Push vs Pull Strategy

Pull v/s Push Strategies of Marketing

Both, the pull strategy and push strategy are widely employed by firms to boost their marketing performance. Yet, the crux of the decision is when to use which strategy, and in what proportion. For this, it is essential to understand what each strategy is all about.

The Pull Strategy: The Pull for a product is created by creating a Brand image in the minds of a customer, in the case of Consumer Products, typically by way of skilful advertisements and in case of fashion Products, by getting high profile Brand Ambassadors for promoting and endorsing them. This ensures a top of the mind recall in the psyche of the Consumer when he is making a buying decision.

In the case of Industrial Products this same Pull is created by employing sales personnel to canvass the products with consultants and specifiers. In the case of Pharma Products, this is achieved by sales staff making a pitch with key doctors and generating prescriptions for a product.

The Push Strategy: It is not enough for a company to merely create a Pull for the product. It becomes equally essential to make the Product available at various purchase outlets, where a Consumer is likely to make a purchase. A key role is played by Distributors who Push stocks on to retailers, who in turn, ensure that sufficient stocks are available on the counters for those consumers who have come looking for the products owing to the Pull created!

At times a Push is created by having attractive Point of Purchase Displays as well as schemes and similar offers.

Chains like Big Bazaar create a big buzz by having various schemes for a limited period and advertising them in a big way through the effective channels. Some of these chains like Aditya Birla’s More and Big Bazaar use the Push strategies by making a sale of their equivalents of popular consumer brands of toiletries, biscuits etc., giving them a prominent position on shelves as well as devising attractive schemes and pricing.

Hence it can be seen that both Push and Pull are extremely important and are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.

I will now illustrate this by an example:

Recently I have partially involved myself in the launch of an Industrial Consumable, a surgical blade used in a saw for Bone cutting, which was supposed to have a Generic demand. It was assumed that merely having a very good quality of product, making it available and that too at the right price, would suffice to ensure demand.
However when launched it was difficult for the product to make any dent in the market place in spite of being priced right as well as being of a superior quality.

When closely examined it was found that it was difficult to displace the market leader although it was exorbitantly priced, simply because the market leader was also supplying the main saw in which this blade was being used.
Hence none of the distributors who were pushing this blade was willing to promote it for fear of upsetting the market leader whose saws they were selling, making these saws a monopoly!

This made it essential to really create a Pull in the minds of the operating surgeons who were the influencer’s of the purchase decisions of these blades. Once prescriptions were created, it was easy to get the administrators of the hospitals to buy these products, as this was a cost saving solution. After this demand was created, it was relatively easy for the company to enlist a series of distributors who could then Push the product at various hospitals.
Milind Vartak.
www.valueaddservices.com