Consumer Durable

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Haier in India

Haier entered the Indian consumer durables market in December 2003 as a 100% subsidiary of the Haier Group, after obtaining clearance from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in June 2003. The official operations started in January 2004. Initially, Haier established its business operations in northern India...

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Haier's Product LineHaier introduced a comprehensive range of products in India to cater to the needs of different consumer segments. While its competitors introduced one product after another, Haier preferred to launch a range of products at one go. For example in color televisions, Haier introduced ten models in the range of 14 inches to 39 inches. In refrigerators, over 16 models with capacities of 60 liters to 690 liters were introduced (Refer to Exhibit II for Haier's Product Range). Television sets were manufactured using a third party facility that followed Haier's quality control standards... | |

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Premium Pricing

Several Chinese manufacturers who entered India priced their products low by compromising on quality, thinking that Indian consumers preferred to buy low priced products irrespective of their quality. This gave Indian consumers the impression that anything "made in China" would be cheap and of poor quality...

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DistributionHaier distributed its products through its channel intermediaries, who were the key participants in the company's marketing strategy. Prior to the official launch in India, Haier arranged tours to China for some well-established distributors and dealers.

The objective of these tours was to create awareness about Haier's operations and product lines and convince the distributors and dealers about its product strengths. These tours were expected to motivate them to become distributors and...