Rural Markets- Understanding needs

I was recently going through this article, which talked about lenovo's strategy in rural China. Lenovo, in the first half of 2009 had a market share of around 28% in China making it the leader. The article had an interesting statement regarding lenovo's rural strategy. It read

"They like to give desktop PCs because the boxes are large," says Li Zhong, director of Lenovo's consumer business in the Beijing and Hebei region. "They deliver the computers to brides' families on trucks, which everyone can see. In these cases the bigger the box, the better." WSJ

LiZhong seems to have caught hold of the need of the rural Chinese consumer. India's large untapped rural markets are still waiting to be explored. Given the uniqueness of these markets and the innovative strategies required to tap them, the first step to explore them would be to understand the needs of the rural consumer. The tough part is that most consumers don't know what they need. The stated needs are obviously clear. But the real, unstated needs are what the marketers need to know. When the iPod came, nobody knew they would need it, but Apple created a need for it. The same goes for mobile phones, when mobile technology was new. The new Tata Ace or Motorola's Moto Razr is a result of careful understanding of the market needs. Both these products sold like hot cakes since a lot of research on consumer demands was put behind their design.

India's success may lie in tapping rural markets and the key to it would lie in understanding the needs of rural consumer.

NIT Suicide: Preventive measures

The NIT suicide case is an incident that reminds us of the dragon hidden in the invisible poison of stress. Stress due to any wanted or unwanted activity can result in consequences, either positive or negative. Ragging is an unwanted harmful activity that can be fatal to the mental makeup of an individual. In such circumstances the individual subject to it may take extreme measures as in Satyendra’s case. Environmental factors cannot be avoided. Stress is just like a road accident. Most of the times, you might not be at fault but still you have to bear the consequences. To avoid them, you adopt safer driving. The same is the case with stress. Asking yourself the question “how big is the problem, how insignificant is it as compared to me, my life” can be the major difference between overcoming stress and being overpowered by it.
I recently did a project with my team on “Health Hazards of stress and its effect on productivity”. Based on our questionnaire, survey and analysis we came up with two things. Our research was in corporate context and may not hold a direct relevance to this case, but it can be modified to tackle stresses associated with ragging.

• Those facing high levels of stress try to manage stress by taking more sleep.
• Those with lower stress levels discuss problems with coworkers and supervisors [1]

The former is an indicator of tackling stress in isolation and the latter is an example of discussing problems. While facing problems such as ragging, discussing problems with others and seniors could be a major factor between a happy and a stressful life-state.

[1] : Based on the findings of the project “Health Hazards of stress and its impact on productivity” by Rahul Pandhi, Sridevi Nune, Souvick Paul, Shadab Sayani, Sushant Kumar.

Jet Airways Strike: Causes

The 5 day strike of jet airways pilots that ended on 13th September 2009 is another example of the dangers of taking communication lightly. According to sources the simulated strike cost jet around $40 million. The damage done is although much deeper. Looking at the nature of strike, there are 3 things that went wrong

1. Communication
2. Negotiations
3. Interpersonal stage collapse

There was clearly a communication lag between the management and the pilots association that led to an ugly concert and pilots holding management to ransom. Labor unions can sometimes take advantage of the shortage of skilled labor and and can set terms and conditions not conducive to the growth of the organization. The history of the communication lag between Jet Airways management and its employees goes way back to Oct 2008 when around 1900 employees were laid off but later asked to return after government intervention.
This drama of layoff, which went awry in a way, gave the employees a sense of power over the management. Empowered employees won round I. The stage for Round II was set and all it needed was a spark. This time monetary losses were to the tune of $40 million. In hindsight it maybe easy to say all this, but looking at the consequences, had jet delayed the negotiation process, time would have given the management a big advantage.
Looking at way this strike has ended, if the management does not appoint a conciliator, who will provide an informal channel for labor-management relations to improve, an uglier showdown maybe on its way.