marketing Mix to adopt changing consumer mind set and growing competition from organized retailers, thus one can attribute the slow penetration of organized retailing in India to this open mind set of unorganized retailers to constantly work on their Marketing Mix. In turn, this becomes a classic example of a considerable magnitude to confirm that the Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 "4P's" framework of McCarthy which was conceptualized sixty years ago holds true even today in India. One could argue that, if unorganized retailers begin to turn in to even semi-organized retailers, then it really poses significant challenges to organized retailer in India to cope up with unorganized retailers in India. It becomes inevitable for organized retailers to keenly focus on their Marketing Mix strategies and strive to create differentiation across various elements of Marketing Mix.

Consumer preference or choice of brand and success of a brand depends upon the brand's personality. It
is important for the marketer to constantly work on strategies to convert the existing brand image into equity [87]. Few researchers have investigated the correlation among the competition of brands, formation of consumers' attitude and intention to choose a particular brand or alternatives being offered to the consumers at a given point of time and the place of the offering. Findings of these studies confirm that consumers' evaluations, understandings, and knowledge about a particular brand of their choice are not just the key influencer of creating intentions of buying a product belonging to a brand, it is also consumers' perspectives and perceptions toward another alternative or brand available in the offering [88]. There are few brands which have gained strong brand equity owing to consumers having special, favourable association with such brands in their memories and these brands were able to create higher perceived quality, awareness about the brand name and ultimately leading huge loyal consumers over a period of time [89 to 91]. Consumers tend to correlate their personality with the brand personality they are willing to associate with, wherein they attribute this to their demographic characteristics, physical characteristics, personal traits and, cognitive abilities consequently leading them to buy a brand's product to implicitly or explicitly express / showcase their personal image or identity [92 to 93].
Abundant literature is available on Brand personality, image, equity, experience, association, advertisement, endorsements, and loyalty as a result of contributions from many researchers across domains.
We believe that Lavidge and Steiner's original 'hierarchy of effects model' conceptualized during 1960's, that the consumer's journey of purchase decision begin with 'Awareness', flows through 'Knowledge', 'Liking', 'Preference', 'Conviction', and ends with a 'Purchase' [94] which was later used in the consumer loyalty studies whereby researchers extended this six-stage model further by adding two more elements such as Repeat Purchase and Referring the brand / product / service to others post-Purchase. This model and framework are still relevant, and we intend to use basic principles of these models in this study. We also determinedly believe Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 that, all the new elements suggested by various researchers were inherent elements within "4P's" proposition which was originally framed by McCarthy sixty years ago and therefore through this research study we intend to customize the original "4P's Marketing Mix framework to Indian lifestyle brands adopting which they could possibly overcome the challenges they are facing due to their existing Marketing Mix and establish themselves as true lifestyle brands in consumer's mind.

OBJECTIVES:
Key objectives of this research were to i) understand lifestyle brands market in India; ii) understand evolution and performance of Indian lifestyle brands; iii) understand existing Marketing Mix of few select Indian lifestyle brands; iv) analyse recommendations from previous research studies; v) design and propose an integrated Marketing Mix framework and iv) recommend systematic approach for executing the new Marketing Mix.

METHODOLOGY:
To ensure wholistic approach to find answers to our key research questions, we have adopted mix of various research methodologies available in the research methods and designs literature as detailed in this section.

Secondary Research:
Intense and in-depth analysis of data available in the public domain was carried to collect data relating to various aspects of lifestyle brands in India through company websites, company annual financial reports, Government data base, trade, and business journals. Research works relating to Indian lifestyle brands was surveyed extensively to collect insights, recommendations, and frameworks.

Quantitative Primary Research:
In the first stage, few lifestyle brands in India were selected who can represent a) different product categories such as fashion; functional, life-stage specific, product specific, gender specific, and need specific products; b) offering single-product category, and multiple-product categories; c) serving different consumer target groups at low, mid-low, mid, mid-high, high, and premium price positioning; d) selling their products through local retailers either directly or using distributors, regional retailers either directly or using distributors, national retailers, exclusive brand outlets (EBO) operated directly by the brand, EBOs operated by franchisee, online EBO store operated either directly or using third parties and, online marketplaces; e) products manufactured from own factory, contract manufacturers both inside and outside India; f) across developing brands, developed brands, and, established brands. In the second stage, data was collected from these select lifestyle brands to quantitatively map their existing Marketing Mix and draw inferences.

PROPOSED MARKETING MIX:
Before we theoretically design a new Marketing Mix framework or proposition, we thought, it would be ideal to first understand the existing Marketing Mix of select lifestyle brands and evaluate if the same is efficient in establishing a true lifestyle brand image across employees, investors, competitors and consumers mind. In addition to taking clues from the direct interviews of employees representing all the departments and functions, we have analysed the existing sales data, consumer data, terminologies, categorization, key result areas, key performance indicators, data hierarchy, organizational hierarchy, and key business objectives through which we have assessed the attitudes of the entire organization towards existing Marketing Mix in relation to data available.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 Figure 2 depicts the existing Marketing Mix which was common across all the Indian lifestyle brands selected for the research study. One can observe that this shows a classical and traditional Marketing Mix wherein, standard "4P's" have been utilized to strategically position the brand. It is perfectly fine not to invent new "P's" but at the same time, the framework seriously ignores the rationalization of each of these "P's" in accordance with consumers' life-stage needs and forces consumers to patronize with different brands for different needs, occasions, price points and retailing formats. Majority of sub elements of the framework have been derived from standard and general way of categorization which are followed by competitor and could possibly lead all the personnel in the organization also deliver results which are just average or below average thereby seriously failing to achieve true lifestyle brand image.

Existing Marketing Mix:
Majority of the employee roles were defined based on general classification and categorization of products and they were all significantly skewed in favour of supply side capabilities. For instance; i) an organization is strong in manufacturing or exporting a specific product category and thus decides to launch a domestic lifestyle brand for such product categories in India; ii) category management team had category managers for specific product categories wherein each of these category managers were concerned about their category profitability level irrespective of its positive or negative impact on the consumer's overall life-time value and satisfaction towards the brand; iii) retail planning team had planners for specific product categories and retailing formats wherein each of these planners were only concerned about the inventory levels and turns of their product categories and retailing formats rather than the overall inventory mix of the brand and its impact on consumers perception over the brand image; iv) marketing team had managers for specific category, tasks and retailing formats grouped together and majority of the promotions were designed and communicated to consumers in isolation that too skewed towards announcing discount related promotional activities; v) sales personnel in the store were allocated specific product categories owing to which the sales pitch to consumers was in silos and the store whether EBO or SIS across retailing formats as a whole could never focus on consumers' life-time value, consumers' complete needs across different product categories and most importantly vi) the store / brand sales team failed to create positive perceptions in consumer's mind about the brand.
The most important aspect of "4P's" framework is internal and external 'People', internal being the employees and external being the consumers and how these internal people 'employees' utilize the basic "4P's" of the Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 Marketing Mix to ultimately influence the external people 'consumers' through processes. In the existing Marketing Mix this aspect was completely ignored. Most of the employees, employee roles, products, processes, performance indicators, promotions, communication tools, campaign contents, campaign methodologies, advertising techniques, product displays, control systems, retailing formats chosen, weightage allocated to different retailing formats, planning cycles and most importantly 'unit economics' were tuned with supply side of the brand rather than demand side. As a result, select Indian lifestyle brands, a) were failing to collect consumer data efficiently; b) were unable to retain majority of consumers; c) could not witness consistent growth in revenue and profit; d) never seen majority of EBO and SIS stores delivering profits across online and offline retailing formats; e) were unable to manage cash flow in efficient manner; f) had piled up huge inventory with much lower inventory turns than industry average; g) were carrying higher level of inventory cover; h) were unable to derive optimal organizational structure, number of sales personnel in a store, EBO store size, SIS size, store location, city type, discount level, category mix and most importantly, i) were failing to gain any strategic and competitive advantage over other lifestyle brands in the market.    We have classified promotions by discount type, discount method, discount level, scope of discount consumer group. Space-on-Hire: A promotional technique wherein the brand will constantly attempt to hire advertising places available within the store in which the brand is present across different retailing formats and places to create catchment specific 'familiarity' of the brand with its target consumer group both existing and potential in the store area. Catchment-Centric Advertisements: A promotional technique wherein the brand will constantly attempt to advertise outside the store in which the brand is present but within the store's catchment Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 area across different retailing formats and places to create catchment specific 'awareness and familiarity' of the brand with its target consumer group both existing and potential in the catchment area.  ∑ (L1, L2, L3, L3. L4, L5, L6, L7)  The mathematical structure clearly demonstrates that, overall brand profitability is directly proportional to product group mix, price lining mix, promotion mix and the type of place the brand is located and if skewed predominantly towards the priority proposed in the new Marketing Mix could possibly lead to higher consumer repeat visits and consumer retention thereby increasing the probability of establishing a true lifestyle brand in employees, investors and consumers mind. The road to brand profitability and true lifestyle brand image establishment journey in fact is full of mathematically derived numbers which are mostly 'output' in nature, the only one number that influence all these output and derived numbers is the total number of invoices / bills being generated by the brand's sales personnel and most importantly the product group composition of majority of these invoices / bills. If majority of bills are composed of products which have explicit capability to drive consumers' repeat purchase behaviour, repeat store visit frequency and in turn the retention rate would be detrimental in establishing a true lifestyle brand image. Thus, the grouping of each sub elements of "4P's" clubbed with priority matrix mix within among "4P's" which have been designed as part of the proposed Marketing Mix plays an important role in deriving the strength of the proposed model [109]. The grouping and prioritization are the key changes cum rationalization being proposed to the existing Marketing Mix.

Overall Brand Profit/Loss (BP) = (E -L -P3C -Central Office Employee Cost)
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 The Schematic representation of this journey is presented in Figure 4. One can clearly see that every milestone in the journey to final brand profitability is important, but at the same time it is imperative for lifestyle brands to understand the difference among input, output, fixed, variable, and derived milestones of this journey. Our proposed Marketing Mix has deliberately considered the role of each of these components while designing the new proposition and significantly gives importance to 'input' variables. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214

EXECUTION OF PROPOSED MARKETING MIX:
We are cognizant of the fact and it is inevitable that, the magnitude of changes and rationalizations proposed to

Supply Side
Create / Own wider Unique Brand Properties i) Own and use these unique properties to promote the brand. ii) Use them as strong communication contents. iii) Each product to be a rational combination of these properties to ensure optimal total product cost.
Build / Nominate wider Supply Side Partners i) Use specialists in each area of supply. ii) No single product to be a creation of single partner vendor partner. iii) Costs rationalization. iv) Make it hard to reproduce a product by any competitor.

Demand Side:
In the proposed Marketing Mix we have prioritized Product-Market penetration over advertising activities. We believe that Lavidge and Steiner's original 'hierarchy of effects model' conceptualized during 1960's, the consumer's journey of purchase decision begins with 'Awareness' [94].
'Awareness combined with Familiarity' should be given priority in the beginning stages of establishing a true lifestyle brand. Consumer retention rate or consumer loyalty are outputs in nature whereas 'Awareness' is an input component of consumer purchase decision making process. We have captured some of the key working areas in Figure 6 which paves path in achieving the main goal of connecting the brand with both existing and potential target consumers and indicates different ways through which a lifestyle brand can create unique demand side proposition in addition to using them as key inputs for brand level promotions (P3C).

Figure 6:
Recommended demand side proposition.

Connecting Supply and Demand Side:
What is most important in achieving the goal of establishing a true lifestyle brand image is the way in which a brand connects supply side with the demand side attributes. Figure   7 gives a ready framework for brands to understand major focus and working areas using which they could possibly connect supply and demand side attributes seamlessly.
The  Methodology and; d) P4-Brand Placement, demonstrates a significantly positive association between prioritization level of key input variables and brand's profitability significantly moderated by overall consumer repeatability [109].

Figure 7:
Recommended framework for connecting supply and demand side.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION:
Through this intensive research work we have noticed that, it is not just about identifying the ideal category, product, price level, discount level, advertising technique, brand location, SIS / store size, supply partners, demand generation partners and sales personnel, it is all about the right mixture of all these elements in relation to target consumers and overall business goal of the brand and the positioning the brand aims to take in consumers mind. It is also not about achieving the ideal mixture for a few of these elements in silos, what is imperative and inevitable is the overall mixture of all these elements / sub elements and not just one or two.

Connecting Supply and Demand Side
People and Process i) Employees-Business Model-Fit. ii) Ownership of each functions with measurable deliverables. iii) Strengthen processes over people.
Technology i) Seamless interface of products, processes, partners and consumers. ii) Enable technology to provide key insights on performance across people, product, processes, partners and consumers.
brand image. Marketing Mix is the most important and basic pillar of lifestyle brands irrespective of products they offer, price positioning they maintain, promotion tactics they adopt and retailing formats through which they sell their products, unless one has this mixture in right proportion across all the "4P's" it is difficult to build a sustainable and true lifestyle brand in India. We have also noticed that majority of Indian lifestyle brands are spending most of their time in inventing new "P's" to be added to the basic "4P's" proposition rather working on existing "4P's" and rationalizing them to suit consumer expectations. In one of our previous researches wherein, we experimented a re-prioritized and rationalized "4P's" framework had shown that about 70 percent of the 'store level' profitability could be determined by just working on the basic "4P's" [109].

SUGGESTIONS TO INDIAN LIFESTYLE BRANDS:
Before we start writing suggestions, let us look at an example of typical on discounts and advertising tactics as their key components of selling proposition are going to be loyal to their brand forever; few brands may be trying to create different perceptions in consumers mind over their brand image, few brands may be opening many EBO stores in premium locations with larger size to tag them as experiential, anchor or destination stores assuming that this effort would lead them to create a premium brand image in consumers, competitors and investors mind; few brands may be expanding their presence in catchment areas irrespective of their target consumer groups to promote their brand to attract new investors, franchisees and licensees; few conglomerates may be trying to show their presence in the lifestyle brand segment to strengthen their group portfolio; few may be selling premium priced products or categories to position themselves as premium lifestyle brands and so on. What is very important is the key business goal of your brand,

LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH:
The main limitation of this research work is the coverage of various stakeholders viz., number of lifestyle brands, product categories, consumer groups, employees, price positioning, product mix, category mix and different types of Marketing Mix in designing the new framework. This might limit the generalizability of research findings to other set of lifestyle brands. The second limitation would be the empirical validation is Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3631214 restricted to few Indian lifestyle brands selected for the study and hence the generalizability of the findings and suggestions to other Indian lifestyle brands. The third limitation would be our ability to carry out an experiment, though we were firm in our approach that, the proposed Marketing Mix has to be tested in the field before we recommend, it was not that easy merely because of the vast scope of the experiment. Unlike other experiments wherein the treatment is limited to few concepts, components or variables this experiment in fact required us to cover practically almost all the elements of the Marketing Mix which do require longer duration for preparations prior to testing, longer duration prior to the beginning of extracting the results and longer period of time for the experimentation itself to ensure findings and insights are derived holistically. At best we were able to elaborate

SCOPE FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:
We strongly recommended that the proposed Marketing Mix is experimented by researchers and the same is finetuned further if required for Indian lifestyle or non-lifestyle brands. Based on the key business objectives and their target consumer group, Indian lifestyle brands can implement the proposed Marketing Mix on a pilot basis and finetune the same based on real-time findings which can then be implemented on a permanent basis.