Penetrative, because for the first time, HP-India is moving beyond metros in the quest for new customers. Instead, starting with the first quarter of 1999, it plans to determinedly expand its market reach to class B towns across the country. In phase one of the project, the company plans to target 30-40 class B towns.

A critical element of this exercise will be partnering with local dealers. The idea is to not just create local excitement for the HP brand, but to let loose a very focused marketing-blitz that targets specific end-users in these towns.

Currently, HP-India is shortlisting a panel of key HP dealers in each city to run the end-user contact programmes. Each dealer will then define a focused exercise for generatingexcitement around new HP products in his area, through a mix of events like exhibitions and fairs, lectures in engineering colleges, display stalls at institutions, product demos on campus, etc.

To this end, HP-India has hired a market-research agency to help manage the end-user contact programme by first, identifying the key class B cities. The agency will also help identify the size of the printer market in each city, as well as the names of the specific industry and end-user segments worth targeting in each city.

"Rather than a burst campaign we want to have a prolonged campaign. Especially, as we will be the only IT company present in these cities," says HP-India market-development manager, commercial hardcopy Tarun Thadani.

Currently, HP-India has asked key dealers to come up with proposals for lucrative schemes and promotions for end-users in their cities. Right now 75 per cent of HP India's total revenues accrues from class A towns and only 25 per cent from class B towns. Earlier, in November, ina bid to expand its end-user base, HP-India flipped its marketing strategy for printers from product-centric to customer-solution focused. As a result, the major categories of end-users that it is targeting for its state-of-the-art laser and inkjet printers are: the financial segment, which will essentially look at the application of cheque printing for banks, corporates and large institutions; bar-code printing which will target corporate users with large printing needs as in the FMCG sector and pharmaceuticals, and label printing; big publishing houses which traditionally outsourced work to offset printers; in-house printing of corporate brochures, catalogues and magazines; and the all-in-one Laser 1100A, which is a printer, copier and scanner for the small-office/home-office user.

While the company conducted a series of road shows in the last six weeks--showcasing the 18 Hewlett Packard printers that were launched globally in November '98--the festivities are now moving into the smaller towns and cities.