The thing that is common in BEER and Education!!!!

Two years back there was a guest lecture by Dr. Tom, an international marketing expert, (an ex McKenzie employee) who worked for a famous beer manufacturing company. While mentioning about their operations in India he told that in India their biggest challenge was to ask people to drink but without getting drunk. Reflecting on this sentence one realizes that the challenge probably lies in customer education and in driving the customer demands properly. In short, in teaching the consumer what they should demand. Demand is inherently seen as a phenomenon largely decided and dominated by the consumers but here it seems that the product is such that consumers need to be taught as to how their demands should be.

In the same lecture we had also discussed that education sector in India is in abysmal state. Interestingly this follows a very close similarity with the problem in beer marketing discussed above. Not that as a product beer and education has any similarities, nor do students wish to have more and more of it!! (Education being no exception to the rule of Diminishing marginal utility for majority of the people!) Then what is the similarity? Smart readers will have definitely figured out, but let me help you in case you did not get it.

Education in our country is always considered as a mean to some attainments. For most of us the reason why we study something is attached to the fact that where would that education place us. (How much money is there in it?) This is a problem not only limited to the higher education, primary, secondary and higher secondary education’s situation is even worse. Parents while choosing school for their children look how much percentage the students of the particular school have got, while this is certainly something one should consider but there are lot many things that should be (must be) considered while selecting a school. Development of a child as a person being the most important of all is thoroughly neglected.

The problem does not stop here, it begins from here. Parents and students do not know exactly what should their demands be. A student can, no doubt, demand best pedagogic techniques however that may not at all correspond with his best result. Since there is ignorance among the consumers regarding their demands, they are buying everything and anything that is offered. Starting from K.G. Nursery or pre-schools which claim to turn one’s child into MSD or Sachin or Shahrukh (or Amir) or Sania Mirza to bogus personality development institute or training institute which offer 100% placement guarantee with a small, almost invisible asterisk of course!

All this needs to be thrown away! These businesses are perhaps good for making money right now but I am sure, as the market will become mature and more and more educated, learned as to what to demand; only those institutes will survive which offer actual benefits and not illusory promises.

It is a task ahead of us to come up with ways with which we can train customers so that they demand what they rightly need. Research in the area of teaching consumers may prove very useful in time to come.

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