MARKET - SHARE - VERSUS - MIND - SHARE

  


Achieving a good market - share is every sellers' dream. Marketing management teaches us various techniques to build up a healthy market share for the product or service that we are selling. The market leader continuously works to retain its leadership, while the challengers are trying their best to usurp the leader. It is rightly said that maintaining the number one position is so much more difficult than achieving it.

"Marketing" means identifying the customers' needs and then to offer a product or service that fulfills these needs. Can you achieve a good market share by just thinking of newer and newer methods of selling more and more of your products or is there something else to it ?? A good marketer is constantly thinking of ways by which the customer can remember his organization, his product & his message so that when it comes to the actual time of purchasing, it is his product that the customer remembers, before others. This, then logically gets converted into a sale. An increase in sales leads to an increase in the market share. It is clear that unless you occupy the customers' mind, a sale is unlikely to take place. Recent "marketing" thinking therefore puts tremendous emphasis on first occupying the customers' mind. Once this is done, an increase in market share is an automatic and logical corollary. Let us ponder today, dear readers, on this eternal truth.


If you happen to know any sales - person of one of these aggressive MNCs, especially selling consumer goods, you will know the kind of dog - fight that ensues between competitors to fill up the shelf space of the local kirana shop from where you probably buy your daily needs. The retailer is offered all kinds of incentives, monetary and otherwise, to give a lions share of his shelf space to a particular product. Traditional wisdom dictated that if the customer saw the shelves of a shop filled up with a particular "brand", then that is what he would also want to buy. Imagine if a customer had already made up his ( or her ) mind to buy a particular brand even before he stepped into the shop, what good would all this hype achieve ? So let us start thinking of means to "occupy" the customers' mind, so that when the time to purchase comes, it is our product that he is thinking about, and cares a hoot about the ones occupying those "shelves".


This leads us to an interesting insight into the buyers' mind; about what usually arrests his attention and influences his buying behavior. Who said Psychology had only a little role to play in marketing management? If current trends are any indication, marketing is an excellent alternative field for psychologists, to use their expertise. The way to a husbands' heart, as the popular saying goes, is through his tummy. We are engaged in finding a way to the customers mind. Though the factors that will come into play will be different for different products, there are some common denominators which are relevant all through and it is these that we will concentrate on, in the limited time and space available to us.


Does the customer know the credentials of the manufacturer of the product or the provider of the service ?
Why does one feel "secure", using a TATA product? Why does one believe that in a bottle of ‘Diet Coke’, or for that matter Diet Pepsi, there will really be no "calories' ? Simple! These manufacturers have won our "trust". If TATAs were to offer say a "cigarette" tomorrow and say that it is free of nicotine, you would tend to believe it, even against your better judgment. This trust is jealously guarded by sellers and no cost is too big to prevent a possible "dent". The most important means of occupying the customers mind is therefore to first create a space where your credentials are perceived as first rate. Contrary to popular belief, it is not only big business groups or Multi National Corporations that can create this kind of positive image in the customers' mind. Haven't you been going to the same bhajiwala or taking milk from the same milkman for years?? Well, they have managed to occupy valuable space in your mind and that is reflected in the "loyalty" that they have been able to generate. Just remember, NO-TRUST, NO-SPACE, is the rule in this game. Not for nothing are corers of Rupees spent in image building.



Are you persistent enough to make the customer finally open his/her mind to whatever you want to say ??
Don't you wish that the salesman who just pressed the buzzer would go away and allow you to have your siesta or whatever else you are doing ? A persistent salesman would not let go of your time until he is convinced that you indeed have no interest in whatever is being offered and even then he would make that last request to consider something new that he would bring "next time ". Big Corporations spend a fortune in doing just what this lone salesman is doing. They keep repeating their "positives" with a hope that they get stuck in "the customers mind". I have shared earlier with you some mind boggling statistics which deserve a repetition here. A market research carried out in Mumbai estimated that an average adult has to face (read or see or hear) about 568 messages (advertisements, trying to tell him something or the other) during an average day, obviously during the time he is awake (fortunately technology has not yet been able to generate dreams, which would give messages to your brain, while you are asleep) . What is interesting is that only 76 of these register on the customers brain and he/she can recall only 12 after twenty four hours of seeing/reading/hearing them. This is thus a virtual minefield. How does a marketer set out to occupy the customers’ mind, if there is so much information also trying to get in? One simple way is to be repetitive. Repetition builds reputation, they say.


A good brand is a MUST for occupying the customers' mind.
Give yourself a test: If I say "chocolate", which brand comes to your mind? If I say "vacuum cleaner", what comes to your mind? If I say, "scooter", what do you immediately think of? If you recalled Cadbury or Amul for the first, Eureka Forbes for the second and Bajaj or Vespa for the third, well you are with the masses. For these products, these brands have firmly "occupied" the mind of the customers like you and me. What this ensures is that whenever we set out to buy these products, we will not take our decision until we first "check out" these brands. Other brands will have to offer us something really "extra" for us to consider them. This is what we call the "benefits" of a strong "mind share" enjoyed by these brands.

Are you paying attention to the factors which help you reach the customers' mind ?
Four distinct factors which affect a customers' psyche are related to his or her (a) FAMILY ; (b) CAREER ; (c) HOBBIES ; & (d) VALUE SYSTEMS . These are the proverbial entry points to the customers' mind. As a good marketer, are you paying attention to all of them , for your group of customers ?? There are two ways of approaching this issue. The first one is to obviously highlight those positive points in your product or service which the customer will perceive as beneficial to any of the above. It may not be possible however, to directly relate the benefits of your product to the above factors (this is particularly so if you are selling industrial products). The second approach is to ensure that your message reaches the customer, "riding" on something which is related to one of these four factors. Like if you have identified your customer segment as "young college going students", and let us say you are selling "personal de odourisers", then you can communicate your "pitch" differently in relation to each of the above factors, so as to eventually occupy a space in the youngsters' mind. The first one is through the parents (FAMILY) who probably will finance the purchase of the de odouriser, if they think their son or daughter will look in poorer light if not equipped with it ; then by creating an image of your brand as one used by top executives (CAREER) ; then by selling it through sports shops or at cricket match- venues or by associating it with famous sports personalities (HOBBIES) ; and then maybe by establishing your product as completely ayurvedic or swadeshi (VALUE SYSTEMS). I am not suggesting that these are the best approaches for a personal deodouriser; all that I am saying is that marketers should explore and re-explore avenues to get into their potential customers mind, by thinking about these GATES to their mind.

Are you working hard to retain the "mind share" that you have achieved ??
Resting on ones' laurels is generally the beginning of the end of a marketers’ career. It is the costliest mistake that can be committed by a professional marketer. As a famous professor said, marketing is an unending race and not an end in itself. If those famous brands we talked about earlier (Coke, Bajaj, Cadbury, Amul) decide to take it easy because of having achieved a "satisfactory" mind share in the minds of their customers, well, soon this share will no longer be "satisfactory". As they say in the field of public speaking, the moment you start thinking that you are "something" (good) you no longer are "something".

Dear readers, what would you now strive to achieve? Market share or mind share? I am sure you have realized that achieving increased market share will take care of itself, if you have paid enough attention to increasing your share in your customers' mind. A wag once said "Before criticizing your wife, just pause and think; maybe because of these very deficiencies in her, she did not get a better husband”. Don't criticize the customer or the environment; maybe you deserve the market share that you presently have!!

"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page."