The Hindu Business Line : Define your own India

Fed up with ‘popular methods used by consulting firms and business analysts to evaluate the Indian market opportunity,’ Rama Bijapurkar comes up with an alternative. “The top line of a P&L (profit and loss) statement is about co nsumer choices, not supply-side economics,” she writes in We Are Like That Only ( www.penguinbooksindia.com).

The book argues that emerging markets do not evolve the way the developed ones did, and consumption here takes off at far lower income levels, with low-priced innovations. The ‘Made for India’ proposition makes sense here, rather than “the conventional wisdom of ‘global standard’ benefits at global equivalent prices”, says Bijapurkar.

Considering the demographic and economic growth of India and China, the author calls for a re-think on “the centre of gravity of ‘global’ ”. She urges businesses, therefore, to define their own India, and to ‘translate the geographic idea into a well-defined construct of a consumer market’. Marketers should learn to accept India as ‘a market of contradictions and focus on designing innovative businesses which would or might work in such a market’.

Bijapurkar foresees a ‘guaranteed to happen’ opportunity: ‘China 2005 = India 2015.’ In about eight years, India would attain the same per capita income as China had in 2005, she declares.

A book for those looking for the winning long haul.

Personality grid

How Customers Like to Buy Steve Deery

What matters is not what you want to sell, be it floor brushes or executive jets. Rather, the secret of selling is the title of Steve Deery’s book: How Customers Like to Buy (Westland). Answering this question demands that we know the customer, he says. And, to help know, he proposes ‘the personality grid’, with four styles as quadrants, named ‘analytical, driver, amiable and expressive’, with connected words, ‘control, tell, emotive and ask’.

The analytical customer likes to ask lots of ‘hard fact’ questions, and spends time checking for accuracy. “In extreme circumstances they may become embroiled in the minute details which have nothing to do with the broader issues at hand,” cautions Deery.

The ‘direct’ ones ask “bottom-line questions, expressing little interest in formalities, or the ‘why and wherefore’, they also expect direct answers.” The ‘amiable’ are unassuming in nature, and they “tend to sit back, particularly in the presence of more assertive personalities.” The ‘expressive’ personalities are easily recognised ‘by their flexible, compromising, and outgoing manner’, and they have ‘an extensive network of contacts and friends’.

Well-dissected study that guides you to choose the appropriate selling style.

Brewing a change

How Starbucks Saved My Life Michael Gill

After losing a fortune, Michael Gill, aged 63, goes for some comfort in a latte, at a small table. “Would you like a job?” asks an attractive young African-American woman wearing a Starbucks uniform, from the next table. And Gill, the for mer creative director of J. Walter Thompson Company, the largest advertising agency in the world, says, “Yes.”

That’s just the start of a fabulously-written account: How Starbucks Saved My Life ( www.harpercollins.co.uk). A book you’d relish with your favourite coffee at hand.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com