Television Category Analysis: Uncovering Premiumization in Tier One and Two Cities
Took end-to-end ownership of a high-stakes category query, structuring a vague brief into a counterintuitive market insight that shifted client strategy
Pranjal Gujral
Analyst at Redseer Strategy Consultants
From their time as
Analyst
Redseer Strategy Consultants • 2026
Overview
Pranjal picked up this query on a Friday afternoon when his manager was unavailable and the only other manager on the project was new to the sector. The brief was three words: the numbers seem off. The category was television, and the client wanted to understand why GMV growth was muted.
The Story
Pranjal picked up this query on a Friday afternoon when his manager was unavailable and the only other manager on the project was new to the sector. The brief was three words: the numbers seem off. The category was television, and the client wanted to understand why GMV growth was muted.
He broke the problem into its two structural drivers: units sold and average selling price (ASP). If GMV was flat, either volumes were down, ASP was down, or both were moving in ways that cancelled each other out. That framing gave the team a clear direction before a single data point was pulled.
Running the Expert Call Under Pressure
The expert call was the critical validation step, and it did not go smoothly. The expert was hesitant, unwilling to give direct trend data. With a tight deadline and a weekend ahead, Pranjal adapted on the call itself. He shifted to calculative questioning: rather than asking for numbers directly, he asked for directional signals on units and ASP separately, then triangulated the implied movement in real time. This let him assess whether the expert's responses were internally consistent and decide whether to continue or cut the call short.
The data held up. What emerged was counterintuitive: growth was coming from tier one and tier two cities, not metro. Metro penetration for televisions had plateaued, leaving only replacement demand. Tier one and tier two consumers, by contrast, were skipping entry-level models and buying directly into the premium segment, driven by larger screen preferences and brand-led discontinuation of smaller SKUs.
The Insight That Changed the Client's View
The ASP of larger televisions had fallen substantially, but not enough to match the old price of smaller sets. So while premiumization was real, the incremental ASP gain was modest, and the volume base was shifting to lower-spending geographies. The result: flattish GMV despite genuine category upgrade behavior.