In projector category, Epson will continue its high focus on projectors and enhance its market share to 18 per cent. Apart from that Epson has got a comprehensive retail programme in place for the last few years. Currently, Epson has got about 800 Epson Retail Stores (Shop in Shop in a Multi Brand Outlet) across the country.

Speaking about the retail strategy of Epson, Mr. Tushad Talati, says, “ We are also entering the large format stores and have a comprehensive programme in place for them as well. Retail will have an increasingly important role to play since many of our printers in recent times are standalone Printers & All in One's. These devices are capable of eliminating the need for a printer. These are sold as gadgets by itself instead of being viewed as bundles along with PCs. This trend has resulted in customers asking for the touch & feel experience prior to the purchase of the products and since these products are feature rich, it becomes a compulsion for the seller to open the box & give a demo of the product. Our retail effort across the country is being built exactly to tackle this kind of segment.”

In order to deliver a better print quality, the focus of Epson's recent development has been centered on Inks. Epson's endeavor has been to make print quality even better, more long lasting and at the entry level more affordable. In the recent past, Epson has launched the award winning UltraChrome K3 Inks for its high end large format photo printers. These inks offer unsurpassed print quality and longevity, the key concerns for the high end pre-press and photo segments. Currently, Epson's commercial photo printers now have the new Claria Ink system which is again focused on print quality and durability. For its entry level printers the new range comes with either water and fade resistant DURABrite Ultra inks or extremely affordable dye inks which cost just Rs. 250/-.

Go- To-Market Strategy

In 2007, Epson is going to make lot investment in enhancing the customer relationship as well as launching lots of programme towards the development of the channel communities. In order to get closer to the customers and channel partners, Epson is going to do lot of roadshows, seminars, workshops for the different target audiences.

Epson has always considered its channel partners as the most important element in overall development of its business in India . Currently Epson has got a robust channel structure, which consists of about 3500 partners across the country. Epson's regional distribution model for consumer products is working well and has helped the company to achieve the desired target. Epson's national distribution model continues to work well for Business products. The national distributors for Epson's DMP's are Ingram Micro & Redington. For Point of Sale products Epson has appointed Purple Infotech and for Projectors it has appointed- Actis Technologies, Ingram Micro, Xeon Technologies & Embee Software as National & Regional distributors respectively. With its robust distribution model, Epson is targeting Home, SOHO , SME (small medium enterprises), Corporate, government, BFSI, and education sectors. Speaking on this front Mr. Tushad, says, “Epson has been constantly worked towards appointing a strong channel community and ensuring profitability for them at all times. It is an ongoing process and we will keep expanding our channel base from time to time, ensuring greater visibility and reach to the consumers.”

Today B & C class cities are generating a huge source of revenue for all the vendors across all the verticals. According to Mr. Tushad B & C markets are extremely important for Epson and a large part of its sales are coming from these markets. To cater to these markets, Epson has got offices/home offices in 20 cities and towns.

Service & Support

Service & Support are the key element through which a company endeavors to propagate and enhance its business operation in a competitive environment. This concept has been very much assimilated by Epson and the company has tried to create a reliable service network, which spans the length and breadth of the country. In line with this, Epson has been gearing up by increasing customer satisfaction, shortening process cycle and response time and developing and implementing innovative new services. Currently, Epson has got 189 service centers spread across 129 cities and towns across the country.

In India, Epson vision for customer support is to integrate customer focus and to develop a healthy involvement and horizontal management. These efforts are driven by the thought behind Epson's Global Tag line “Exceed Your Vision”. Some of the effort taken by Epson towards increasing the customers satisfaction are like Epson Express Outlet which offers a 30-day warranty replacement, SAP based Customer Relations Management software across the country, and Epson's nationwide Customer Satisfaction Survey twice a year to check the level of customer satisfaction.

Speaking about the Service & Support Mr. Tushad Talati, says, “we believe that service is a critical component to building a strong brand and we have been making concerted efforts to continuously push our service to a higher level. Incidentally our service Index is now higher than our competitors and Epson is now considered the benchmark for many companies. We will continue to improve our service levels.”

At the bottom

Till now, Epson has been able to propagate effective brand awareness among the Indian consumers and it seems that with its multi-facet activities and efforts, Epson is definitely going to create benchmark for its competitors in the field of channel engagement and Service & Support.