1. Reliance Young Leaders Program
Summer Internship Project 2016
Prepared by: Neha Nagpal, NMIMS, Mumbai
Under the Guidance of: Abhay Kumar, CMO, RCL
Project Title: Analyzing The Perception Of Brand Reliance Across
Age Groups And The Implications Of Fintech On Brand Identity
2. Confidential Slide
Objective of the project:
• To determine the perception of brand Reliance as a whole
• To test the awareness and perception of brand Reliance in financial services
• Understand consumer perception about various financial products in the market
• Competitive analysis of Reliance Capital
• Media consumption habits across age groups
• To suggest ways to get Reliance into a bigger consideration set
The research aims to address the following questions:
How is Reliance
Capital perceived in
comparison to
competition
What are the media
consumption habits
across age groups
What should the brand
do in order to enter the
consideration set of a
larger population
How aware are
people of
Reliance’s financial
offerings
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3. Confidential Slide
Methodology used:
Mixed Methods Research
•In-depth telephonic interview
•Exploratory and investigative questions
•Small sample size: 10
•Used to construct the hypothesis for the
questionnaire
Qualitative
Quantitative
•Testing of hypothesis through the survey
•Sample size: 140
•Geographies covered: Mumbai, Bangalore
•Five age groups covered
• Analysis done through basic MS Excel tools
and Pivot table
Perception about Reliance Group
• People perceive Reliance as a profit oriented company
• People don’t perceive Reliance as a consumer friendly company
• The first word that comes to a person’s mind when we talk about Reliance is ‘BIG’
Media Habits
• Use of online media to research about financial services is inversely proportional to a person’s age
• Word of mouth advertising is directly proportional to a person’s age
Awareness about Reliance Capital
• In financial services, it is in one of the top recalls 40 percent of the times
• There is very little awareness about the brand name Reliance Capital, even though people are somewhat aware of
its services
• Amongst all the services Reliance Capital provides, insurance and mutual funds are more known than the others
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4. Confidential Slide
FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH
Group
No.
Age group No. Occupational Structure
1 <25 years 26 70% students, 20% private job,
10% self-employed
2 25-30 years 27 70% Private job, others either self-
employed or students
3 30-35 years 28 40% private job, 32% govt job
29% self-employed
4 35-45 years 31 33% government job, 40% private
job, others self- employed/
homemaker
5 >45 years 28 Mix of retired and self-employed
The sample
Top Recalls
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• LIC and SBI remain the top recalls of the population,
because of safe returns and people’s inherent trust in
them
• Private banks like ICICI and HDFC also in high
number
• Brand recall of Reliance is a small margin of top
recalls, it came in approximately 11 out of 140
responses
Top Recalls
5. Confidential Slide
1. Financial Priority
• Being in the younger generation, this group plans on spending on
luxuries like travel and car the most
• Loan repayment, mainly an education loan, and also investments in
mutual funds
• The company should come up with more initiatives in those sectors for
the younger group
• Acquire people from their first purchase, by tying up with top colleges
and giving various attractive schemes
• People in this group give comparatively less importance to travel and
more on long term goals
• They want to spend building a house and buying a car and buy a loan
for the same
Since at this point, people have started the first steps of building their
lives, giving them more options in loans is a good strategy. This will
increase the meaning of the brand for the people and will help us get into
their consideration set
4
G1
G2
6. Confidential Slide
Financial Priority..
• Invests the most
• At this stage, child’s education becomes a major priority and requires high
investment
• Travel insurance schemes in office for older employees, in this age group
• Special mutual fund schemes, offering high returns, since people are
comparatively risk taking
• Loan repayment
• A large portion include other commitments like child’s marriage, investing in
PPFs and real estate as well
• Attractive schemes and tie-ups with colleges for seamless child education
schemes
• Difficult to acquire customers from this group because of brand loyalty
• A majority wants to spend their money of pension planning and investments
which give them safe returns, like PPFs and SIPs
• Some want to invest in mutual funds as well, these are people between the
ages of 45-55 mostly
• Come up with a low risk, safe returns formula for people in this age group,
since they are risk averse
• Pension planning schemes
5
G3
G4
G5
7. Confidential Slide
2. Financial Products
Insurance
• Highest awareness,
ownership and intention
of buying between all
financial products
• Group 5 being the
exception
Mutual Fund
•High awareness and
ownership amongst all
groups
•Group 3 and 5 have an
intention to purchase
Debt fund,
ULIP
• Group 1 and 2 largely
unaware of the products
• Ownership of ULIP least
amongst all groups
• Debt fund owned by
group 4 and 5
Gold Fund
• Has gained awareness
recently because of
Modi’s gold schemes
• High ownership in group
1
• Low buying intention
Housing
Loan
• High awareness
• Low ownership, high
intention in group 1 and
2
• High ownership in group
3,4 and 5
Credit Card
• Very high awareness
across age groups
• High intention of buying
in group 1 and 2
• High ownership and
intention throughout all
groups except group 5
Trading
Account
• Extremely low
awareness and
ownership and group 1,
2 and 3
• Higher age groups more
aware and own them
Personal
Loan
• High intention of buying
in group 2
• High ownership in group
3 and most in group 4
• Low ownership and
intention in group 5
6
8. Confidential Slide
Not
trustworthy
Profitable
Diversified
Family
business
Huge
Futuristic
Not user
friendly
Good
Returns
Manipulative
3. Perception Of Reliance
The first perception people is on the basis of the Dhirubhai tag, people
perceive it to be a huge business belonging to a rich family, and making
a lot of profit
Most negative perceptions because of the headlines the company has
made in the past, which has made it vulnerable to negative public
opinion, and this perception was the most evident in Group 5
The biggest issue people who had availed the services had with the
company was its customer experience, or lack thereof. They defined it
to be less consumer friendly and more profit oriented
Competitive Analysis
• G1 considers it most reliable & helpful
brand
• Favorable for all parameters for G3, 4 &
5
• G2 finds it the most trustworthy & helpful
• G4 finds the brand most reliable
• General positive overall perception
• Doesn’t score high on any parameter
across age groups
• Lowest positive brand perception
• Has high visibility across all five
groups
• Has high trust among G1
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9. Confidential Slide
4. Awareness about our Financial Products
• Collectively, there is most awareness about Reliance mutual funds in the market, followed by Reliance
Life insurance and Health insurance
• Group 2 has almost no awareness about business loan, housing loan and securities. Overall as well,
these three arms are the ones people are the most unaware about
• There is comparatively less awareness about travel insurance as well
• Commercial vehicle loans are owned by a lot of respondents and there is moderate awareness
• People are not aware of Reliance Capital as a holding company, but have awareness about its
products in general
• A point to be noted is, group 2 has the most people with an insurance, and people are most aware
about Reliance Life Insurance in this group as well
• There is less awareness about business loans, personal loans and travel insurance, all of which fall in
the top financial priorities of people. Therefore, the company needs to work on its branding in these
arms
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10. Confidential Slide
5. Media Consumption Habits
• This group spends a large part of their day on
their mobile phones, followed by desktop surfing
• Hardly any time in being spent on traditional
media, like newspapers and radio
• Even in this group, there is more inclination
towards the digital media sources
• Most people spend their time watching television
as well
• Good mix of people consuming television, mobile and
desktop media
• Surprisingly, media consumption of mobile has risen
over Group 2
• Less consumption over desktop, television preferred
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G1 G2
G3
11. Confidential Slide
Media Consumption Habits
• Don’t consume traditional like newspapers and
radio too much
• High inclination towards mobile usage
• Low inclination towards desktops, people prefer
traditional sources like newspapers and television
• Dependence on mobile still evident and more than
radio
1. In all five age groups, no matter what generation, the dependence on traditional media sources
in decreasing
2. Mobile is the most used method of media consumption, defeating television, newspapers, radio
and desktop
3. Even though the traditional sources are fading away, television still remains a popular choice
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G4 G5
12. Confidential Slide
6. Evaluation of Financial Products
Similar trends observed across all age groups
Own research is the very important for the age group 1 and 2
Group 3, 4 and 5 rely on word of mouth of trusted people,
followed by their own research
Past experience was considered as the most important factor to
go for a product or a company again
Advertisements were the least considered factor amongst all as
people don’t tell to believe the promises made by the companies
People prefer getting advice on the risks and returns associated
with any product, since a lot of clauses are difficult and complex
to evaluate
How To Get Into A
Bigger Consideration
Set?
Examine consumer
knowledge about
Financial Products
Target the media
consumption
habits
Change the
brand perception
of Reliance
Recommendation
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13. Confidential Slide
The Changes Around
• RBI easing banking regulations,
giving more and more bank licenses
• Peer-to-peer lending regulations
Regulatory
Changes
Technology
Changes
More
competition
• Rise of fintech companies
• Even companies without a license can function as a
bank or an NBFC
• Digital has become a necessity rather than an
advantage
• Target audience- Millennials, SMEs and underbanked
Data driven
digital
insights
Integrated
Customer
experience
Digital
Marketing
Digitally
enabled
operations
Gen next
technology
Recommendation: Embrace FinTech
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14. Confidential Slide
Impact of the project:
A Brand is essentially the sum of all experiences related to the company. Brand perceptions are
shaped by functional experiences as well as emotional experiences the customer associates with
the product and company.
This research project address exactly that.
• It will help the company to figure out what customers
feel about the brand, how they perceive it, and how
strong is the brand’s identity
• The project can help the brand analyze what it is doing
right, as well as what it needs to improve upon, from
the branding perspective
• How to simmer down the impact of radical changes
that have been happening in the financial industry in
India
The Impact
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15. Confidential Slide
Major Challenges:
1. The major challenges faced during the duration of the project were
related to the quantitative aspect of the research
• People are reluctant to give their details, or sometimes even to fill the
survey, as they feel like you are trying to sell them a financial product
• People tend to choose the ‘safe’ and ‘average’ option while ranking
various products and companies to save time, even though it might not
reflect their actual behavior
• There was a language barrier in the city of Bangalore, though most of the
people were familiar with English, some knew only Kannad or were not
fluent in English, and it was a struggle to explain the questionnaire to
them
2. Apart from these, since the questionnaire was manually filled, putting the
entire data into Excel and analyzing it was a tedious process. And because
of my lack of familiarity with Pivot and SPSS, ended up being a more time
consuming process than I had expected
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16. Confidential Slide
Learnings
• This project helped me gain experience in market research,
how it is done, what all factors come into play, the
methodology involved, etc. This was an unexplored area for
me and I enjoyed getting to know about it
• It helped me gauge how to correctly approach people for a
research, to get maximum information out of them and how to
make the best use of that information
• In the end, the project helped increase my knowledge base
about financial services and people’s perception about them
in general
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