Continuing the journey.....

It has been a long break…almost 8-9 months since my last entry. I’d be lying if I say I was too busy and didn’t get time…but then as I said in my first entry – “Time is always there, intentions are not there”. I guess I didn’t have anything fruitful enough to write or had too little to write to make it into a blog entry. Well, neither do I have now!! But I guess I needed a push… and a simple talk with one of my dearest friend today drove that intent to write and here I am…This article covers two topics:


EARLY ADOPTER OR LOSER?

One of the early things that we were taught in our marketing class was that any new innovation needs a few people (called innovators) – people who look forward take the risk and try new innovations in marketplace be it in any industry, people on whom the company launching an offering so dearly depend - to further increase the penetration of product/service. Then come the “Early adopters” and so on (I have attached a pic for ease of understanding)…





I think I can take the liberty to count myself in the “Early adopter” category when I bought a data-card for connecting myself to the virtual world called Internet. Tata and Reliance had launched Photon+ & Netconnect+ respectively and I had opted for my Photon+. I have been happy with the service but over time I felt more and more cheated when I saw the price of the device falling (which can be mix of many factors like technology helping reduce price or the penetration reaching a cutoff where company can reduce prices or competition). But as I saw the prices falling, the questions kept disturbing me -

“Why had I, being a brand ambassador, one of the early adopters of the product paid more for the product than the ones who are buying it today? When all I know is that I am probably a small part, yet a part of the reason that made it possible for company to reduce price to enable these people to buy”.

“Why has the company forgotten my interest?”

“Should I not get some incentive now that prices have come down?”

“Is being an early adopter comes with an extra price tag?”

“Is the early adopter a loser in the end?”


I haven’t got the answers to these questions but I am happy lately ‘coz I won a pen-drive by participating in a quiz competition launched by company. I don’t know if I won because I am one of their core customer group, ‘coz the quiz hadn’t gone too well OR is it plain good luck. But I am happy that I have got something from the company. It made me feel “valued”.

I guess it shall be important for companies as they move into future to not forget their customers (once they become customers) and make them feel valued by some way or the other. Focus would be more on retaining as the customer becomes very vulnerable to move to competition.

In case of data-card, I may have been bound by the device and not switched, but I may have done so in case of some other product. And the companies should not forget that.







HOW TO PREVENT YOUR CORNER FROM BECOMING A GARBAGE DUMP!!


India is one unique country. I have always been amazed by the infinite number of deities followed by people through-out the length and breadth of the country. Sometimes I feel people over-do things in name of their devotion – be it “doing a jagrata and disturbing many people by turning on the loudspeaker in night” OR “following some god-man as if he/she is a real god” and so on… Well sometimes, this comes of use too

Over time, I have realized one thing that most of the people including me have in common is that we are “God-fearing” - Nobody complains of the loudspeaker during jagratas ‘coz it is something related to god, a person who may do wrong all day long but turns a saint when visiting a temple / gurudwara / mosque / church (I am suddenly reminded of the old bolly movies where even the villains are god-fearing)…

But this is not the thing I wanted to talk about…I thought I saw an opportunity of window where this behavior can be used to help clean your surroundings. (Devotion pays somewhere you see!!!)

It happened some-time back – the PG I stay in Kolkata is a part of a nice, clean locality.. but then clean is something that differs from person-to-person. As it is, my PG is at a corner and I guess, corners in locality have always been taken as granted as places to dump trash by people. Ours was the same case…weekdays were no problem..I used to stay in office and come back by night to eat and sleep. But then, on weekends, you could smell the stench if you venture out and if nothing, it doesn’t look good.

My landlord, a house-wife had no such luck…she had to spend all day at home and thus was really worried about this… Then one day, lighting struck!!! And she had a brilliant idea. One day, I suddenly noticed a small “shiv-ling” (lord shiva’s symbol of worship) outside the house at the corner. My landlord had got that made and well, let alone trash, now you can see some small change (coins) people leave at the place.


The truth is nobody learns and I can see the corner a few blocks down turning into a garbage dump now. It’s high time people, U and me to start with realize that we have to take care of our surroundings and not throw small stuff like a wrapper, tea cup etc around..


“Or does God need to present himself/herself at every place to stop people from littering!!!!”