RMS (Ravi Metro Services) was founded in 1992 by a young and dynamic entrepreneur, Ravi. In the initial five years, the company confined its operations to Hyderabad. Later it expanded its operations to Chennai and others parts of India. In India, the soft drinks industry is recognized as a profitable industry. The industry provides employment opportunities to 125,000 people. There are 110 soft drink producing units scattered all over India. Ravi Shankar Reddy (Ravi), founding head of Ravi Metro Services Pvt. Ltd., a reputed realty firm in Hyderabad, had been a dynamic entrepreneur since 1992. With company profits not being encouraging over the previous few years, Ravi planned to enter into a new area of business. On a friend’s advice, he decided to enter the soft drinks market. However, he had a few queries in mind on the issue of launching a new product in the market. He sought the help of a reputed marketing agency ‘Sadanand Marketing Strategies and Solutions’ (SMSS). Eventually, SMSS carried out a pilot marketing research and analyzed consumer perceptions to provide answers.
Ravi conducted preliminary research and assessed the Indian soft drinks industry. He concluded that lemon flavored drinks would find greater demand as people generally preferred healthier soft dinks.An entrepreneur, who did not have much experience in the soft drink industry in India, planned to enter the market with a lemon-flavored soft drink. He asked a reputed marketing research firm to help him to effectively position the new soft drink product in the market. SMSS employed the Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) technique for the purpose. Looking at the results, the entrepreneur wondered to what extent the MDS ‘Perception map’ would be helpful to his company RMS in launching the new product in the existing lemon flavored soft drinks industry in India.
Questions:
- Discuss how MDS (Multidimensional Scaling) technique can be helpful to RMS particularly in positioning its product?
- Was it a wise decision to enter into a soft industry India, where-lemon flavored drink called limca was not a successful drink?