Customers clearly ruled Day Two of the Brand India Summit as corporate honchos acknowledged their importance of customers in their brand building efforts.
The spotlight was definitely on the customers who were reffered to as consumers, guests, users, passengers alternately but the message essentially remained the same 'customer is king'.
Friday's session, which was later dubbed the 'India Retail Summit' saw the czars of the retail sector in full attendance.
"People buy brands not products, they buy benefits not features and benefits that make a customer buy are benefits perceived by their heart and mind and not what the manufacturer may want to believe is a benefit," said Jayant Kocchar, managing director, Amoretto Retail.
Kocchar however didn't subscribe to the 'customer is king' adage, his mantra -- 'customer is queen', " women spend 2.4 times more time shopping and spend 3.9 times more money too," said Kocchar.
Shrikant Joshi, president, Access Media, Satyam Infoway had another interesting observation on how a company can enlist the customers help for brand building " Customer focus has been our top priority at Sify, thats how we decided upon 24 hour customer care as our USP and the customer care agenda has helped our business grow at a phenomenonal pace," said Joshi.
The significance of word-of-mouth as a publicity device was discussed in detail.