CONFUSED!!!!! WHO ISN’T?

Sourav Ghousal
2nd Year Student (Marketing)
IBS Hyderabad

A "pretty lady in white salwar and beautiful smile"- you cannot ignore, walked into the grocery section of Highland Park, the biggest shopping mall in the heart of Kolkata. Due to curiosity I followed her. She picked up a packet of Atta out of many packets and puts in the trolley. I went upto her and asked her, “ Madam you seem pretty brand loyal! U picked up Ganesh Atta without even looking at other brands.” She horrifyingly look at me and then she replied,

“ Who are you?, I don’t know, sorry. I just picked it up because my parents have been using this for many years!”, she replied with a confused and perplexed face.

A little boy coaxed his dad to bought a Cadbury chocolate. I asked the gentleman “ Why do you think your child asked for Cadbury only?” He surprised looked at me for a second and then said, “ I guess it’s the best brand around, and after all why you are worried; even many others are buying the same brand.”

Every body must be wondering why I have cited these two real life examples!!

Every customer is unique in nature. They have different buying patterns, different insights & different outlooks. But there is one thing unique about the entire customer fraternity:Every customer is confused. And when somebody is confused he needs advice, consultancy or help.

Lets see what companies are doing these days to make the customers more confused.

First mover advantage: One who can advice first wins a better part of this mind game. Let others follow and give the same advice, but your's unique.

Blue Ocean: Give advice which no body has given before. The market is ahead of you and the competition behind. You either have to be in pace with the market or some where between the two.

Red Ocean:What do you do when a hell lot of companies are giving the same advice as yours and you are not the one to create the ocean!

-Create a blue inside the red.

- Patent your advice.

- Strict to the core part of your advice and cash on it.

Do not let the confusion creep in: While trying to make the road clear for the customers, don't forget your own people. Do not let the confusion creep inside your own organization. Let your own employees be the pillars of your success. Remember one who knows the most about the customer is your front line sales force. They are the ones who know what the confusion is all about and how it can be healed. Their contribution and feedback is a must.

Let the confusion prevail: The day the consumer stops being confused is the day advisors lose their jobs. So dont let this happen. Offer them variety rather value added variety and let customers choose their own solution for their confusion. If the customer dosent find the solution the door is always open for other competitors. One should never let this happen.

If we all remember, recently HUL had changed the name of its RIN bar soap to SURF-EXCEL bar soap. Why did it change its name in the first place? Was the brand name loosing its charisma? Ask household wives and they would beg to differ. So what was the reasons behind it? Why this confusion when RIN had a greater recall value? Is the new name giving them similar profits if not better? Have the common people accepted the change?

Questions like these and many more with no answers to them will always crop up and the net result: ……………..Confusion will prevail …………….and so the companies who have created it.