Quality for Marketer

One of the most difficult questions for me to answer for last so many years has been: What is Quality? There are hundreds of definitions given by the various books on Quality Management; each one sounds perfect in the given context but generalizing the term is very difficult. Quality is a subjective matter, but very important for any organization to survive and make a mark in the fiercely competitive market. A producer and a customer can view quality differently.  Some of the technically best products may not be commercially successful and vice a versa. For example if you ask people about best wheeler available, you probably get as many answers the no of bikes available. It is very difficult for a marketer to decide what is quality?

Quality needs to be defined in a producer and customer context differently. Let us look at some definitions

Business has tried to define quality in a producer-consumer context, with the following variations:

1.     ISO 9000: "Degree to which a set of inherent characteristic fulfills requirements." The standard defines requirement as need or expectation.

2.     Six Sigma: "Number of defects per million opportunities." 

3.     Philip B. Corsby: "Conformance to requirements." The difficulty with this is that the requirements may not fully represent customer expectations.

4.     Noriaki Kano and others, presenting a two-dimensional model of quality: "must-be quality" and "attractive quality." The former is near to the "fitness for use" and the latter is what the customer would love, but has not yet thought about. Supporters characterize this model more succinctly as: "Products and services that meet or exceed customers' expectations."

5.     Rober Pirsig: "The result of care."

The best definition is given by Dr. Joseph Moses Juran. He was a 20th century management consultant who is principally remembered his work on Quality and Quality Management, writing several influential books on those subjects. He says quality as “fitness to use” and fitness is defined by customer.

This definition is best suited for marketer to understand the term. Here marketer needs to understand what is a best solution to the target customer problem? May not necessarily be the best in terms of technology. e.g. the immensely popular product of the past in two wheeler category  ‘Bajaj scooter’ was not the best technical product but successful as it was for fit to use for its target market. Understanding the target market and what would be suitable for the same is the key for successful launch of new quality product.

Word of Mouth - An Effective Ad Tool

Positive word of mouth publicity is very important of any product to succeed in the market. To take advantage of the same one needs to understand why do people talk about the product and in turn influence the buying behavior of reference group. There are few reasons why I think people are interested in talking about the product.

1.      As a natural tendency of human being every one likes to give a suggestion to others. When they like the product and happy with product performance they want to inform others, in turn spread positive word of mouth for the product.

2.      People like to show off their knowledge to others. This is one of the reasons even if the product is not bought or used, people talk about it. e.g. all the people talking about Mercedes or Bentley it is not necessary that own one. It is quit possible that they have not seen it ever, but they talk about the same.

3.      People like to associate themselves with certain product. Some products are considered as status symbol and prestigious, so when you own one you will talk about the same and inform people that you own the product. People are actually talking about themselves but end up advertising the brand.

4.      People also talk about the product that they buy to check whether their decision of buying the product was correct, and some one has bought the same product for the same price. This is result of post purchase dissonance when customer is not sure about the performance of the product.

Marketer needs to have product which lives up to the customer expectation, brand which is considered to be the prestigious or best in terms of quality and the product which suffers no post purchase dissonance to take advantage of the positive word of mouth publicity, which is free of cost and needs very little marketing effort by the marketer

Regulating the Regulators

We, Indians have very short memory. We forget things very easily and move on with life. But this time even before you forget Satyam disaster and move on, news flashed about five IT Indian companies being debarred from receiving direct contracts from the World Bank group under its corporate procurement program for four years. This may not be shocking but finding Wipro name amongst the five companies is definitely a shock. Wipro is known for its transparency and integrity.

This really makes us think again about the corporate governance practices in India. Are there enough of regulations in place? Are the regulators doing their job to make sure the corporate practice these regulations fairly? Are some of the regulations causing the fraudulent behavior by corporate? Can regulators be held responsible legally and punished for irregularities?

These are some of the important questions needs immediate answers. May be making corporations declare financial results every quarter is creating needless competition amongst the corporate post growth on quarter on quarter basis. This could be one of the reasons for window dressing and leading ultimately to the end like Satyam. Any fraud or deceptive action can not be kept under the carpet for so long without the either ignorance or by involvement of the regulators be it an auditor, independent director, credit rating companies, or even ROC. Most surprising is the company getting the Golden Peacock award for best corporate governance practices found to be a fraud. What sort of research is done before giving away this award is also questionable?

When corporate world is expected to practice corporate governance which is nothing but being transparent and accountable to the all the stake holder, why not our regulators practice transparency and accountability. The irony of the situation is these regulators only given the job of investigation of these irregularities of the corporate.

There is a need to hold these implementers of the law responsible for their misconduct and ignorance. Unless that happens even if we have another set of new laws, which is normally a kneejerk reaction after big scams, we will still have more of Satyam taking place in future. 

Reality of Reality Shows

Today we have 300 plus television channels almost all these channels are 24 x 7. We get see about 40 plus 24 x 7 news channels. Sometimes I wonder how all these channels are managing their program schedules. Where are they getting so many new things to air for 24 hrs? One must give viewers something which can glue them to television sets and doing that is definitely not so easy job to do. I must say creativity of all those managing these channels is commendable. You need issues to discuss and debate. You need people to talk about. Of course our politicians are helping these channels by providing some material by making controversial statements. Our film stars by expressing their opinion on things which are beyond their area of specialization and how can we forget our dearest people from sport fraternity by most of the times not playing to their potential. But still this material is very less to be aired for 24 hrs a day. Ms. Ekta Kapoor and her Bajaji Television along with some fellow directors provided some sort of solution in terms of daily Saans Bahu Beti soaps to entertainment television channels and giving some issues to discuss on the news channels. People started disliking these daily soaps and started loosing interest in these serials. Television channels were very quick to realize this fact and they came up with new plan to set up a business which can produce celebrities and the new production unit is called as reality show.

In India we got few celebrities in different walks of life about whom people like to listen to, discuss and debate. If I have to name them, we have Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukharjee, Aishwarya Rai, the three Khans, Lalu, Sonia, Sachin, Sourav, Rahul and of course Sania. This number is very less for channels to discuss about these people and issues related to them. When Aishwarya Rai weds Abhishekh Bachchan it becomes breaking news for all TV channels. If Mr. Bachchan wears a spectacle worth Rs. Three hundred thousand it becomes news to discuss for two days. But how much can one discuss these things and make them into breaking news. There is need for more celebrities and the best tool for this is a reality shows which can occupy some prime time on entertainment channel and create some celebrities to talk about on News channels. There are at least more than ten reality shows working on this project.

This idea of producing celebrities and creating material to sale them and issues related to them on channels is working out for the both entertainment and News channels. There are some management lessons to be learnt

1. Understand what viewers want to see and giving it would ensure product success.
2. To attract people it is very important to have good packaging of the product.
3. Product with multiple usages would benefit all the stakeholders e.g. Celebrity Reality shows increases TRP rating of entertainment channels and provide stuff to News channels so that they can discuss various issues such as likes and dislikes of these celebrities and many more things. Both of them are benefited.

But looking at very short lived fame of these reality shows one must understand the fact that the design of the product should be very good and quality should be ensured to maintain the market leadership for longer period of time.

A Common Man on Satyam

Satyam saga continues even today. What surprised me is some reactions that I came across about what should the role of Government in the case. Disbanding the board of directors and nominating the members on the board is fine but talking about bail out package for Satyam is something unacceptable to the common man of this country. A company which could not manage the tremendous growth and goodwill it created for the years due bunch of greedy people, why should the government spend money to save such company? I can understand the interest of the share holders is very important but using public money to bail out something like Satyam is definitely not a good idea. This would help may be few thousand people but if the same money is used for something it is meant for i.e. public works it would help the entire country. And if one can trust the news channels then the government is also heading in the same direction.

I will not surprised to see this happening because from the day 1, if one can recall the sequence of events then there is enough of scope to suspect the role of government machinery. No case was filed against Raju for almost 72 hours; no attempt was made to find out his whereabouts, AP CM sympathizing with Satyam, no property is of the any of the promoters is sealed and so on so forth.  

If we look at what happened in the past in similar cases, then there is very little hope about the positive and constructive outcome in this case as well. I do not think our regulators have learnt a lesson from earlier experience. It is not enough to have regulations and laws in place to see to it that is followed is very important rather more important responsibility of the regulators. That is defiantly lacking. All the talks of Corporate Governance, transparency, accountability sound vague. There is a need of corporate governance practices to be followed by regulatory bodies and government organizations. In that case we do not have to repent and they do post mortem of the situation.

As a common man I can only request and hope that government will not use tax payer’s money to bail out bunch of greedy.

Intellect Marketing

For years marketers have talked about marketing strategies, marketing mix, 4 P’s, 4R’s, 4C’s and 4A’s of marketing. Sound familiar? This has become the basic marketing checklist. It is a time to add extraordinary important “I” to the list: Intellect.  Customers do not buy products, they buy benefits, is a well known fact and has become mandatory for every marketer to market it’s products by communicating the benefits of his product to consumer. When all the products offer same stuff to its target market it becomes boring for consumers to make a choice, as there is hardly anything different. Only difference is the name and the logo. Marketers start differentiating their products by offering price discounts, various loyalty programs to compete in a market, where there is hardly any differentiation when it comes to real functional benefits.  These tried and tested strategies definitely work but to be exceptionally good or remarkable you need to have really different approach while marketing a product and be excellent. And that means you have to be a leader. You can't be remarkable by following someone else who's remarkable. One way to figure out this is to look at what's working in the real world and determine what the successes have in common.  What could the Nokia (bringing out new hardware every 30 days), 3M, Gillette possible have in common? Other than the fact that these companies have done exceptionally well and maintained its leadership for years, they have not only marketed their product but intelligence that customers buy with the product to solve their problem.  Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable.

Post – it is a piece of stationery with a re-adherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and to other surfaces: walls, desks and table-tops. Post-it is not just a bookmark for consumer; it is also bookmarking intelligently without having a mark of glue on the book or any surface. Gillette product makes it a point that the product give and edge to consumer to do things intelligently whether it is razor or a battery. Nokia combines Radio, Torch and mobility in a bundle and markets its’ product and makes sure that consumer finds it easy to use the instrument. Xerox is not just a photocopier machine but time saver and epitomizes smart way of doing things. Airtel Cellular service provider does not only make subscriber mobile but also tell them how to make use of technology intelligently. Airtel subscriber can use the smart way of paying their bill using easy bill pay services. It is all about giving easier solutions and smart way of doing things using your product or services.

I recently came across one such intelligence marketing. An Elevator company Schindler Elevators Corporation.  Elevators aren't a typical consumer product.  They generally get installed when a building is first constructed, and they're not much use unless the building is more than three or four stories tall.

How, then, does an elevator company compete? Until recently, selling involved dinners and long-term relationships with key purchasing agents at major real-estate developers. No doubt that continues, but Schindler Elevator Corporation has radically changed the game by developing a remarkable product. The story goes like this.

Every elevator ride is basically a local one. The elevator stops 5, 10, 15 times on the way to floor. This is a hassle for every one, but it's a huge, expensive problem for the building. While the elevator is busy stopping at every floor, the folks in the lobby are getting more and more frustrated. The building needs more elevators, but there's no money to buy them and no room to put them. An intelligent solution, this problem by Schindler Elevators Corporation.

Schindler's insight? When you approach the elevators, you key in your floor on a centralized control panel. In return, the panel tells you which elevator is going to take you to your floor. With this simple preset, Schindler Elevator Corporation has managed to turn every elevator into an express. The elevator takes folks immediately to the 12th floor and races back to the lobby. This means that buildings can be taller, they need fewer elevators for a given density of people, the wait is shorter, and the building can use precious space for people rather than for elevators. A huge win, implemented at a remarkably low cost.