AMULAYA AMUL: Customer Value Proposition

“Please consider your customer smarter than you. Don’t think that you can tinker with the ingredients or weight. If you employ short-term marketing strategies, your customer will lose faith in you. We are growing thanks to Amul’s value system.”

~ Verghese Kurien

Milk is one product that is served daily in every other household in one or the other form. A child’s day does not start without a glass of milk. A day for elderly people starts with a cup of tea. Various Indian sweet delicacies are incomplete without milk. In India a mother’s love is measured in the dollops of ghee she pours for her kids. In real terms also, milk is one product that is necessary for nutritional values.

Amul is one brand in milk category that provides trust to its customers as its major value. Besides trust amul is the one brand which knows its customers well. It has varied options for it’s different target customers. Amul is a way too far in positioning its milk to different customers in the market.

Amul Variants of Milk

Positioning: Middle class households

Value : Economic Price, Nutritional

Positioning: Rich People who love creamy milk, thick texture, rich aroma

Value: Creamy, Tasty aroma

Positioning: Tea Enthusiasts

Value: Makes tea more thick and tasty

Positioning: Heart and blood pressure problematic people, Health and weight conscious people, fitness enthusiast.
Value: Need not put in refrigerator, need not boil.

Consumer and packaging value :

Amul is the only brand among its counterparts that has packaging available for different target customers. No other brand in market has such variants.

Big Pack of Tetra pack for working house members

Small packing of tetra pack for hostel students

Flavored milk for youngsters and kids

Competitor: Nestle (Packaging only available in tetra pack no daily use packet)

Handling relationship with consumers

Neha Tomar, an amul user posted pictures of Amul Gold Milk that had gone bad, on Facebook, and asked people not to consume products of Amul.

"..When we started boiling the milk, within 2 min what came out is shown in these pictures. It is some dangerous substance that came out. I thank to god that my family did not consumed this milk. I wonder what would have happened if we would have consumed this,” Tomar posted on Facebook.
The images caught the attention of social media users and went viral within a few days.

Usually brands do not come up on social media in such sensitive issues or they sirectly refuse about such allegations. But Amul looked into the matter closely and gave the following clarification on the matter:
"The consumer called our customer care on 10th morning at 9.22 am and shared her experience of using Amul Gold Milk on the very same day. She also emailed the complaint to our official email ID on 10th afternoon. As informed by her, the "use by" date of the Amul Milk was 9th of October. The milk got expired in her fridge which was later used by the consumer."

They also said how they made all the necessary checks and present their case convincingly. Amul said they also visited her residence in Gurgaon.

"On 13th we once again visited the customer and provided technical reasons for the incident. We informed her that we checked all the batches of the same Amul Milk and found that there is no problem in any batches including the one which consumer had purchased."

They, then gave a little science lesson about what goes into their milk and why it looked like that on Tomar's pictures:

"Any natural milk (branded/unbranded) which is acidified (sour) in the chilled condition and then heated shall result in curd mass which shows stretching property similar to that of mozzarella cheese."

Amul’s Relationship beyond product: