Friday, January 28, 2011

The Mobile Store launches 'Dial-a-phone' service

With scores of new handset players coming to India and selling mobile phones getting tougher each passing day, retail store owners mulling new ideas to reach out to potential  customers.
In lines with this kind of initiatives, Essar Group company The mobile store (TMS) has launched an innovative plan of delivering desired mobile phones at customer's doorstep. TMS has also floated a helpline number--1800-209-6363 -- in this regard on which prospective buyers can make a call and ask to deliver their phones at home. Buyers need to enter their credit/debit card details with the IVR system to make the purchase complete.
Though TMS has taken a hint from the success of pizza delivery mechanism to promote their sells, and infact mentioned in their note that they would like to create similar experience like pizza delivery for mobile phones in India, they need to understand the difference of the products they deliver.
Consider this. A pizza costs Rs 300 to Rs 500 on an average. And a pizza company knows the pizza better than the customer. And its for one time use. The customer could afford to loose Rs 500 in case the pizza is not up to the mark.
But in case of a mobile phone, which would cost a customer more than Rs 3,000 (average cost) and a customer knows what he wants in a phone, in all probability he would like to have a -touch-and-feel of the product before he decides to buy it. And in most casses before going to buy a phone, people used to check upon few handsets and then make their choice. So, this will make the business proposition of TMS little difficult to gain feet. Calling the TMS helpline to deliver a phone only sounds possible when the customer has already decided which handset to buy. But in that case and in most probability, he must have decided about the handset checking out at the stores and not by looking at the promos of the device. In that casse he might prefer to buy it directly from the  retail store and it could be again The Mobile Store.
However, we'll keep a track of this service model and will come back to you with more insights.

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