Yo!
I remember sitting uncomfortably on a trolly sipping chai bought from a passing tea vendor. This was Mumbai airport circa 2000. A business lounge was something to crave for – and some credit cards made a killing on it – to get away from these sordid, uncomfortable surroundings. It wasn’t just Mumbai – I remember sitting on the floor at Zurich Airport to get access to a power source so I could finish my deck. Cut to today when airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore are cool places to shop, sip lattes and do your work. I don’t mind going early at all, and I don’t go to the lounge. For a while, bottled water was a big ticket sale at airports – you couldn’t take your own in, and you wouldn’t dare try the tap water. Today with the free, swanky water fountains I don’t need bottled water. In fact aiports are the ONLY place in India where I drink tapwater! So when public services get their act together, private services that bridge failure start to shrink. The government is focusing on making payments really easy – thereby impacting the people who were bridging the ertstwhile difficulty. If the government were to fix the education and healthcare systems, the dynamics of private enterprise in those sectors would change rapidly.I also want to point out that luxury is relative – if the airport isn’t so horrible, the lounge looks less attractive. If the water is dispensed from a swanky fountain instead of a dispenser with a steel tumbler tied to it, the bottled water looks less desirable. If you sit in a plane with just one class of seating and the same type of food for everyone, you don’t lust for business class any more.
I bring this up to point out that positioning of your service/product is impacted hugely by factors that you cannot control, but may be able to predict. In the online world this happens far more rapidly – a movie could trigger a new fashion, weather changes the sale of not just apparel but also health aids, beauty aids, holidays… you would have to combine this with your own product mix as well as the real time data of your customers’ choices to optimize your strategy. This is what we are going to talk about in our upcoming webinar for senior marketers and digital experts on Cognitive Commerce co-hosted with IBM on 6th October, 2016 and email me to know more.
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