Brands
New concepts and marketing tools lend teeth to IRS 2005
MUMBAI: More than Readership! That is what Media research Users Council (MRUC) in association with Hansa Research are looking to do with Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2005. The two parties held a forum for the marketing media and advertising
community this morning. The aim was to familiarize the industry with improvements made to the IRS.
Two new tools have been added. The first is IRS Local Area Potential (Ilap). This is packaged to the clients specifications and provides demographic, penetration of product and service in potential areas like distribution, test marketing, below the line activity, growth etc with insights at micro area level for the products and service. MRUC states that till now all syndicated studies have been providing data at a city level. The marketer could only do analysis at a city level and not do any planning at the micro level. Last year IRS introduced the concept of sub-metro reporting wherein broad areas of big Metros were broken down to two to four parts. Ilap takes this concept forward.
Functions of Ilap: Ilap breaks cities into various smaller areas and enables the user to analyse these areas within the city. For instance Mumbai can be broken into 45-50 areas. Bangalore can be broken down into 15-20 areas. The number of areas depends on the size of the city. One can compare Juhu to Linking Road. A comparison can be made based on affluence , ownership and usage of products, media consumption. One can also compare brand shares for large brands across categories like personal care, consumer
durables, telecom, food and beverages. MRUC states that Ilap will be useful for people opening a new restaurant, multiplex, bank branch, super market. As far as marketing activity is concerned it is helpful in test marketing, below the line activity in terms of sampling and conducting outdoor campaigns.
The other new service that IRS 2005 has introduced is Household Premiums Index (HPI). This has come about as over the years advertisers and media planners have felt the need for an effective classification variable that allows for grouping of households by affluence levels. Though monthly income household (MIH) or SEC
have often been used as surrogates these variables do not always reflect the affluence or prosperity of a household. Hansa research developed HPI and this is an attempt to provide the marketing and advertising fraternity with a tool that facilitates a more efficient classification of households. Based on [prosperity. HPI enables the user to develop better strategies for targeting, profiling and market sizing.
Hansa research claims that HPI is a more systematic, standardized approach and tries to do away with research bias in formulating a premiumness index. The basic concept revolves around the philosophy “Less penetrated a product category, more premium is it with respect to another highly penetrated category.” Consequently the ownership of such premium categories entitles a household to be a part of a higher premium stratum. The premiumness scored accrued out of ownership/ purchase of a category is defined as the inverse of the penetration of that category. The summative score of a basket of categories gives the total premiumness score of a household. This raw score is indexed to a scale of 0 to 1000 to develop the HPI.
Hansa Research adds that HFI offers scope of better targeting and provides an option to study markets and target groups in a much more innovative manner. It also breaks the conventional wisdom that SEC is the most effective way of segmenting and classifying
audiences. HPI scores reveal that prosperity is not always directly correlated to SEC. This apparent from the fact that the top one per percentile of all households is exclusively constituted by SEC A1.
Hansa Research claims to be the fastest growing market research agency in India. It deals in customized and syndicated research. It clients come from a cross section of industries including media. MRUC is a non profit organisation. It is a regulatory body that conceptualises, facilitates and ratifies the findings of media research. It states that its aim is to ensure timely, credible, relevant and economical media research.
Brands
Trump announces $300bn Texas oil refinery with Reliance, calls it the biggest in US history
First new US refinery in 50 years planned at Brownsville port with Reliance
WASHINGTON: The United States may soon see the first brand-new oil refinery built on its soil in half a century.
Donald Trump announced a proposed $300 billion refinery project in Texas, calling it a landmark moment for American energy production and jobs.
Posting on Truth Social on 10 March, Trump said the facility would be built at the Port of Brownsville and developed by a company called America First Refining, with major investment from India’s Reliance Industries.
The announcement frames the project as a centrepiece of the administration’s push for “energy dominance”, with Trump claiming it would deliver thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity to South Texas.
If realised, the plant would mark the first all-new major refinery constructed in the United States since the 1970s. In recent decades, oil companies have largely chosen to expand existing facilities rather than build new ones, citing high costs, regulatory hurdles and environmental scrutiny.
Trump described the proposed investment as the “biggest in US history”, positioning it as proof that policy changes such as streamlined permits and lower taxes are drawing large-scale energy investments back into the country.
The refinery is planned for the Port of Brownsville, a strategic Gulf Coast location that provides easy access to shipping routes and export markets.
A key partner in the project is Reliance Industries, controlled by billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani. The company already runs the world’s largest refining complex in Jamnagar, India, making it one of the most experienced operators in large-scale petroleum processing.
The Texas venture would mark a significant step for the group into America’s domestic refining sector, potentially strengthening industrial ties between the US and India.
The proposed refinery is being promoted as a next-generation facility capable of processing American shale oil while maintaining high environmental standards. Trump said it would be “the cleanest refinery in the world”, although the specific technologies behind that claim have not yet been detailed.
Industry observers also note that the $300 billion figure is unusually large for a refinery project, and analysts are waiting for more clarity on whether the number reflects total construction costs, long-term infrastructure investment, or broader economic impact estimates.
As of 11 March, Reliance Industries had not publicly confirmed the investment size or the structure of its involvement.
For now, the announcement has sparked equal parts excitement and curiosity in energy markets. If the plan moves from promise to pouring concrete, the refinery could reshape the Gulf Coast energy landscape, and reopen a chapter in American refining that has been quiet for nearly fifty years.
