GROUP 4

Aswin George Jacob –B2020011

Jitendra Sharma– B2020022

Nipun Allurwar – B2020031

Shaleen Agarwal– B2020049

Sudharshanam S– B2020057

PGDM - BDA Goa Institute of Management

 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We express our heartfelt and sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Pravat Surya Kar for the
guidance and support provided to us.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................................................4
MARKET ANALYSIS....................................................................................................................................................5
SWOT ANALYSIS........................................................................................................................................................6
STP ANALYSIS............................................................................................................................................................6
SEGMENTATION....................................................................................................................................................6
TARGETING...........................................................................................................................................................7
POSITIONING.........................................................................................................................................................7
PRODUCT DECISION..................................................................................................................................................8
BRANDING.................................................................................................................................................................8
PRICING.....................................................................................................................................................................8
DISTRIBUTION...........................................................................................................................................................9
PROMOTION.............................................................................................................................................................9
ADVERTISING........................................................................................................................................................9
SALES PROMOTION...............................................................................................................................................9
DIRECT MARKETING........................................................................................................................................10
INTERACTIVE MARKETING...............................................................................................................................10
EVENTS AND EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING........................................................................................................10
PERSONAL SELLING.............................................................................................................................................10
PUBLIC RELATIONS AND PUBLICITY....................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................................11

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report analyses the market and various marketing elements of CLASSMATE, an ITC product. Classmate is
an Indian notebook and stationary brand launched in the year 2003 by ITC. It has anannual turnover of Rs.1400
crores with 25% market share.

Classmate targets both the Business to Business(B2B) and Business to Consumer(B2C) customers. But the
prime target being the students of the nation. It has carefully positioned itself as a socially responsible brand,
by promoting the uniqueness in the students and individuals in general. Classmate sells notebooks, pens,
pencils and other stationaries under the names of Classmate and Paperkraft. Paperkraft being more focused
on the aesthetically designing the products with positive environment footprint. From its initial launch
Classmate had branded itself by uniquely designing the cover pages of their notebooks. In addition to that,
they added fun facts and coloring sections in their notebooks which has a great reception among the
consumers.

The price of their products is consciously priced 10% - 15% higher than the average market price. This was
done to project themselves as a superior-yet-affordable brand. They have identified themselves as a brand
with superior paper quality. The brand has an intensive distribution channel with more than 900 distributors
across the country. Classmate spend more than 5% of their annual turnover on marketing and brand building
activities. Their advertisements focused on these twotag lines “Because youare one of a kind” and “Be better
than yourself” which had a very good reception among the parents and the students. Their promotions also
extended topartnering with Sahara in 2011 for the IPL matches withtheir “Classmate Man of the Match” and
also conducting contests among the student community with the reward of meeting the Brand ambassador.
Their database helped them to reach out to their consumers with more than 28Lakh messages.

Furthermore, Classmate has beenconstantly engaged in Corporate Social Responsibility activities by donating
Rs.1 for every four notebooks purchased to the primary education of ruralstudents.

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INTRODUCTION
ITC Limited (formerly Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited), which is one of India’s foremost private
sector company, was incorporated on August 24, 1910. As the company’s ownership got Indianized the name
was changed to India Tobacco company Limited in 1970 and then to I.T.C Limited in 1974 (ITC, n.d.). Further in
acknowledgment of the ITC's multi-business portfolio spanning into Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs),
Personal care, Cigarettes, Safety matches, Education and Stationary products, Agri Business and Information
Technology, the full stops in the Company's name were removed effectively on September 18, 2001. Today
the company is called ‘ITC Limited’ where ‘ITC’ is no longer an acronym. As on 31-March-2020 the Company
has a Gross sales value of ₹ 76,097.31 Crores and Net Profit of ₹ 15,135.05 Crores (ITC, n.d.).

While ITC still prevails as a market leader in its established business of Cigarettes, Paperboards, Hotels,
Packaging and Agri–Exports, it is expanding its market share in its budding businesses of Packaged Foods and
Confectionery, Branded Apparel, Personal Care and Stationery as well. ITC is widely recognized to be
dedicatedly nation–oriented as it is one of India's oldest, most valuable and respected corporation. Under the
brand name Paperkraft, in 2002, ITC launched a series of premium range notebooks and further to enhance its
offerings and reach a wider student population, the popular range of notebooks was launched under brand
“Classmate” in 2003. Classmate over the years has grown to become the best seller in the education and
stationary sector as well. The brand claims it stands for identifying and celebrating the “uniqueness” of each
child and it encourages to nurture the talents and fascinations that make them special so as to make their
dreams a reality (ITC, n.d.).

The products range of Classmate includes notebooks, pens, pencils, mechanical pencils, diaries, mathematical
drawing instruments, scholastics, erasers, sharpeners and scales and art stationery products. There are more
than 300 variants under Classmate notebooks which includes normal notebooks, long books, practical books,
drawing books and reminder pads. ITC have designed these books uniquely as each of these books have catchy
themes on the cover and detailed information related to the same inside as well. The Classmate notebook
papers are of prime quality as they were devoid of elemental chlorine, underwent Ozone- treatment, and
minimal chemicals were used in the bleaching stage. Ozone treatment of paper before bleaching process not
only improved the paper quality but also the shelf life of the books. Classmate Pulse is another trendy range of
notebooks which was launched by Classmate for the vibrant youth of India. For an improved sense of style quotient
Pulse have come up with stylish and trendy covers with special effects. Classmate's range of pens includes ball
pens, gel pens and roller pens. They are ergonomically designed and engineered for a smudge free writing
experience. For smooth and comfortable writing Classmate pens are made with textured rubber grips and
low viscosity inks. For students and professionals, Classmate also offers mechanical pencils and leads ideal.
Another product in the stationary sector which Classmate launched were the geometry boxes that came with
die-casted metal instruments with a self-centering mechanism that gave maximum precision and accuracy
while drawing. For good accuracy the compasses in the geometry boxes have been designed precisely with
equidistant tips. Sturdy, transparent plastic instruments are given in the boxes that are perfectly calibrated
which in turn provides better accuracy. Reference guide full of important math formulae is also provided in
each box which is highly useful for students. The variants of boxes available in the market are Classmate
Victor, Classmate Invento, Classmate Invento - Disney Series, Classmate Archimedes and Classmate Asteroid.
Erasers, Sharpeners & Scales are the other products in the stationary segment manufactured by Classmate and
these are available in regular and jumbo sizes. The erasers are known to be non-toxic and dust-free. Classmate
offered sharpeners which had stainless-steel blade with a sparkle-textured body and are available in 5 vibrant
colours. Classmate Scales are known to have clear, distinct and bold markings which enabled precision and also
the rounded edges make it safe for students as well. Classmate Colour Crew range of art materials has been
designed to cater to children’s learning needs from developing hand-eye coordination, to colour recognition
and much more. Wax crayons, Plastic crayons, Oil pastels and Sketch pens are the products under this
portfolio.

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MARKET ANALYSIS
Classmate is an Indian brand of student stationery products in the Consumer goods industry. ITC Limited
launched its Classmate brand in 2003 with the notebook’s category. Classmate added pens, pencils,
mechanical pencils and geometry boxes to its portfolio later on. The brand stands for identifying and
celebrating the uniqueness of every childand it encourages each of its users to nurture the skills andinterests
that make them special, with confidence, to make their dreams a reality.

COMPANY
Classmate is the Indian brand of student stationery products. Having a pioneer of organization of the notebook
industry, Classmate as a brand promises to deliver notebooks of high quality and Eco-friendly paper. Through
a group of around 900 distributors, classmatesmake their products available in over 70,000 outlets pan India.
They have an annualized consumer spend of 1400 Crores buying about 38 crore Classmate notebooks every
year. Interms of consumer spends, Classmate is already an Rs. 1,000 crore brandandenjoys the No.1 position
in this segment (ITC, n.d.).

CUSTOMERS
In the wake of a growing economy, high literacy levels, booming middle-class and an enhanced scale of
initiatives in the education sector, the exercise notebook market in India is expanding at a decent pace. The
brand leader status of the classmate has been the status symbol for the customers. A classmate has a wide
range of customers from individuals to corporate. Students, professionals are end customers while
stationaries, corporates are wholesale customers.
Classmate notebooks have 25 per cent market share in India as on Aug 2019, having around 315 million
students in India as their major customer base. The total notebooks market size in India is around Rs 6000
crore. From that, Classmate has 25 % market share which is approximately RS 1500 crore and continues to
grow in double-digit as against the industry growth rate of 4.5 per cent.

COMPETITORS
There has been a buying preference shift among the customers from cheap local brands to quality products.
With its customer value andproduct features, classmates have ensured that the customers always prefer them
over its competitors. Bilt and NavNeet are the main competitor's Classmate have in this consumer sector.
Navneet, which is one of the oldest brands in student stationery products, is also very well placed in rural as
well as urban market along with exports outside the country. They are having an advantage of low pricing
compared to classmates.

COLLABORATORS
Classmate believes that the retailer is an essential and excellent brand ambassador/advocate for their
products. Educating the retailers about the products and their unique selling proposition forms anintegral part
of the selling process. A classmate has dealers and retailers as intermediaries between the company and its
customers. The business between dealer and classmate can be a B2B business and similarly, the business
between dealer and retailer is also B2B.

CONTEXT
The education as well as stationary product space are set for a power-playfollowing de-reservation from small
and medium scale industries sector. Leading stationary players in the market such as Camlin, Linc and Cello
have already brought in strategic partners in last 2-3 years, now the tobacco-to-FMCG-to-hotel behemoth, too,
may look for a new acquisition in the market following health double-digit CAGR in the sector. Now, ITC has
made a strong presence in the sector with Classmate. A classmate with its product features and customer
value has ensured that the customers always prefer classmate over its competitors (Bhuyan& Tripathy, 2015).

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 SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTH
 Classmate has a strong distribution channel.
 Being a brand of ITC, Classmate entered the market with high brandvalue
 They have presented their product in an innovative way by bring in the socialaspect.
 Classmate has its own online website ‘https://www.classmateshop.com/’ where purchases canbe
made directly.
 Classmate alone stands at 25% of the stationary market, having a strong market share.

WEAKNESS
 Classmate does not have a well-defined target market.

OPPORTUNITY
 As Classmate is a brand of ITC, it has an existing distribution channel which helps Classmatetohave
an advantage
 Classmate has good growth opportunity to further expand the market share

THREATS
 Increased expenditure dur to online channel is one of the problems faced by Classmate
 As Classmate is a supreme product the bigger competition are the local stationary manufacturers to
attract low-income class.

STP ANALYSIS

SEGMENTATION
Segmentation divides the market into a well-defined targeted customer which consists of a group of
customers who poses an almost similar type of requirement. There are mainly 4 types of segmentation
Geographic, Demographic, Psychometric, and behavioral. Similarly, the market for Classmate is divided
based on Geographic, Demographic, Psychometric, and behavioral.

 BEHAVIORAL SEGMENTATION
This is a form of segmentation in marketing that separates people into different groups that
pose a special kind of behavioral pattern. The group of the customer may be those users
who use other stationary product. This segmentation also focuses on customer feedback on
any update and new product, customer retention, tracking of existing customers towards
purchase behavior. (Jones, 2020)

 DEMOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
This is a form of segmentation in marketing that segmented people based on age, caste,
gender, religion, income, family size, ethnicity, and education. The group of customers may
be those users who are price sensitive based on the available substitute. This segmentation
includes individual user students, professional users, potential customer age group is 5-35
years. (Study.com, 2003)

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  PSYCHOMETRIC SEGMENTATION
This is a form of segmentation in marketing that segmented people based on relates to their
faiths, beliefs, values. The psychological aspect is definedas the impact of consumer
purchase behavior such as the living of customers, social status, lifestyles, and activities. The
group of customers may be those users who are brand loyal, customer attitude towards
tradeoff between Quality and Price, customer opinion, beliefs on classmate product quality,
price, uniqueness from other similar product. (Ndukwu, 2018)

 GEOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
This is a form of segmentation in marketing that segmented people based on areas such as
cities, regions, countries, urban, rural, suburbanareas. The group of customers is all potential
users irrespective of location and geography since classmate products are essential products.
The marketing effort would be varying according to substitute availability, type of location
such as tier1, tier2, rural location. (Study.com, 2003)

Segmentation divides the market into a well-defined targeted customer which consists of a group of
customers who poses an almost similar type of requirement. There are mainly 4 types of segmentation
Geographic, Demographic, Psychometric, andBehavioral.

TARGETING
The potential customers can be broadly categorized into B2B and B2C. In the B2B category the
educational institutes and the business firms are the target groups. When coming to the B2C market,
there are two broad target groups namely the student and the individual professional users. The
student group can further be hyper targeted as Primary school students, Secondary school students
and the higher education students.

POSITIONING
Classmate tagline is "Be Better Than Yourself" to educate students on how to tackle exam pressure,
with a core message that the goal is not to be better than anyone else but to improve one’s past
performance. In this way the campaign sent a message to the student community to continuously
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improve their future selves. The brand understands that a child’s potential is influenced and shaped by
parents, teachers and the academic environment. Thus, the message reached all of the targeted
participants. Classmate has also positioned a few of its products to cater to professionals as well.

PRODUCT DECISION
Classmate offers a wide variety of notebooks and stationaries under both Classmate and Paperkraft. Each of the
products are targeted on to a particular sub segment. This is based on the need for the product and relevance of
the product. The products for the targeted groups are tabulated as follows:

Targeted Groups Products

PRIMARY SCHOOL Notebooks, Pencils, Scholastic, Art Stationary
STUDENTS
SECONDARY SCHOOL Geometry Boxes, Notebooks, Pens, Scholastic
STUDENTS
COLLEGE STUDENTS Classmate Pulse, Pens

WORKING PROFESSIONALS Paperkraft Roller Pen, Notepad

BRANDING
Classmate as a brand is preferred for its high quality of the paper of its notebooks. It is also known for
its attractive and seasonal cover pages for its products. Classmate was one of the early brands to
provide knowledge and fun facts in the notebooks. Classmate as a name has awareness among the
customers. Above all its positioning as a motivator for children has increased the overall brand value
for Classmate among students, parents and teachers.

PRICING
Pricing of any product depends on several things like pricing objective, the market one is operating in,
the purchasing power of the consumers, the market condition, product’s market position, etc.
Classmate follows Product Quality Leadership where their focus on affordable product characterized
by perceived quality with a price slightly higher compared to competitors. The classmate also provides
the best quality products to its customers. This kind of pricing objective brands already positioned them
as leaders in quality with premium pricing and a very loyal customer base.

Competitors Prices as compared to Classmate

Brand Name Price (A4 size 200 pages Notebook)

Classmate Rs 76
Camlin Rs 70
Navneet Rs 74
Bilt Rs 76

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As per the table, we can observe that Classmate notebook prices are slightly higher than competitors
with superior quality and hence follows the Product Quality Leadership. The average market price is Rs
74 and the classmate’s product price is Rs76 which depicts the affordable price with perceived quality.

DISTRIBUTION
Classmate follows separate channel design with the respect to the geographic group. They adopt 2-level for the
Urban and 3-Level marketing for the rural areas.

2-Level Marketing Channel

3-Level Marketing Channel

Further, Since Classmate comes under the category of convenience goods and hence the brand needs
an intensive distribution channel (Dolan, 2000). They achieve this through their 900 distributors and
more than 70000 retailers throughout the country.

PROMOTION
Shailendra Tyagi, Chief Executive- Education and Stationary Products Business- ITC, admitted that
classmates spend more than 5% of its turnover on marketing and brand building activities in a news
interview and further said that they spend across mediums, depending on the need of the campaign.
Classmates expenditure on digital marketing has substantially increased over the past few years, and
they are planning to continue the same (Dolan, Integrated Marketing Communications, 2000).

ADVERTISING
ITC Classmate Education & Stationery has rolled out a several ad campaigns which had an emotional
appeal for their customers. “Because you are one of a kind”, targeted at school children and their
influencers was their initial ad campaign slogan. It aimed at encouraging children to nurture their
uniqueness instead of being 'the next somebody’. Classmate have come up with a new advertisement
campaign “Be Better than Yourself” for promoting individual ambitious students and as a heart-
warming reminder for students that the goal is to improve one’s own past performances and not to be
better than anyone.

SALES PROMOTION
Classmate Man of the Match. The objective of this sales campaign was to create brand and product
range awareness, thereby increasing portfolio sales. On purchase of Classmate stationery products this
activity allowed the target group to earn 'runs' or points and the participants were given a chance to
meet Yuvraj Singh - the brand ambassador of Classmate’s if they were able to score the maximum
number of runs.
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Chill out with The Hangout Offer- Classmate Pulse was a notebook brand from ITC Classmate that was
launched all across India with focused below the line activation efforts on various consumer
touchpoints. Ascertaining Classmate Pulse’s youthful, energetic audience, Classmate marketing team
came up with targeted promotional activities in which on the purchase of notebooks worth Rs. 150 and
above, customers received assured prizes ranging across pizza parties, free movie tickets, bowling
passes, coffee vouchers and go-karting experiences which were redeemable across 500 venues.

DIRECT MARKETING
In support of this activity, email marketing and mobile phone-based SMS marketing platforms have also
been leveraged. With their database oriented from sources like schools, coaching classes and colleges
more than Twenty-eight lakhs text messageswere sent acrosscities topeople withinthe age- group 15-
25 years.

INTERACTIVE MARKETING
Classmate also created a campaign micro-site that encourages participants to register for the contest
on making their first purchase, and thereafter subsequent purchases made by individuals have to be
uploaded on the site to earn runs. Along with this, Facebook and Google have been leveraged to
promote the activity by running and promoting the contest online.

EVENTS AND EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING

I.T.C. sponsored different events across India. They partnered with Sahara for Pune Warriors India in
2011 and “Classmate Man of the Match” campaign was done as part of IPL as well. Classmate cover
hunt, Classmate Spell bee are other recognized events conducted by the brand for their target group
i.e. students.

PERSONAL SELLING
This promotion approach was adopted in the initial years where classmate employed jobbers togoand
sell to different stationery vendors in different areas but now this has not been practiced by the brand
as they sit with a good market share of 25%.

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND PUBLICITY

Classmate has focused on building the brand image by publicizing its C.S.R. activity and also the paper
quality. For every four Classmate notebooks purchased, ITC contributes ₹1 to its social development
initiative that supports primary education.

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REFERENCES

 Bhuyan, D. P., & Tripathy, D. S. (2015). Competitive Strategy and Its Impact on ITC Portfolio. ITC. (n.d.).
About Us. Retrieved from ITC: https://www.itcportal.com/about-itc/index.aspx

 ITC. (n.d.). Classmate. Retrieved from ITC: https://www.itcportal.com/brands-microsite/classmate.aspx

 ITC. (n.d.). History & Evolution. Retrieved from ITC: https://www.itcportal.com/about-

itc/profile/history-and- evolution.aspx#:~:text=In%20recognition%20of%20the%20ITC%27s,acronym
%20or%20an%20initiali sed%20form.

 Jones, N. (2020, September). Yieldfy. Retrieved from Segmentation:

https://www.yieldify.com/blog/behavioral-segmentation-definition-examples/

 Ndukwu, D. (2018). Kyleads. Retrieved from https://www.kyleads.com/blog/psychographic-

segmentation/#:~:text=In%20a%20few%20words%2C%20psychographic,status%2C%20opinions%2C
%20and%20activities.

 Study.com. (2003). Demographic Segmentation. Retrieved from

https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is- demographic-segmentation-in-marketing-definition-
advantages- disadvantages.html#:~:text=Demographic%20segmentation%20is%20market
%20segmentation,targe t%20its%20consumers%20more%20accurately.

 Retail4Growth. https://www.retail4growth.com/viewpoints/classmate-scoring-high-at-retail-77

 The Times of India. Business. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Classmate-

brand- from-ITC-crosses-1k-cr-mark/articleshow/28814318.cms

 Robert. J Dolan. (2000). Going To Market. Harvard Business School Publishing

 Robert. J Dolan. (2000). Integrated Marketing Communications. Harvard Business School Publishing