CONFLUENCIA – 2011, Day-2

“Marketing is a mindset”

The Confluencia 2011 was concluded by a Guest lecture by Prof. Devashish Das Gupta, who is currently an Associate Professor at IIM, Lucknow and his area of specialization is Marketing. His topic of discussion was “Strategic Marketing in Contemporary era”. It was a highly interactive session and the hall was jam packed with students of both first and final year.

Prof. Devashish started his lecture by making it clear that the popular conviction of Marketing being selling is a myth but in real sense marketing is just about the mind set. He asked the class to tell various means of communication by which a company can communicate to the consumers. He got several answers like TV, radio, newspapers, social networking, words of mouth etc. but he explained the best way by which the a company can communicate to customers is the communication of values. The sole purpose of marketing is to communicate a company’s values to the consumers in a manner that he can decide what is best for him.

Next he discussed about the need gap analysis. He explained that first step of marketing is to do the need gap analysis on consumers because a consumer might not always be aware of the needs. He gave the example of Dabur Homemade, which for the first time launched the readymade spices. At that time, people were wondering why Dabur chose such a business as women had huge time to prepare spices but Dabur was visionary and since, the working women concept arrived in India, now there exist several brands offering similar products. In fact, the market of ready-to-eat products is increasing day by day which earlier used to be concentrated only in the cities like Mumbai.

Our speaker, further explaining the visionary model, told the audience that in the contemporary era, it is very important to be aware of new trends in the market. He explained how the youth concept of India is getting old and the next in the queue is Grey India, which is the consequence of DINKS (i.e. double income no kids). So, the companies need to be ready for these new trends in Indian markets. Further, he added that in this era, people are ready to pay more but the only thing they demand is quality. So, our next focus should be quality, and that should be provided to consumers at any cost. He also advised the audience to look for unique need sets in the market. He gave the example of new trend of kitchenless flats in Singapore and explained how change in trends affects the needs in contemporary era.

Next he talked about the ways of making profit. According to him, there are two ways of making profit either selling more or low pricing. And for selling more, one can either make existing consumers consume more or target new consumers. And new consumers can be attracted by innovative thinking. He gave the example of theme restaurants and theme marriages to explain the idea of innovative thinking. Our speaker also discussed about the emerging domains of business in contemporary era. He mentioned that the three most suitable business domains in coming times would be fitness, environment and security and one should be fully equipped for these upcoming trends.

Lastly, Prof. Devashish talked about the “Service Quality Model”. According to him, the service provided for a product gets integrated into the brand image. So, it is really important to provide good quality of service to the consumers. He also shared his insights for being a successful marketing manager, which are knowledge, skill set, physical health and mental health. With this note, he ended the lecture.

After the lecture, a query came from audience regarding the punchline and its use for marketing to which our speaker replied that punchlines are 100% effective when the product is new but as the product becomes older, punchlines become less effective and what matters the most is services and quality. So, if competitors are same, the main focus should be on quality of goods. At last, he concluded that in marketing, always go one by one, i.e. doing one thing at a time.

Prof. Devashish was appreciated by the audience with a huge round of applause for giving such an insightful and knowledgeable lecture.