The course on Customer Insights provides an exhaustive exposure to various behavioral traits of customers and how understanding these traits can help a marketer or a seller to understand and influence the customers more. By trying to understand What does the customer need’, marketers can make the process of communication and selling much more efficient, reduce wastage of time and resources and assist customers In accessing their desired products and services, thereby creating value.
I learnt that if one can unravel the ways in which people observe, perceive, behave ND react to various objects, other people and various situations, one could create a significant value by exploiting the understanding of human psychology and thereby customizing products, services and situations, appealing for the customers. In this elective, we learnt about various principles based on key customer Insights, and their practical applications by drawing examples from every day real life scenario. These principles that are discussed in the course are key to understanding the mechanism of the irrational though normal behavior of people.
Also, from a nonuser’s point of view the course facilitates a thorough understanding of all these principles used by sellers and marketers, which enables them to be better prepared when they face similar situations so that they can make informed decisions. Out of all the principles the ones I found most interesting were the principles of context effect, scarcity, nudge or lure, nudge with reward substitution, likeability and social context, social influence and social proof, perception distortion and loss aversion.
Principle of perception distortion has taught me now to look at the true message Enid any advert and make reason based decision by not getting trapped by the misleading effect of the created perception. For example, at any snack joint, most of the times the total price of a meal comprising of individual items is not less than the sum of individual prices of each of the items. However, influenced by the context, a customer believes that by choosing the meal option he is saving money and it is a good deal for him/her.
Similarly, In a super market, most of the bundle promotion, which says X number of the product free on the pack of Y, or product M free with reduce Y, etc. , are directed to the customers weakness of wanting more for less. In these cases the customer ends up buying much more than their need at that point in time and thus the sellers make the most of this perception distortion of the customers. I learnt a crucial understanding of how human beings think.
There are two systems – brain functions rapidly and reacts instantly in situation such as smiling upon seeing a small child, getting nervous while a plane takes off, crying when moving away from family and close friends for long, etc. , so human brain in Automatic System, does no hinging, where as ‘Reflective System’ involves thinking. This system makes a person deliberate over the situation and take a conscious decision, for example, when people decide which university to attend, where to go for holidays, and who to get married with.
This helps in explaining when will a customer be more reactive to a particular situation or set up in a super market, or when he/she sees a perception distorting commercial in newspaper and TV, etc. After learning the principle of nudge or lure, I can relate to my marketing promotion experiences while working for Milliner India, here I used this principle nudge or lure for promotion of milk food product, which targeted the school going children. The campaign featured no known celebrity but a young school student who was the best chess player in his age group in the country and had won many tournaments.
The promotion did not explicitly mention that consuming the product will make your child like the one in the promotion, but the mothers got nudged to buy the product as chess is quite popular in India and often get linked with intellectuality of a person, therefore, being a good chess player at a nouns age is a great sign of success for a child. Campaigns with negative message also have profound impacts. For example in India, smoking in public places is banned and there is a huge social and governmental drive in spreading the awareness of harmful effects of smoking.
Therefore these days at the beginning of every movie there is a 5 minutes long commercial on why smoking is injurious to health and what are the potential impacts that smoking can cause in a long run. This commercial is then repeated mid way through the movie at the intermission. Also, every time when any character of the movie smokes, it is mandatory to show a promo of one liner at the bottom of the screen saying, ” Smoking is injurious to health”.
Thus this repeated hammering of negative message has had impact on the way society looks at smoking and it is no more considered a fashion statement in the youth rather it is now being considered a taboo to some extent. Another interesting principles that I have learnt and find highly effective are the ones of scarcity and loss aversion. Often it used to happen that I ended up buying meeting as it happened to be available only for a few days and I experienced the ‘Fear of Missing Out’ and bought it when clearly it was not the most important item on my priority list.
Also, many times when I have received free discount coupons, which were for a limited period, from the nearest pizza store, or a burger Joint, it pushed me to order food from these Joints more often out of the intent of avoiding losses to the extent of the discount percentage mentioned on the coupons. Clearly, eating from these Joints was not on my priority list and I was rather interested in ordering from other food Joints or restaurants, however, to avoid potential losses I was influenced to order more from these stores. Arioso situations around me, which may be misleading, however, appears obvious after analyzing using the suggested framework. This will help me in making informed decision and exercise reason based choices, help me in avoiding distractions in the market place. However, on the other hand as a marketer or seller, this course will help me in attracting customers with relevant value proposition in innovative ways by exploiting deeper understanding of their thoughts and behavior.
