`Head & Showers', `Pantane', `Sunmilk', `Tipsy', `Toss Up' and `Lahar'-these are not new products launched by Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) players, but `pass off' brands carefully coined by marketers of spurious products. These are branded to sound similar to the established brands offered by the organized sector. The names mentioned above are improvizations (or careful contortions) of leading brands such as Head & Shoulders, Pantene, Sunsilk, Pepsi, Thums Up and Lehar respectively. A leading business daily estimated that there are 38 `versions' of Clinic Plus shampoo, 44 of Vicks Vaporub, 113 of Fair & Lovely and 128 of Parachute Hair Oil in the market.
For a typical urban customer in India, such brand names can raise suspicions about the genuineness of the products, which get confirmed when the retailer quotes a selling price much lesser than that of the original products. For the semi-literate or literate audience, such attempts are attention grabbing, but do not succeed. Imagine an illiterate rural customer purchasing such brands. He/she cannot decipher the difference and invariably falls into the trap. The substitution of a couple of alphabets in the brand name does not get registered, as sellers of such products ensure that the remaining elements of the packaging are deceptively similar to the original product. These include the package size, the color combinations used on the pack and the use of brand icons. Being extremely price-sensitive customers, it pleases them to be able to afford such heavily advertised products normally consumed by their richer, near-town or urban counterparts. |
