Ice cream! Don’t we all love it? Have you ever used ice cream to thwart competition? Have you used this as a tool to lure fellow classmates away from your rivals in school?
I have never used this as a mechanism to eliminate foes. But, someone has!
My friend belongs to a family who runs a chain of restaurants, spread across Tamil Nadu and Kerala, catering to the in transit population. Their restaurants are located near the busy and popular bus stations because of the clientele, right in the face of hungry traveler but inconspicuous for a casual passerby. These restaurants are not flashy. Yet, appealing to the hungry. There are no franchisees and the chains of hotels do not belong to a single registered company. The commonality is the family (or the bloodline) and being in the family, you can adopt the name while setting up a hotel in a new town.
In one of the towns blessed with their presence, a competitor started a new restaurant very near to my friend’s family establishment. Since the competitor had similar menu and also was catering to similar clientele, his family feared a substantial loss of customers. So, what did they do? They came up with a simple and effective way to undermine the competitor. For every sale above a certain amount, they gave out a free ice cream! The amount was set at such a level, you can easily achieve it by making barely minimum purchases.
Do I need to say more? The competitor shut down his shop in two months!
Picture Courtesy: http://www.orgs.bucknell.edu
Tags: Musings,Ice Cream,Competition
A free ice cream with a meal sounds heavenly. And thats a terrific idea to beat the competition!
ReplyDeleteThis is what is called business, right?
ReplyDeleteIt is a marketing super strike.
ReplyDeleteyes marketing masterstroke...:) how u doing buddy? tc
ReplyDeleteWell what if the competitor had also followed suit? ;)
ReplyDeleteGreat idea... The picture is nice..
ReplyDelete@Tomz - :) It is more like staying ahead of competition. Isn't it?
ReplyDelete@Aparna - Wish all competitions in life is as easy and sweet as this one. :)
@BKC - Rightly said
@Ramesh - Yes! Thanks. Doing good. Of late, not been able to write any comments on your site in spite of reading it religiously. :) Thanks for asking.
@ScorpioGenius - Good question! Then, the one with deeper pockets and stronger resilience would have won! They would have added something in addition to ice cream! :)
@Swatantra - Thanks. :)
thats a clever way to oust a competitor...
ReplyDeletenice post :)
@AnishThomas - :) May be the competitor ran out of money.
ReplyDelete@Rajlakshmi - Thanks for dropping by. Glad you like the post
Strange that the guy who opened shop did not study the market or his competitor. And if he could not last that long , he had no right to be in business in the first place. PS: Glad your friend's business outsmarted them.
ReplyDelete@Radha - Thanks for dropping by! Isn't it true that many of the people open up a business without proper planning? :)
ReplyDelete