Branding - at Low cost ???

Two incidents made me think of the topic for this post :

1. I was in this uptown Mall with my friend and we were out there primarily for window shopping. She suddenly saw this beautiful BIBA Kurti priced at 1200 and to my surprise, without a wink bought it, leaving me blinking !

2. But at the roadside Fruitwala shop this same friend was haggling with the vendor for a mere 5 Re reduction in price !!

The friend justifies her first purchase in the name of Brand ( though everyone knows it is not worth the money) and in the second instance tells me that she was trying to save money and avoided getting fleeced !!!

Exploring:

What could have made her think that she has made a good choice on the 1200 kurti while bargaining for Rs 5 "saved" her money? I am not going into the familiar territory of Brand,Positioning, placement of product etc. What i want to explore is the possible reasons behind such attitude.

• We feel that Bargaining in an uptown retail would bring down our image and would not even dare to do such a thing - We are intimidated by the luxury the store has to offer. We are at the mercy of the store.
• While with the hawker we take the upper side ( cos we know that we can very easily afford his ware) and this time get him under our mercy by intimidating him. We know he needs the money.
• We also feel that the lower strata of people can be exploited ( though we won't admit it) and hence do not hesitate to do so. This is evident across all the forms of economic activity. Be it wages, standard of living, political quotas etc. This attitude exists in all, right from the Babus of the nation to the small kid in the neighbourhood.

Insight:

One of the ways to build the Brand Image for a small, upcoming or unheard of player is - not to fall for the Low Price Trap. Maintain the actual worth or at times even slightly higher to make known the value of the product. ( This would work only if the product is worth its salt in terms of quality and technical expertise.) For ex: If you are looking to buy a lunchbox at a local departmental store and your estimate is around Rs 100 max. But you go to the store and stumble upon this brand " Look at me" which starts only at Rs 200. You are for a moment taken aback and might not purchase the brand., but it gets registered in your mind that "Look at me" is a " High Quality Brand". You did feel initmidated by the brand which started of at double the maximum price you were willing to pay.

This is one of the low cost branding methods that companies can explore.