Category Archives: Marketing

The Digital Customer: Differences from the Traditional Customer and Implications for Businesses

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Teaching in a virtual classroom over the past few months has made me think about how the thoughts and actions of digital customers are different from what marketers have traditionally thought of as customer behavior. The pandemic has accelerated the change by getting people to engage in activities that they carried out either infrequently or probably never, be it online shopping, online banking, working at home, or even using a laptop. This article is an attempt to examine how today’s digital customer differs from the traditional customer, and the implications that this holds for businesses. The views presented here are based on my observations and do not claim to be comprehensive.

First, the digital customer is often, but not always, characterized by behaviors that digital technology allows for. The most common behavior is that of easy switching between activities, which was first evident when the television remote came into the market. Switching occurs because consumers want variety, can easily move between windows, and there are lots of activities competing for their attention – motivation, ability, and opportunity, as consumer research would call it.

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Sharing and Owning: When the Sharing Economy Meets the Digital Economy

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Recently, I attended a talk by Russell Belk who is arguably the most authoritative figure in research on the relationship between possessions and people. Belk’s work, beginning with his classic paper of 1988 marks the beginning of an era of understanding what our possessions, the objects we own, mean to us, and how they mark our “extended selves.” In this article, I discuss ideas of sharing, owning, the sharing economy of today, and what all of this means for digital goods.

With advances in research, our understanding of possessions gained clarity and became a topic worth studying. Belk has done work on other topics such as materialism, sharing, gift giving, possessions in the digital world, and a variety of cross cultural research. Among all these topics, Belk chose to talk about sharing and materialism, among others. Some of his thoughts are worth repeating, analyzing, and criticizing, hence this article.

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Why Virtual Should Continue Even After it’s Not Needed. At Least in Academic Conferences

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Recently I participated in the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) annual conference 2020 as a presenter. The ACR conference is a large and prestigious academic conference on research related to consumer behavior. The conference was held virtually in Paris. Participating virtually meant that one could not get the “feel” of a typical conference (which I will call a “venue” conference going forward). But it struck me that once I let go of my expectations of a venue conference, the virtual format was probably – no, definitely – more effective, at least for me. The virtual conference starkly revealed how costly venue conferences had been, when I counted the nonobvious costs of venue compared to virtual.

In this write-up, I have attempted to explain why, and hence make a case for all conferences considering going partially virtual even after the pandemic lifts. Towards the end I have given a set of options that conference organizers can consider when the pandemic has been managed and virtual conferences are no longer essential.

Note: this post is long, but is structured with numbered and titled lists for easier reading.

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Will New Consumer Habits from the Pandemic Live On? A Reflection

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

For over six months now, the world has been in the grip of a pandemic that has changed our lives to a large extent. As human beings and as consumers, we have learnt new habits that have become essential to the new reality. Will these habits last as the pandemic slowly washes away?

Consider the following situation. A father needs to buy a new laptop so that his daughter, who is in high school, can attend online classes. At any other time, he would have visited a retail store as he is more comfortable asking questions and choosing with the help of the salesperson rather than searching for himself online. But now, most stores are closed and even if they were open, he would not feel safe in the airconditioned store premises. So, for the first time in his life, he decides to buy something as costly as a laptop online. And the experience isn’t all that bad!

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Advertising in the Pandemic’s Reality

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Advertisements have changed quite a bit to reflect the reality of our daily struggle against covid-19. They no longer casually encourage consumers to splurge thoughtlessly: more and more advertisements are giving us reasons to buy. And more and more products are associating their reasons with the current situation. Handwashes, sanitizers, and Disney+Byju’s aside, there are a few interesting ads. Consider a few examples.

Recently, I was told that Lakme’s lip products have taken a hit, at least as evident from their product display on e-commerce sites. Natural enough, I thought, although I was unable to verify the news. After all, when lips are hidden by masks, the only time you can show off your lipstick is when you are eating (which happens only at home) or when you are in front of a webcam with a virtual audience. Well, that has not deterred either Lakme or Garnier. The same pandemic that has reduced consumption of lipstick (literally too!) has deterred visits to beauty parlors, implying that consumers need a substitute. Lo and behold, here is the “sheet mask” that gives the effect of a parlor-like “facial” in fifteen minutes! See a sample below, from the cosmetics seller Nykaa.

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Google Duo’s New Campaign in India – To What Purpose?

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© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Saw an ad for Google Duo the other day, and this one is worth talking about. But probably not worth much more.

It shows the freshest couple in town – who else but actor Anushka Sharma and cricketer Virat Kohli! – at their admirable best. Even earlier, every young couple had wanted to be like them: rich, famous, good looking, and young forever. Now, in this video ad available on YouTube, we see the camaraderie between them as Anushka plays a prank on Virat.

Agreed, the laughing wife and the trusting-but-fooled husband are quite adorable. However, in a video calling market increasingly captured by Whatsapp – everyone uses Whatsapp messaging, and its video calling is seamless with messaging – it is not clear how developing a celebrity-based liking for its brand will help Duo.

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The Changing Actors of Indian Television Advertising [Prize Winner]

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This article was first published as a prize-winning entry in the Dec 2018 edition of the campus newsletter on marketing, Niche (Niche on Facebook here and on Twitter @iimaniche). I have added YouTube links to some old ads.

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Some of the earliest Indian television ads have been by the soap brand Lifebuoy. Our parents, if not we, would recall how Lifebuoy entered the market as a long red bar of carbolic soap, often cut into two halves before being used, for that was an age of patent frugality. The bathing experience, with a bucket and mug, was not very similar to the shower in the tandurusti ad, but there you have it: advertising is more aspirational than realistic. How, then, has such advertising portrayed its actors?

First, the children. Who can forget the adorable girl and her sweet way of saying, “I love you, Rasna”? While Rasna might now be passé, the idea of presenting children in advertising, targeting either parents or children or both, is an incredibly winning strategy. Remember the boy beating up a puddle on the road in the Surf excel daag acche hai campaign? As all seasoned advertisers know (and many others suspect), the road to a mother’s heart (and her purse) lies through children.

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