Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Lessons from Introduction to Marketing!!!!

Today has been a strange day. I got up early for once... rushed to an unscheduled marketing lecture only to watch a garam bhajan on Mitsubishi (DC++ users should get that pun), came back and got fooled into watching Boys in Telugu. Phew!!!! What a day.
A roundup of news informed me that the World Mobile Congress is going on in Barcelona and its difficult to keep track of all the new things they are coming up with... like a James Bond style wrist phone. Another interesting article was this.
Well another pathbreaking headlines for the day is that today was the last class of our Introduction to Marketing course. Yippee to that!!! Given the amount of cases, readings and surprise quizzes I have faced for the course, I have surprised myself that I haven't ranted (read blogged) about it yet!!!
But in hindsight (yeah, the most powerful and useless tool available to mankind) I find that it was the most realistic course in our term, and that's a scary admission. More so after reading the book by Trout and Riese "22 immutable laws of marketing".
The power of brand comes to fore every time I flinch at Pepsi, when I have asked for Coke. Valentine's Day is an exercise in positioning by all eligible (this topic by itself merits a post) and what to say about consumer buyer behavior, easily understood. The only issue with studying the course has been to reconcile all these innocuous acts with hair raising frameworks and psychological factors. The huge ocean of terms doesn't help the cause either. Why do I care if someone is an opinion leader or chief opinion dispenser (wow!!! i made that up) .. its just a guy whom i listen to!!! Plain and simple huh!!! now try not losing sleep while remembering painful terminologies!!!!
Perhaps the most important piece of truth was revealed in the last class, while discussing channels. The whole concept of buying/ selling value to/from consumers/companies can be laid into 3 statements:
1. Your product doesn't deserve to be bought
2. The customer doesn't think your product needs to be bought
3. Your product is not available to be bought

If we look carefully at the first point then it indicates a possible failure of both market research and the quality departments while the second indicates failure of promotions and marketing efforts. The third is a failure of the SCM guys and in management of channels. Neat huh!!

Anyways the most important point is that hopefully I'll use some of this gyan in my Introduction to Marketing exam as well!!!
Signing off... gotta do lotsa project work!!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Parsuram,

    Was following your blog regarding IIT interviews..would like to interact with you further on this, if you can find some time please.

    What email should i contact you on?

    Swapnil

    ReplyDelete