Page 231 - DMGT510_SERVICES_MARKETING

Services Marketing

Notes Servicescapes and Physical Evidence

Started during the colonial times, ICH management tried hard to relate to the era. The
waiters, who were mostly Malayalis from the coffee plantation areas in the South, were
dressed in white with ornate turbans flaring rakishly into a peacock fan and green
cummerbunds (with red cummerbunds for head whiters). Then there was the rookie
waiter, more simply dressed in white with a Gandhi cap. His main job was to constantly
clean the tables and fill up the water-glasses... but never to take an order.
The early outlets had high ceilings with wood panelling, huge curtains and red jute carpets.
In ICH Nagpur, one still finds old posters of advertisements for coffee consumption, now
sepia-toned and appearing quite quaint and old-world. There is an air of time having
stood still, with muted noise, and a laid back atmosphere. There are separate sections for
families and partitioned cabins for the romantics.
Locations

Indian Coffee House had the early mover’s advantage and could get into locations in
prime areas. They also spread into multiple locations in a city, leveraging their brand
image. ICH had a unique location strategy: keep the service outlet small and keep them
many. To take a typical example, in a town like Indore, Madhya Pradesh (population 2
million); it has as many as six outlets. They are in high traffic areas as well as in old,
sequestered business districts. The outlets are in the campus of a medical college
(delightfully under banyan trees as well as with a regular indoor format giving the
impression of a bistro), in the main street of business, near a university campus etc. They
have been adept at choosing their locations very well – either at the crossroads of high-
traffic junctions or where there is a captive market with nary a competitor in sight, like a
college campus.
One is tempted to ask: What is the successful mantra of Indian Coffee House? The answer
is very simple: consistency of products, service, imagery, and the ability to control costs.

A customer who has travelled a lot and is looking for familiarity in food and other
services at reasonable cost and consistent quality, looks forward to Indian Coffee House.
Its success in its positioning is such that even if he stays in an up-market hotel, he would
prefer to have his breakfast, lunch, snacks, coffee and dinner – all at an ICH around the
corner.

Ironically, this is the business model that it sought to practise, and has been successful in
doing, much before Starbucks Coffee Company became a global brand name.
An analysis of, and a comparison with, Starbucks Coffee Company, the 2,000-outlet
coffeehouse chain, with a growth of over 50% should be revealing:
1. Consistency of products and services such that it “successfully replicates a perfectly
creamy café latte in stores from Seattle to St. Paul.”
2. Owns all its outlets and thus is able to maintain control over all that takes place
inside it. ICH owns only the old outlets or has long-lease agreements in most
properties and therefore has been able to keep its décor and designs unchanged. In
the new outlets it has had to improvise, but has kept the imagery unchanged through
the uniform of the waiters, offer and service. Another Indian firm that comes to
mind in this context is Bata, the shoe giant that has successfully straddled two
industries: the goods business of manufacturing shoes as well as the service business
of shoe retailing. It owns all the stores or has a long lease on them, the retail store
employees are on its payroll, etc.
Contd...

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