Opinion Squeeze the psyche to make them buy

Of the identified psycho-socio factors that will drive tomorrow’s business,behaviour is quite assessable,but what about reckoning the mind? This varies according to the nation,geography,culture,language,religion,economic class,the political milieu,age and family environment. Finally it’s a person’s self-confidence that stops the buck. At the very base of this decision making hierarchy is the country a person belongs,the kind of geography she lives in that induces specific purchases. The collective consciousness of culture,language and religion,plays a role as obvious as the economic class a person belongs to. The political environment plays an enabling part as to whether certain goods and services have been made available under that government. Different age groups definitely behave in their diverse ways,influencing purchase or detracting others from spending. The immediate social and family environment factor in the decision for purchase,and at the very top is a person’s self confidence. If we have a population of say 6.5 billion people in the planet,we can upfront say there are 6.5 billion psychological strains to deal with. The accumulation of these strains comprises multi-dimensional consumer sensitivity. No management process has found a mechanism of how to understand the multidimensional psychological content of the human race.

Innovation needs the subconscious mind: The primary requirement of any company’s innovation centre must be the invaluable knowledge of people’s psychological dimension. Being tremendously sensitive to consumers will result in sustainable innovation. You may be serving your B2B customer,but your customer’s end consumer will be very involved with the psychological paradigm. Innovation centres employ technologists or engineers,but never consider recruiting psychologists or sociologists. This results in technology-based products,which then become generic. If the innovation environment considers the cognitive and societal ramifications,that innovation can gain in differentiation,in its capability to earn premium and to sustain in the market.

Benchmarking with statistics is a global business process. At a local level,it bypasses the consumers’ psychological facets. Business leaders with articulation and number-crunching skills who feature in Fortune 500 global companies often get accolades for their company’s power,size,and business results. But if you ask these leaders what is the emotional level at which their product or service connects to the masses,will they be able to answer? Developed societies took a long time to understand the need of appreciating people’s subconscious choice,particularly of women. This realisation emerged from the competitive pressure in sophisticated markets. Intense competition threw corporations off their thrones to check out ground reality with more consumer research to understand psychological gaps. An economically emerging country like India has several socio-economic layers of women with differing psychological subsets. Do Indian organisations factor this in as the real market space to drive future business in?

If there is no world war in future,the world of business will run only on the basis of the human psychological aspect. Indian companies that aspire to become transnational have to venture into this area with substantial investment. Start with understanding the psychology of women,the world’s biggest buyers. This can win you an unending business platform to grow and sustain your business profitability.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com