JBL has been one the most popular brands in the Indian audio markets for years. Known for its signature ‘Pure Bass’ sound, the brand has launched several products in the Indian market over the years and enjoyed its share of success.
However, despite all that, some questions remain in the mind of the consumers about the brand’s strategy going forward and in the current market scenario too. Questions like JBL’s strategy to stand against competing Indian brands and what is the reasoning behind a product getting a Dolby certification?
To get answers to all these questions and more, we sat down with Mr Vikram Kher, Vice President, Lifestyle at Harman India and Yogesh Nambiar, Head of Marketing at Harman India. Here are the excerpts from that conversation.
Q. How does Harman plan to compete against homegrown brands like boAt, Noise, Boult, and FireBoltt?
Vikram: Okay. So let me answer it in this way. Harman welcomes the competition. I firmly believe, rather we firmly believe that competition is always good. Not only for consumers but also for market leaders like Harman or different industries having different brands. So without taking the names of any brand, I believe that we can stand our ground. Our focus is primarily on what consumers want. And with our 75 years of expertise in research and development to create what we call JBL Signature Sound in marketing language.
For that, consumers are willing to move from Flip 4 to Flip 5, to Flip 6, to whatever in future will be coming, we will be offering the best quality product, which is good for the consumers. And that is one short way, which is to summarize understanding customers' needs and providing the right quality, which is required, which will add value to his environment or his life. That is the only way any brand can compete with the competition. So without worrying about competition, we are focused on consumers' experience and customer experience.
Q. We recently reviewed a pair of JBL earphones, and its “Pure Bass” sound signature affected the listening experience in terms of clarity of vocals. Any comments?
Vikram: So the bass is one subject where sometimes the consumer is not fully aware on what are the pros and cons. If you ask a layman consumer, they feel that bass is the best sound for us, which is not right. So, what we are doing in our recent launches is app support. If you use JBL’s app, you can have the flexibility to tweak the bass as per your own taste. And this taste will keep on changing probably, in India, our experiences, everybody wants high bass. Right? Which is not good for your ears. So we want to give that flexibility to the consumer so that they can tweak the bass based on their taste and requirements.
Q. JBL is a subsidiary of Harman, the company behind the audio curve used by professionals and audiophiles. However, we do not see the balanced sound signature philosophy being reflected, even in a toned-down way, in JBL products. Why?
Yogesh: So I'll take that question. So Harman has its signature code, and so does JBL. Okay. Harman addresses a certain customer segment, and JBL addresses a separate audience profile of consumers. JBL has a separate following, okay? People who are listening to JBL it need to have a JBL Signature Sound. And when you're listening to Harman, it needs to have a Harman sound that comes attached to it. So, which is where they both don't go together. Our engineers are separate for Harman Kardon versus JBL. They both sit separately. Designs are separate. That is because the consumer profile is totally different.
When Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon designed Harman Kardon, they weren't thinking about what James Bullough Lansing was designing on JBL, right? So when we got JBL under our wing, we obviously didn't want to tinker with what James planned for. They both have their separate signatures, and we've kept that legacy.
Vikram: And believe me, there is a huge fan following for the JBL Signature Sound as well. In fact, Yogi (Yogesh), when he designs his marketing collaterals and the campaigns, we make it a point to talk about JBL's Signature Sound. Our consumer segments are different. The consumer profiles that we target are different for Harman and JBL.
Q. Why don’t we see as many product launches from B&O and B&W in India as in the global market?
Vikram: See, it's for the brand to decide what is the best time to launch their product range. And any brand will be looking at the ROI calculation, right? If the segment is really attractive and big enough for the brand to get excited or interested in the market, there are brands that will be launching products.
I think Harman is one good case. When launching products, you need to meet some kind of price point. We ask ourselves, hey, will consumers buy this product at this price point? I will give you one example. Soundbars is one category where we are one of the top leaders globally. We sell something like 4.5 million units of soundbars, which is a huge number.
We have a flagship model called Soundbar 9.1, which is being sold at ₹1,00,000. Maybe ₹95,000 after discounts. Believe me, this is one product which sells like hot cake, mainly because we are able to give that Dolby Atmos experience to consumers. For the last two and two and a half years, consumers were not travelling.
They were confined to one place, theatres were not working. They wanted to get the best audio experience inside their homes, and we saw that when brands come out with premium products, they are being liked, and they're getting a phenomenal response from consumers. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for superior quality or superior experience.
So even in a country like India, I firmly believe that premium segment, there is no dearth of right consumers. Harman, for sure, is committed to having a razor-sharp focus on premium products and premium segments. And we'll be launching our entire range without two thoughts. In times to come, you’ll be seeing some more new launches, both in party boxes and sound boxes, along with, of course, speakers and headphones.
Q. I think our readers would also like to know about this. At what stage during the product development is it decided that, yes, this product will be going for a certification like Dolby Atmos? Is it during the development stage where the concept is being floated around or is it during the research that the engineers decide that this product is good to go for certification?
Vikram: I think the flow is something like this. First, we do consumer research in different countries. So even if Harman is a large global MNC, a market like India is substantially important for us, significantly important for us and market research happens in multiple countries to understand what consumers want. Each segment is decided based on the brand. Based on what we have found out from research on consumer expectations and our research, we create products for that particular segment. And depending on the segment which we are targeting, we will be having different strategies.