PepperFry Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)

Published in Services category by MBA Skool Team

Marketing Strategy of PepperFry analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on PepperFry marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the PepperFry Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:

PepperFry Product Strategy:

The product strategy and mix in PepperFry marketing strategy can be explained as follows:

PepperFry is an ecommerce platform in India which focuses on selling furniture and other household accessories. PepperFry identified that there is unfulfilled consumer requirement of logistic support for movement of furniture from one city to another and there is a business potential for a pan India furniture portal. PepperFry began as an online marketplace platform where merchants can list their furniture products for sales and PepperFry would additionally provide logistic support in order fulfilment. The company later moved into providing its expertise in packaging and photography. The company offers more than 1 million furniture products ranging from furnishing to kitchen and dining as a part of its product offerings in its marketing mix.

Coffee table is the most sold furniture item through its platform. The company ventured into home décor business with the launch of Studio PepperFry in December 2014. Studio PepperFry provide services ranging from space planning and conceptualization to selection of furniture and guide for material specification. The company has launched its mobile app to enhance its engagement with the customers.


Image: company website


PepperFry Price/Pricing Strategy:

Below is the pricing strategy in PepperFry marketing strategy:

PepperFry does base its pricing strategy on discounted price but on customized offering and comparison across assorted products in the process obtaining 40-45% margin. Company believes unlike other e-commerce platform, furniture e-tail is fragmented and PepperFry has to target a market which is largely unorganised and hence discount pricing may not work.

However, PepperFry prices its offering at competitive and affordable prices as a pricing strategy in its marketing mix. The company also brings in sales discount for limited windows to boost up sales and create buzz. PepperFry uses periodic referral and discounted coupon codes for certain categories of product. It has also collaborated with other credit and debit cards companies and offers special discount to the partner credit card company’s card holders.

Read more about PepperFry

    PepperFry Place & Distribution Strategy:

    Following is the distribution strategy in the PepperFry marketing mix:

    PepperFry has covered more than 500 cities under its service offerings. The company has 17 fulfilment hubs across the country. It has sold furniture assembled in Jodhpur in Rajasthan to a customer in Mizoram covering 2664 km for fulfilment in process. PepperFry owns 400 vehicles as on April 2016 for the fulfilment of orders. The company has built the Padgha Warehouse, the largest furniture warehouse in India. Most of the company’s warehouses are present in Western and Southern parts of India. The company has opened 20 Studio PepperFry across the country to enhance the customer experience and create a pull for purchase from its online marketplace. The psyche of consumers in India is to have physical look at the furniture before buying, these experience centres helps PepperFry in building confidence towards its product among consumers. Experience centres also bring in customers for its home décor business.

    PepperFry mobile app is designed with augmented reality features for increasing customers experience.


    PepperFry Promotion & Advertising Strategy:

    The promotional and advertising strategy in the PepperFry marketing strategy is as follows:

    PepperFry invests heavily on advertisement as it tries to increase the brand awareness level. Their marketing strategy is built around helping people to make purchase decision. The company mostly advertises on TV. PepperFry also advertises through paid print media and radio. In first few years its ad campaigns were focussed on building the trust around the brand and online purchase of furniture. Once they have reached optimal awareness among the consumers later ad campaigns are more focussed on providing specific benefits like looks and design of product. PepperFry is also utilizing digital media platform for promoting its brand and business. As a part of the promotion strategy the company ensures it presence for the people who actively researching on the Internet to buy furniture and these target groups are approached via performance marketing channels such as search engines and Social Media. To create good impression only high definition images of products are posted on the webpage. As per company’s research their 65% of the customers are women who shop after 8 P.M on weekdays and on weekends and accordingly company designs its promotional campaigns.


    Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of PepperFry.


    People:

    PepperFry had an employee strength of over 400 by 2015 and it had planned to notch up its employee strength up to 750. Being a start-up, PepperFry looks for the specific qualities in the employees like ability to work in an unstructured environment. The company did not have HR for the first two years, however later it has a HR head who reports to founders. PepperFry wants to hire people who are willing take up work outside of their job responsibility. It values creativity more than skill in its employee. PepperFry has 250 carpenters on call so that customers need not have to wait for more than 6 hours for the set-up of furniture. It invests in improving its logistic services as furniture is a segment which needs exceptional care while fulfilment. Logistics is the area where company loses its most of the margin but it’s the quality of fulfilment service which is the key differentiator for company. PepperFry has launched Bespoke services, a forum through which customers express their opinions to the designers for upping the design quotient of their respective homes.


    Physical Evidence:

    PepperFry sells some products which are made from technologies having ISO:9001, 18001 and 14001 certifications, which signals the quality of product it has on its online marketplace. PepperFry had a sales of INR 1000 crore which accounts to 50% of total e-tail furniture sales. The company is market leader in online furniture sales. PepperFry sells an item every 25 second, has over 5 lakh monthly visit on its webpage and has more than 5 lakh likes to its Facebook page. By February 2017 it has served 4 million customer orders. PepperFry has won numerous awards like Red Herring Asia Top 100 which is given to most promising private technology ventures in Asia and Pure-Play e-retailer of the year at Indian e-retail congress 2014.


    Process:

    PepperFry deploys stringent quality check to provide quality products to the customers at durable prices. IT is the key to PepperFry’s business it invests in building state of IT infrastructure. It makes extensive use of data analytics to know about the consumer preferences and shopping habit to provide customised offerings. The company values its merchant and artisans, currently it has over 100 merchant partners who use this platform to display their design and craftmanship. PepperFry has announced the launch of innovation hub in Bengaluru in 2016. This will be the R&D centre with 30-40 developers responsible for developing solutions to enhance customer experience. Hence this gives an overview of PepperFry marketing mix.


    About PepperFry:

    PepperFry is an e-tail platform for furniture sales in India. The company launched its online retail website in 2012. It is headquartered at Mumbai, India. As of 2017, the company has more than 3.5 million registered users. PepperFry created a new market segment for online furniture sales in India. Indian furniture industry is ranked fifth largest market in the world with home furniture industry alone valued at $20 billion market. The furniture market in India is highly fragmented with majority of revenue being generated by local small players. Nevertheless, the online furniture marketplace is gaining traction particularly in Tier1, Tier2 and Tier3 cities compared to smaller towns. As per PepperFry’s data, total sales of furniture through e-commerce platform in 2016 have been $300 million and is expected to grow up to $650 million by December 2017.

    According to Morgan Stanley report online penetration in this category is 0.5% and there is a huge untapped market. PepperFry was valued at $280 million after it raised $100 million in 2015.

    This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

    Browse marketing strategy and 4Ps analysis of more brands similar to PepperFry. The Marketing Strategy & Mix section covers 4Ps and 7Ps of more than 800 brands in 2 categories.

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    The names and other brand information used in the Marketing Strategy & Mix section are properties of their respective companies. The companies are not associated with MBA Skool in any way.

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