D. Light Design's Channel Strategy

                                                    SDM CASE

                                                   D.LIGHT Design

 Sanket   1801173

Adil         1801175

Shraddha 1801176

Tanvi         1801178

Pratima    1801039

1. Analyse the macro environment that has implications on d. Light Design's channel strategy. Conduct an end-user analysis for d. Light Design's solar lamps.

Sol : India’s population was primarily rural with 70 percentage of people living in rural areas. The majority of Indians in rural areas earned their living through agricultural work which tends to be unreliable .Purchasing power was therefore diminished.The average debt of rural households was Rs 21,211.The literacy rates differed widely between the rural and urban areas and difference in access to mass media . The electricity access to the rural areas was often unreliable.

Educating the customers was necessary to sell the product in rural areas of India which requires highly skilled and trained salesforce. It was also necessary to let the customers try the products to develop faith and credibility . The lack of traditional promotional channels and lack of transport infrastructure meant that reaching the end user was a time consuming and costly .

D.Light’s cost was still not low enough to reach the poorest customers of rural India who needed it the most therefore bypassing the lowest income group segment.The target segment for D.Light was rural customers who did not have reliable access to electricity.  The service outputs  these people  expect would be affordability, trustworthiness , trial and check and after sales service. The target segment needed the above service outputs so as to have any sort of interest in the product.

2. Analyse various options that d. Light Design has for it channel structure and design strategy?

Sol : 1. Rural Entrepreneurs- Local villagers were employed as sales people. These people were not professionals. They focused on physically transporting products and covering the last mile to reach the consumer. Also, they were responsible to inculcate brand trust among villagers.

However, they struggled to grow sales over a period of time and receiving payments from them was a difficult task.

2. Village retailers-   These were small shops owned by a local. Shopkeepers were practices to move products and money over large distances and hence, payments were handled well.