I recently ran into a friend from B-School who is occupying a rather senior position in a FMCG major. He currently handles a very large portfolio of brands on a pan-India level and a top performer thus far, not to mention, being considered a rising star in his organization. He has worked in different part of India, rural and urban and has some very definitive points of view on the fickle Indian consumer (as he calls it) which has been arrived at through years of real experience. As a seasoned Indian marketer, one of his points of view stayed with me long after our meeting. He mentioned that despite having a very good understanding of the consumer landscape and having been at it for close to 2 decades, he makes it a point to visit the trade (Wholesalers, stockists, retailers and even end-consumers) at least once a month to remain relevant and understand the underlying dynamics that affect the market. In his mind, if he doesn’t do that, he quickly loses track of reality and which in turn leads to incorrect decision making. When I asked him about his views on using social media or buzz analytics to make his life easier, he completely cracked up. In his mind, the social media is a crazy ecosystem of delusional wisecracks (I called them PKIAs in my earlier post) who have no understanding of the common man. To be rhetoric, he asked me as to how much do I know about the local economics at the Kirana stores that happen in my neighborhood. Or the impacts of demonetization at the rural co-operative societies which are essentially the bedrock of common man economics in India. And how diverse this behavior is, as you go from state to state? And he was not surprised at my ignorance of either of these. At the max, I could just blurt out some theories based on my limited knowledge or quote some article written by a PKIA. And of course, neither of which could be backed-up by any kind of experiential knowledge or credibility.
This set me thinking quite a bit as to how much do we really know about the “common man”? The recent US elections reflected this lack of understanding, quite adequately. Another event in the recent past was the victory of the Aam Aadmi party in the Delhi elections in 2015. As technologists, several of us claim as to how much data is out there today and how if analyzed (and interpreted) properly could help people/corporations take better and saner decisions. It could be consumer behavior for firms selling products/services or political parties selling a dream or just plain common-speak. However is that really true? I reckon that there are indeed tons of data/ points of view out there and in some sense, far more than needed. I suspect that a combination of cognitive bias, selective perception and the data deluge pushes us into a state of delusion (in the name of debate) and analysis paralysis and which in turn makes a mockery of reality. And of course, Post-truth politics. The common man, however maybe doesn’t thankfully have to deal with all this and is possibly taking the right decision based on what intuitively appeals to their senses. There are of course, the limited few who are in the field working with the common man and who possibly have a better sense of reality. In the few areas, where I have had the good fortune of doing the same, my points of view underwent a dramatic change post the experience. The rest of us flood Facebook/Whats/app with half-baked points of view about the common man and keep contributing to the cacophony. So where do you fit in?
Experiential Musings 