- How much marketing effort do I require to sell my products to X compared to effort required to sell my product to Y? If X will not buy my products until I have Shahrukh in my ads or I sell the products only in the elitist malls, then it is very expensive to sell my products to X.
- How much service is required by X compared to Y? If X is an idiot and keep calling my customer care to know about every small feature or benefit of the product or just for time pass, then it's expensive to serve X.
- How loyal is X customers compared to Y? In case when I am the only supplier, the question may not apply?
Some questions, some learnings
Friday, January 8, 2010
Who the hell should be my customer segment?? contd..
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Who the hell should be my customer segment??
So, have we arrived at a customer segment now? The answer is No. We have got a section of homogeneous customers who have similar needs but we have still not touched the second half of the definition i.e. “which can be satisfied through similar distribution channels". I am not touching this part now. I will take it up in the next post. (Otherwise you would sleep off till the end of the post).
PS: I know the scope of the title was to choose a segment and I did not even define a segment. This is cheating. You may call it. But I will be covering all this in subsequent posts.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Is it really cheating or an application of a marketing concept?
Recently, I went to a dtdc shop (don’t know if it was franchise or not. This shop gets the couriers from main Ahmedabad dtdc office and delivers them in its area). The shop is located in Vastrapur, Ahmedabad. I wanted to courier one package to Delhi. The guy there weighed the courier. It came somewhere around 275 gms. After weighing he started doing some paperwork. I understood he was basically preparing receipt for sending the courier. Wanting to know the amount, I interrupted him and asked what the charges are. He replied Rs150. I stood there silent for a few seconds giving an impression (and it was actually the case) that the amount he quoted was much higher than I expected. He asked whether he should continue. I paused for a moment and then was probably going to refuse him. At that time, he said that I can send it for Rs120 also. I was a bit surprised and asked him what the difference is. He said that there is a separate department dtdc+, which charges extra. He pointed me to a banner which had dtdc+ written on it and showing that it gives some delivery guarantee.
Even though Rs120 was also higher than I expected (I did not have some amount in mind but probably around 50-60 was in my mind), still I said yes. I was sending such heavy courier for the first time. So, I thought may be it costs that much.
On returning back, as I was still feeling that the amount was a bit high, I went to dtdc site. According to the site, it should have cost me Rs75. I instantly called that guy. He started giving lame excuses that no matter what is the weight we get, we have to pay this much…blah blah blah… I said ok now I can’t do anything, so good bye.
Then as I was thinking about the incident, I started thinking whether he has really done something immoral. I knew he has sort of cheated me. But was he really morally wrong to do that. One thought came to my mind that no, he has done nothing wrong. He has just extracted more customer surplus (for definition of customer surplus, see end of post) out of me. This is what the job of a marketer is: to provide maximum value and then extract maximum surplus out of the customer. The prices of all lifestyle products and even things like coke, pepsi, chocolates are not calculated on cost plus margin basis. The price is calculated on the basis how much can the customer pay. So this is the same he did. As I could pay Rs120, he charged me that. Rather than calling him immoral, I should call him a good marketer. Shouldn’t I? Is there something wrong with my argument?
As I was thinking about this one more thought came to my mind: Are money lenders exploiting or helping poor people? Most people hold the view that these money lenders charge unjustifiable interest rates and conditions to the poor people. But my point is that it is their choice how to price their product. Do we ever ask pepsi why does it charge Rs10 for a bottle that costs just 80 paise? So, money lender has money. They fix a price for lending. Now it is up to the farmer to get a loan or not. Money lenders are not forcing loans to the farmers. The value derived by the farmer must still be higher than the cost (even though it is very high), that’s why farmer is coming to the money lender. That’s the only reason he is coming to the money lender. So, money lender is actually increasing the value to the farmers by providing loans, even though at exorbitant rates. What’s wrong with this? Why people are severly against these money lenders? At least, marketers should never be critical of them. They are just doing what a good marketer is expected to do.
If you say that one should look at the social value also when trying to capture the customer value, then my first argument is you are walking on thin air. What is social value anyway? Isn’t pepsi wrong when it charges Rs10 for a 80 paisa bottle? Can you measure the psychological sadness that a person might be feeling when he wants to drink a pepsi but he can’t spend Rs10? I’m not joking. I am serious. How do you feel when you want to buy something but you can’t afford it. Similarly, a poor person sees a bottle of pepsi and wants to drink it but he can’t. If it had been for Rs3 or 4, he would have had it. Now who is the cause of this depressed feeling? Pepsi or someone else? Now if that’s not enough, Pepsi spends so much on advertisement and keep bombarding that person with advertisements continuously reminding him of his poverty.
One thought that’s just coming to my mind is suppose that a person worth Rs1000 crore gets a heart attack and is taken to a hospital nearby. There is no other hospital in 50km range. What should this hospital charge the person? How much would he be willing to pay?
Definition of customer surplus: Suppose if you are buying pop corn for Rs5, then the satisfaction or value you are deriving from consuming pop corn must be greater than the value you derived by keeping Rs5 to yourself. So, customer surplus is
Value (in monetary terms) derived from the product – Price of the product
So, suppose the maximum you are willing to pay for same pop-corn is Rs10, then that means this the point where you are probably indifferent to having pop-corn or money with you. Above price of Rs10, you’ll prefer to keep money and below Rs10, you would like to have pop-corn.
In this case, if you are getting pop-corn for Rs5, then customer surplus if 10-5=Rs5. A marketer job is to capture the maximum of this. So, a good marketer will price the product around Rs10.
Disclaimer: This is very simplistic explanation but it captures the essence