The Glare 'Which' Project

Since time immemorial, I was thinking of getting my eyes checked by an optician, and in all probability was expecting a further decrease in my vision power. Or shall I say I was expecting to get more myopic, given the fact that it was becoming more and more difficult for me to read what some of the professors wrote in their sweet little fonts on the white and black boards in the classrooms. Sometimes I wondered if some of them thought that it was a global standard to follow Times New Roman Font size 12 not only on the word documents, but also on the class room boards. Nevertheless, one fine day I finally managed to visit a prominent eye care store downtown.

Having enquired about the rates for a vision check, I went ahead with it. The person who attended to me seemingly knew a lot about the terminology related to opthalmics and threw a lot of half phrased gyaan at me in his broken English. All through he was checking my eyes, he was speaking words like spherical vision, fiber lenses, high index and the most frequently dropped word was “anti glare”. With some background in science and technology, I took pride in the fact that I could somewhat make sense of whatever terms he was speaking. Thereafter, when I ordered the lenses and chose the frame, I was glad to know that he could deliver me the glasses within 2 hours. So I happily decided to sit down for two hours for coming down all the way to city from my campus demanded a comparably higher investment in all kinds of resources.

In the next two hours, I noticed what is called as the beauty of sales. A good number of customers dropped in, and I saw how brilliantly the same salesman cum optician was convincing people to use anti glare, and high index glasses. In fact, many a times the conversation was in regional dialect but it was apparent how the sales guy would throw in the benefits of the anti glare coating and would scratch on the glass and show people the coating (Though even after two hours I could not figure out what was he trying to show about the ‘Anti Glare’ coating by scratching on the glass). The best part came in when he would ask people to wear an anti glare pair of zero power glasses and look at the television, and then do the same using ordinary glasses. Through my experience of last 5 years of using anti glare glasses, I know that one cannot find any perceptible difference in the two situations just by trying the glasses for a minute. But to my utter amazement, people actually agreed that they could find a difference between both the exercises! This is very typical of a consumer’s behavior that one actually starts to feel the difference if he knows about it before hand. In our case, the salesperson was so convincing and smart that he would point to various colors and sharp features on the television, and ask the customer to notice the difference in a way as if it was in black and white. There were people who had never sat in front of a computer terminal or never intended to do so in foreseeable future, but the salesman could manipulate them to buy the costlier and higher margin ‘anti glare’ glasses. This is again typical of many consumers that they purchase products whose features are way beyond their foreseeable utilitarian needs. In fact, this kind of a buying behavior is especially observable when people go to buy mobiles. The height of the situation was when a person claimed that he was using an anti glare screen for his desktop, and so did not need an anti glare coated pair of glasses. The salesman beautifully answered his concern by explaining to him the different types of glares, the angles at which they work (He actually drew a diagram on a paper!) and how the desktop anti glare screen could prevent ‘one kind of glare’ and not the ‘other kind of glares’! I was dumbstruck….and so was the poor customer who was left wondering why the PC company did not take care of the remaining ‘kinds of glares’ while making the anti-glare screen. My entire fundamentals of physics was shaken, as it was the first time I was hearing about ‘different kinds of glares’ and that too from an ordinary looking, a not so intelligent, salesman of an eye care store. Nevertheless, I got my glasses in the mean time. And so I left the store being much more educated about ‘Which glares’ and ‘What glares’, than what I previously knew about, and certainly with an added insight into consumer behavior and the art of sales.

My learning for the day – ‘If you are sure that you know little about something, try to sound all the more convincing and confident about it – and more than half the world will fall for it’.

Toothpaste vs. Toothbrush: Commodity or Brand

Recently I had the opportunity to work with a leading oral care company in India. Having been in this field for more than 75 years, they are the established leaders in the field. The product portfolio of the oral care category of the company primarily consists of some of the most popular toothbrushes and toothpastes sold in the country. I was working on their toothbrush subcategory, and one of my assignments was to figure out the extent of brand awareness and loyalty shoppers exhibit when they purchase a toothbrush.

I carried out shopper intercept studies across various retail environments, and came out with some interesting insights. In India, people generally tend to lay much more emphasis on the toothpaste they use rather than the toothbrush they use. While purchasing toothpaste, a shopper is generally sure of what kind of toothpaste she is looking for. This leads to a significant (if not very strong) brand loyalty. A shopper knows that she wants, say, something like a toothpaste which has cooling crystals, gives fresh breath and may be a herbal one. People even go to the extent of associating freshness of breath provided by a tooth paste with its transparency. They tend to identify themselves with the characters in the toothpaste advertisements they watch on TV. This makes their choice of toothpaste satisfy not only their utilitarian needs but also the hedonistic needs.

In contrast, the conventionally agreed upon approach of the tooth brush shopper is that she exhibits little brand loyalty and most of the times it is more of pick-whatever-is-available kind of purchase resulting in the toothbrushes being categorized more of in the commodity segment. Also, the conventional belief among marketers is that while purchasing a toothbrush a shopper ends up experimenting a lot more often. They often feel that last time I used this particular toothbrush, so this time let me use another one. But I did have a slightly different opinion after my research. Typically, Indian shoppers tend to be more particular about the price point or the price segment into which a tooth brush falls. But given a choice between comparables in the same price segment, shoppers do exhibit a brand preference. For example, one of the conclusions that I could derive from my intercept studies was that more than 70% of the shoppers responded as being brand conscious while purchasing a tooth brush, which was vindicated by a close observation of their purchase decision in the retail environment .It revealed that unconsciously the shopper was more pre-disposed towards some particular brand. This was much more evident in urban areas where the shopper is more informed. Surprisingly, it also came out from my studies that shoppers are generally indifferent towards the features in the toothbrush, because they feel that despite every company claiming that their bristle shape or handle design is superior, their perception is that they are all the same. In fact, the color and appearance of the toothbrush played a bigger role in driving the purchase decision than the features.

This definitely gives us an understanding of the consumer behavior. The shopper feels that the features (which at least theoretically are more important to satisfy the utilitarian needs) takes a back seat while making a purchase decision and the color and appearance of the toothbrush are among the prime determinants of the purchase. Brand consciousness, which earlier was only for tooth pastes, has crept in the minds of tooth brush shoppers also and no longer can a company afford to treat it as a commodity. In fact this has happened with a leading FMCG multinational, which despite repeated cues continued to regard tooth brushes as a commodity, probably because it has a huge product portfolio to take care of, and has lost market share consistently in the tooth brush sub category for the last 2-3 years. There is definitely a need and opportunity for the marketer to influence the tooth brush purchase decision of the shopper - either through media promotions or through in store execution like POP material or visibility aids, which may drive an impulse recall of an existing need or at least create an awareness about the brand in the minds of the shopper.

Love Thy Gadget !

People find love in many ways. There are some who met someone once and said that “whoa !! this is the person that I have been looking for”. Then there is this category of people who are not sure about what kind of a person they want even after “trying and testing” a plethora of different personalities. But seeking love can lead a person to many different destinations, one of the more prevalent ones these days being a deep love and passion for gadgets. In fact, recently I came across an article which mentions that the biggest gadget freaks are the ones who are lonely, and seek love desperately. Gadgets provide a sense of belongingness and identity to a lot of people. There are certain electronics companies which concentrate their entire marketing efforts around this theme of a gadget being a part of an individual or better still an individual himself, rather than just being an object.

At this point of time, I would like to clearly point out the difference between an appliance and a gadget. If you notice the buying behavior of consumers for an appliance like say TV, Refrigerator, AC etc. and compare them the buying behavior of the same set of consumers while buying gadgets like mobiles, Music players, Laptops or PCs, Video Games, one comes to notice a stark difference. Though are high involvement purchase decisions, but the kind of passion and cult following that is noticed in purchase decisions for gadgets, is nowhere to be found in other day to day home appliances. People are very particular about the specific features, and generally tend to pay premiums for features which they may or may not use ever in their lives. In fact, an average consumer seeks a higher utilitarian value than emotional or hedonistic values while buying a home appliance, but seeks a higher hedonistic and emotional value than utilitarian value while buying gadgets. Drill down the demography further, it becomes apparent that the its particularly the school-college going youngsters who are very particular about the features of their gadgets whether they use it or not, while the grown ups or the working class adopts a more utilitarian approach despite the fact that they have a higher purchasing power and more financial independence.

Marketers are evolving novel ideas to convince people about how important gadgets are in ones lives. Gadgets are becoming a favored gift item for youngsters. All gadget brands have been ascribed distinct personalities in the minds of the consumers – party due to marketing efforts and partly due to high usage and adoption. There are minimarts in metros which have started to store gadgets alongside their day to day eatables. In fact, the last decade was aptly called as “Gadget Decade” by a leading publication. The love for gadgets is indeed a very passionate one for many who are very particular about their gadgets, and maybe instead of Love thy neighbour, a lot of people believe in love thy gizmo.