5 things about Patanjali and its product placement in Modern Retail set-up

Patanjali has been at the center of limelight for quite some time now. Many case studies have been piloted and a lot of research has been done to analyze its purchasing, operations, logistics, marketing and to some extent financing.

In this post we will look at the more simpler yet distinct steps it has taken in modern retail in terms of product placement, shelf design and location and assortment display. Here are five things which you may have missed when you passed by the Patanjali ‘mini-store’ in a modern-store.

• Patanjali, with its strong consumer-demand derived strength, has been able to command for itself exclusive mini-store like spaces in the modern retail set-ups. These are a set of shelves especially reserved for Patanjali products. More often than not, these shelves will be separated from the long racks stocked with other manufacturer’s brand-lines, which gives Patanjali a strong visbility and adds to its distinct-ness.

• Apart from the distinct-ness created due to a separate display space creating an anti-me-too impression (much needed differentiation in FMCG domain!), Patanjali is able to keep all its products at one place irrespective of product category (food products like noodles, honey and chyawanprash, and personal care products like bathing bar, face-wash and face creams) that leads to extensive cross-product selling. Customer who would have wanted to buy Patanjali toothpaste can take a long look of, feel the packaging and read the content on the face-wash that is kept just next to it.

• Interestingly, Patanjali is only one of the very few known brands at the moment, who in the modern retail set-ups, have not resorted to multi-unit packings for products such as soaps (bathing and washing bars), toothpaste etc. This means, that consumers who do not want to spend 100 Rs on buying soaps (even if it means buying 3 soap bars) can always pick Patanjali soaps for as cheap as 13 Rs. Also, none of the products offered has gone to package size beyond the nuclear-family packs, hence, none of the product’s price seems outrageous (when your brain is not in the mood to calculate per kg or per 500 gm or per ‘normal unit size’ price of the product, it just renders pricing of bhujia at 200+ Rs (for 1 Kg!), and 400+ Rs corn flakes (1.2 kg!) as outrageously expensive, and for some time putting the “unaffordable” tag on the brand itself.

• Patanjali can attribute its success (provisional revenue for 10 months in FY 16 upwards of 3200 crores Rs) to many things and there is a lot already written about it. One of many such attributes is its products’ direct or indirect link to Ayurvedic roots. Patanjali Yog Kendra and Swadeshi Kendra have been selling ayurvedic products and medicines for quite some time but there haven’t been strong inroads for these products in modern retail set-ups. However, the presence of these products right next to the fast-running ones like soaps, toothpaste and biscuits makes up for their weak revenue generation. These ayurvedic products reinforce the connection of fast running non-medicinal products to ayurveda, just by being placed next to them, and helps in maintaining and growing brand credibility

• Critics observe that one segment which has not accepted the product the way a bigger chunk has accepted it is the Muslim community due to their religious beliefs and also with lack of resonance with the star ambassador of Patanjali, Baba Ramdev. However, the company has tried to make some inroads with the segment by putting the label on their recently launched spices packs in Urdu, along with other Indian languages. While, this is just a start, we may see more such attempts to woo the community by advancing Patanjali products to their ‘consideration set’ from the current ‘evaluation set’.