Loud and clear: Vegetable vendors in Ludhiana resort to CDs

“Aaloo lo, pyaaz lo, tamatar lo, gaajar lo, kheere lo...” Don’t be surprised if you hear the routine call of a vegetable vendor on a CD player in the vicinity of your home. For most of the vegetable sellers in the city have resorted to CD players to sell their commodities.

Popularity of different marketing strategies keeps changing from time to time. The case seems no different for vegetable sellers, for whom it may have been a while since they started using mikes for advertisement. But now, recorded CDs are gaining popularity among them.

While some resorted to the idea of using CDs a year back, many others have recently started following the same trend. Marketing experts are terming it as one of the most innovative marketing trends and feel it is here to stay.

“Over the last few months, it has been interesting to come across vegetable sellers using recorded CDs to sell their produce. With time, number of vegetable sellers using the same method also seems to be on a rise. Many of them may not be educated but they understand the power of marketing methods they use,” said Ramandeep Singh, a professor from Punjab Agricultural University’s (PAU’s) school of business studies.

The CDs connected to a speaker generally roll out names and prices of the vegetables being sold, followed by phrases terming the vegetables as fresh and of high quality. These are either recorded by the seller himself or recorded in the voice of their friends who they feel have a better voice quality.

“Earlier, I used to make announcements using a mike. Whenever I visited different residential colonies to sell vegetables in my open van, a CD became my marketing partner. I recorded all the announcements with the help of my tech – savvy friend who installed a CD player along with a speaker on my van. It saves a lot of energy,” said Amarjit Singh, 31, a vegetable seller.

Another vegetable seller Sham Lal, 45, who has been using CD for the last three months, said: “I was inspired to adopt this method as almost every vegetable seller was doing so. Not only those who visit residential areas on their carts but also in the markets, many of them have adopted this technique to reach out to customers. However, with the change of season, with which vegetables also change, we will have to record announcements accordingly.”

Meanwhile, women who have been purchasing vegetables from them had mixed opinions on it.

“For the seller it’s true that this technique saves his energy and he can reach out to large number of customers. But what about the noise that the recorded announcements make? The same goes for the use of mike,” said Gurpreet Kaur, a housewife from Dugri.

Another housewife Priyanka Bansal said, “I find it interesting. You can instantly know that a vegetable seller has arrived. The recorded announcements are also very clear.”

However, in rural areas, use of CDs by vegetable sellers is yet to attain popularity but use of mike is ubiquitous.