Potential Customer, or Buyer? A ‘Hand-Raise’ Cannot Tell You

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

Remember that time you went to buy clothes – you casually touch or look at a dress and the salesperson starts following you? From that point on, you are pressed with clothing suggestions, hand-guided to the trial room, and complimented as you try something on, all the way till you step into the payment queue. (Wonder how this works at an AmazonGo store.) And all you wanted was to “look” at a few clothes! And if you really liked something, you would pick it up. If you needed help, you would ask. (Of course, I could be exaggerating, it has been years since many of us went on a shopping trip just for fun. Hopefully, not any more.)

Apparently, by touching or looking at a dress (before the inconspicuous salesperson’s eagle eyes), you have engaged in a “hand-raiser” – you have shown interest in buying. But this is where a huge sea of miscommunication separates the customer and the company/salesperson. The customer, by their own definition, is a “potential” customer and just wants to look. The customer, according to the company, wants to buy and would like to be helpfully nudged till purchase. Clearly, this does not make for an easy customer relationship!

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Stop Talking About Her, Talk About Her Work

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What are the issues that women professionals face in their organizations? What are the benefits they bring to the organization? How can organizations bring out the best from their women professionals? Here is my take.

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

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Now that the Women’s Day hoopla is done, it’s time for sensible views on women in business. This article is a collection of lists: the real issues faced daily by women in business; the real value that women add, over and beyond what regular employees aka men add; and the real action that everyone in business can take to realize the potential of women for their business success, and for justice in its most modern form. The article does not provide any advice to women, as most women are already taking several steps on their own, and non-contextual advice is often less than helpful.

Here are some real issues faced by women in business, daily and cumulatively, presented as quotes modified from my observations:

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Digital Customer or Digital Marketing?

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

SEO, influencer marketing, content marketing, social media strategy… these are some of the terms that exemplify popular views of digital marketing. But when trying to comprehend digital marketing, two problems arise: What exactly is “digital” in digital marketing? And does digital marketing include anything beyond digital communication?

In this article, I attempt to answer these questions based on my experience in marketing and digital marketing, experience gained through learning, teaching, and consulting. I also include definitions by researchers and the American Marketing Association, and offer a book suggestion for those interested in learning more.

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Just What I Like: What Brands can Learn from Ronaldo’s Snub of Coca Cola

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

It was during the final match of FIFA football World Cup in 2006 that Zinedane Zidane, the French football legend, head butted a player from the opposing team and watched from the benches as a penalty kick saved the day for Italy (watch the video here). After all these years, Ronaldo’s snub of Coca Cola is possibly the nearest I have seen to Zidane’s act in terms of wilfulness.

While many might disagree, the point remains that a statement was made at the last month UEFA pre match press conference. Avoid Coca Cola, drink water. A point well made indeed, as can be seen in this video that soon became viral. Apparently, Coca Cola lost $4 billion in stock value that day for this reason. (This Forbes article, though, presents an interesting counter view.) Regardless of monetary losses, customers might have started to think.

A celebrity sportsperson blatantly deriding the leading fizzy drink of the world! Could this be the end of sugar and fizz? Then again, one could argue that those who drink Coca Cola will continue to do so, some might take pride in their unwise loyalty to the drink. But, right now, the anti-Coca Cola sentiment that has dogged the brand like an unwelcome guest seems to have found form. Till memory fades, the Ronaldo incident can be used to present a silent but clear visual sword-shake at the brand.

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The Ferrari Formula: A Ferrari in Every Home. Really?

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

From a well-known brand of racing cars to a fashion brand label, Ferrari has come a long way. Yes, you read that right, Ferrari is now selling in-house fashion apparel. Here’s a video of the models on the ramp, oops, on the Ferrari production line. Are we witnessing the democratization of luxury, or is this just another unimaginative attempt to milk the market?

So, Ferrari seems to say: If you can’t buy the car, you can buy the jacket. Or at least a cap. But then you could always buy Ferrari merchandise earlier through franchisees. These branded products have been used in product placements as well. (A hilarious scene in the Bollywood movie Munna Bhai MBBS shows taporis whisking off a tourist – wearing a Ferrari red cap – to supply a personal cadaver for Munna Bhai, the doctor-to-be, to tear apart and learn.)

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Fighting Covid-19 with Corporate Nudges: Time for Businesses and Governments to Join Hands?

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

Recently, Krispy Kreme came into the limelight for offering a free glazed donut to anyone in the US who could show a covid vaccination record card. Other companies have also started offering freebies for vaccinations. What’s going on? Why should a donut company care whether people get themselves vaccinated? After all, conventional wisdom tells us that it’s the duty of the government and not private companies to ensure public health.

Indeed, Krispy Kreme has faced criticism for its initiative, because it is offering an unhealthy snack in the interest of driving a public health measure. But what else can a donut company do, especially when it is simply offering a reward for good behavior? As every parent would vouch, rewards are an essential nudge towards desirable actions. In any case, offering something tangible in support of the vaccination effort does seem to be better than capitalizing on the covid situation through messaging in the form of unproductive lip service as this Horlicks ad purports to do. Just as this Dabur ad once did by (insensitively?) showcasing loss of hair caused by cancer.

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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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