The challenge

Havells is a leading fast moving electrical goods (FMEG) company and a major power distribution equipment manufacturer with a strong global presence. Havells enjoys enviable market dominance across a wide spectrum of products including motors, fans and home appliances. With so many product categories and brands, it’s imperative that Havells understand what consumers think about different categories, their buying behavior, competition perceptions and awareness. Added to this is the challenge of changing trends and consumer behavior. Havells needed to understand purchase patterns, trends and the competitive landscape on a continuous basis to remain top of their game.

What we did

We run a qualitative consumer understanding program for Havells – the Consumer Passport Program. This program is ongoing and has been running for the past 3 years. Each year, we conduct between 400 and 500 in-depth interviews across various categories, socio-economic classes and locations. These interactions are done in-home to understand customers’ usage and interactions with the category and product. The ongoing nature of the program allows us to understand changing trends and have real-time discussions with Havells customers about the betterment of its products and services.

The impact of the research

What we have been able to achieve through the Consumer Passport Program is nothing short of phenomenal. The Havells team – spanning strategic business units and different support functions -have been able to directly engage with consumers to understand their need-gaps with products and services, evaluate internal hypotheses and understand the purchase decision journey for various product categories. As a result of this, a Knowledge Bank is being created within the organization, which will serve as a repository of new ideas. This will help Havells finetune the existing product portfolio, developing new products, enhance the purchase processes and better engage consumers through its marketing. Most importantly, the Knowledge Bank will contain a vast reservoir of consumer information to ensure a better understanding of who Havells customers are and how to engage with them.

Thanks to the support of Kadence team, we were able to meet all the goals we had set for ourselves with the Consumer Passport Program, inculcating a culture of customer centricity – as a passionate brand, we believe that the customer comes first; without the customer no business can be successful – and seeing the world through the customer’s point of view to understand the realities of market.

Havells