Gross National Happiness :)

We all know that many countries use GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of the country’s success. But our neighbor, Bhutan uses a more creative and humane measure of the country’s success. It is GNH – Gross National Happiness.

Here is a short 3 minute video explaining this concept:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zqdqa4YNvI

Confessions of a Shopaholic Interviewer

With the little exposure to field-work in my career so far, I have been driven by an urge to explore ways of motivating and engaging respondents to answer our surveys. I can still recall the turmoil I faced while conducting shopper intercept interviews during my summer internship last year. The first hurdle was to convince the respondent to start with the survey.“Why should I take part in a survey?” is a question every single potential respondent is confronted with, as this is the central motivation question. The answer to this question is decisive for the later results.

Many respondents feel “forced” to answer surveys and feel that they are doing a favour to the interviewer by giving her their time. Also, many respondents feel, “If I don’t do it, there are many others out there who would do it. Why don’t you ask the other person to answer your survey?” This phenomenon is called the “Bystander effect”.

With the “B.E.“ people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are alone. Reviews of studies on over 6,000 subjects in a variety of helping situations indicate that subjects who are alone help about 75% of the time, while subjects in the presence of others help about 53% of the time. The bystander effect is believed to occur because of diffusion of responsibility when the responsibility is divided among many, everyone thinks that someone else will help. Hence, it becomes problematic to convince respondents in a crowded shop! Also, some of them say, “Why don’t you ask the other people? My answers may not be good enough for you!”

Even after the first hurdle is crossed, the second hurdle lurks in the corner. The respondents start off the survey well and answer the initial questions with interest. As the survey progresses, they start getting impatient/ bored and ask, “Still how many questions are left? Can we leave now?” Some of them just walk away or dismiss the interview abruptly. Some also say, “Based on whatever I have answered so far, you fill in the rest of the questions yourself.”

We need to get them involved in the “purpose” of the research. They should know why are we asking them these questions – It is for their own benefit so that we can make better products forthem in future. With the knowledge about respondent motivation and ‘hot buttons’, researchers could influence response rates to online surveys.

Monetary incentives have been used extensively to make respondents participate in surveys. But we need to look beyond just extrinsic motivators. If monetary incentives are involved, many times the respondents just answer surveys for money. This leads to “professional respondents” who try to give fabricated answers in order to qualify for the survey so that they can earn the extra bucks!

Ideally, the approach should be of ‘Marketing 3.0’ where the respondent is considered as a consumer who is seeking value through the survey experience instead of an employee who is getting paid for doing a “chore” for the researcher. Like any marketer who motivates consumers to ‘try’ her new product by communicating with the consumer, the researcher should try to ‘market’ the survey to the respondent.

Pete Cape distinguishes different types of motivation based on the different goals that give rise to the desired behavior.  It has been observed that tasks completed with intrinsic motivation are characterized by high levels of engagement resulting in high quality and creativity, and enjoyment on the part of the doer. Hence, it becomes important for a researcher to induce intrinsic motivation in their respondents in order to obtain high quality responses. Motivation depends on the person and different individuals may be motivated by different stimuli. If a person has to transcend from the level of extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation, she has to internalize the focus of causality (“they are making me do this” vs. “I am doing this myself”).

For my thesis, I had asked each one of the respondents of my survey the reason they answered the survey, what motivated them to answer the survey? One factor that emerged in all cases that drives motivation among respondents is “Karma” or reciprocity. People tend to answer surveys to help the sender of the survey.

Martin Nowak talks about two kinds of reciprocity that is applicable to respondent motivation. The first one is called direct reciprocity. This is when individuals have repeated interactions, so if I help you now, you may help me later. This was true in the case of a student peer group that I surveyed as a part of my academic research.

“I feel the guy/girl would really need people to fill it up so I try to help out in my own little way. I guess I might need their help in future. Karma is the answer.”

There is also indirect reciprocity, which takes place in groups. If I help you, somebody else might see our interaction and conclude that I’m a helpful person, and help me later. That’s a reciprocal process relying on reputation. This is one factor that I noticed when I approached couples who were out on a date and the boy would happily answer my survey to impress his girlfriend!

We really need to understand the respondent’s mindset deeply to find the key to unlock all barriers between the respondent and a completed survey! We still have a very long way to go…

The Epitome of Spiritual Strength - Joan of Arc

I consider myself extremely privileged to have received an opportunity to view the most magnificent and heart wrenching classic movies of all times, "The Passion of Joan of Arc".

Although the movie is now available on Youtube for everyone to watch, it is best experienced in "Plato's cave" where you are confined and watch it without any distractions.

This movie gave me goose bumps because I witnessed the highest level of spiritual strength in Joan of Arc. This movie clearly drew a distinction between religion and spirituality. Often people tend to equate both of them. But they are actually completely different from each other. Religion is very hollow and shallow if not understood with a spiritual base. The clergy of the church followed a very hollow religion. Their ego and vanity overpowered their mind. They believed that ‘God’ only showers blessings on people who follow the church. But did they know the true meaning of “God’? It was only Joan who actually understood and was clearly aware of what is the true identity of ‘God’. For her, God is personal. He is not a supreme entity sitting in an ivory tower and dictating rules to the world. God is within her soul, her inner voice. Each person in this world can be connected to their own God personally just like every little child can run into his mother’s lap and cry. There are no rules and regulations governing this acquaintance.



Joan of Arc was in a constant state of spiritual bliss because she was always connected to ‘her God’. The church cannot exercise ownership on ‘her God’. They have ‘their own God’ whom they try to ‘market’ to the world as a product. But if all the people in the world realize that even they have ‘their own God’ within themselves just like Joan of Arc, then nobody would ‘buy’ the ‘church’s God’. This threatened the church and hence they decided to break the spirit of Joan. Her spiritual strength surpassed all barriers, including the attachment to one’s own body! Among all the people in the movie, she was the only person who had a peaceful soul, even though her body was in chaotic pain. Everyone else around her had peaceful bodies that carried souls in chaotic pain.

A "little" wish for India at the ICC

This is a little wish of every Indian as we see the launch of ICC Cricket World Cup this year.

Click the image to enlarge

This is a print ad created by me for an advertising competition organized by SAMAR - The Sports Fest at MICA. You can join their FaceBook page here and check out other entries.
If you liked this ad, you can "like" it on FaceBook here after the joining the page and help me win this competition :)

A Walk Through the Greeky MICA Campus

The on grounds creatives for Sankalp 2010.
It was the best creative learning experience for me this year.


The campus looked heavenly when the sun went down. The photos below speak more than words on the work that our team put up.

Lamp shades were created using white chart papers with blue paint dabbed on them and greek alphabets drawn randomly. The yellow lamps were covered in red gelatin papers to get a red light. After that, blue chart paper made the final light look violet! :)
The hostel floor was full of greek alphabets, with me sitting with "colored fingers" :)


They look fiery in the day-light too!

Special thanks to the best team-mate ever - Taniya Dhirasaria! :)

My experience at ESOMAR Asia Pacific Conference 2010, Malaysia

I was selected by ESOMAR to attend the Asia Pacific Conference this April in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia through their Developing Talent Initiative. It was a life-changing experience for me and it gave me a whole new perspective towards market research and global relationships.

What is ESOMAR?

ESOMAR is the world organization for enabling better research into markets, consumers and societies. It is a prestigious community with more than 4,600 members in over 100 countries. ESOMAR’s aim is to promote the value of market and opinion research in illuminating real issues and bringing about effective decision-making. To facilitate this ongoing dialogue, ESOMAR creates and manages a comprehensive programme of industry-specific and thematic conferences, publications and communications.

What is DEVELOPING TALENT INITIATIVE – Future Talent Meets the Industry?

ESOMAR has developed a programme aimed at encouraging the brightest students to enter the industry and to start a dialogue between University and Business school professors. This highly successful initiative has extended many invitations to students around the world including MICA. They want to show the students that the business dynamics require a market research profile which is not only rigorous and based on knowledge of methodologies and statistics but also needs skills that prepare new comers in this industry to handle the complexities of everyday business. ESOMAR events are also a great opportunity to learn and to allow students to get in touch with industry experts and their companies worldwide.

The APAC Conference

Asia Pacific 2010
Eyes on Asia
Kuala Lumpur / 25 - 27 April

Theme of the Conference

There is a widespread sense that we have talked for 20 years about Asia as representing the future. Now the global economy has positioned Asia as a driving force of the world economic recovery. Asia is no longer the next thing but the thing. In this context, business must find the way to invest in innovation and capabilities. How can market research help business exploit the opportunities that the economic situation is bringing to the region? How can local Asian market research companies leverage global opportunities to expand and grow their business? And what are clients looking for? How can local and international companies best utilise existing skills and maximize resources?

The answers to these critical questions will be the engine that drives the Asian research industry to react and adapt quickly to the new context.

Students selected to attend the conference

ESOMAR had selected 4 students from across Asia to represent their country’s young talent at the conference. The following students were selected from Asia-Pacific, including me:

- Benjamin Jozef F. de Leon University of Asia and the Pacific, Philippines

- Tanvi Gupta MUDRA Institute of Communications, India

- Mark Wong Kah Yuang Singapore Management University, Singapore

- Wenqi Zhu Communication University of China, China

The ESOMAR APAC Team

The conference was held at the JWT Mariott Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the conference, the four of us were given an opportunity to work as a part of the organizing team of ESOMAR and to interact and network with all the participants from across the globe. We attended all the presentations followed by the networking drinks and dinner. We got an excellent opportunity to work on the back-hand operations of an international conference along with overseas colleagues in the same team. In the above photo, the two senior members on the left are the Presidents of ESOMAR - Gunilla Broadbent and Finn Raben.

There was a plethora of innovative ideas and thoughts spreading across the sessions as the presenters from across the globe presented their research papers. The papers were from all across Asia including India, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and also other countries like UK, Germany and USA. Most of the papers focused on the Indian and Chinese context but yet had a universal applicability. Some of the papers that I found very interesting are described below.

Synergistic co-creation: A blend of art and science. This paper was presented by Deepa Soman and Prakash Dadlani from Godrej, India. They spoke about how “synergistic partnering” between client, agency and consumer can create wonders in the market. They spoke about the process of ideation, design and implementation of innovation in developing remarkable products by using innovative research.

Shoppers of Asia was a paper written by Korakoj Nirutnapaphan from Bangkok. It was also co-authored by MICA alumni, Himanshu Vashishtha and Aruni Ghosh. It was a very interesting comparative study of the differences and similarities across markets in different asian countries, with a focus on shopper’s store selection behavior.

Relevant pieces to the Chinese media puzzle was presented by Don E. Schultz and Martin P. Block. It gave a revealing comparison between consumers’ media consumption in China vs. the USA.

Will Twitter change the way that market researchers communicate? Was presented by Ray Poynter from UK. This was one of the best presentations I have ever attended in my life. It was an interactive session where Poynter projected a live Twitter screen and live comments from the conference attendees were showing up every minute. The hashtag #ESOMAR was being used to tweet the proceedings of the conference. Live feedback to the ongoing seminar was appearing on the screen simultaneously as the speaker was presenting. This would allow the speaker to adapt to the audience needs real-time. It was only after this experience, that I was inspired to use twitter productively. And till now, I have been using twitter to stay in touch with all MR professionals from across the globe!

Measuring emotions: Is China different? Was presented by Raimund Wildner and Laena Liu. They had created a tool that researchers can use to measure emotions quantitatively. Also, this tool had to be tweaked to be applicable to China because the tool used cultural elements as the base of measurement.

Billion dollar baby: Leveraging mobile technology for research applications in India was presented by proud MICA alumni Madhumita Chakraborty and Sandeep Arora. They spoke about how the mobile penetration in India can be tapped by marketers and researchers as a tool for data collection. This paper was selected as one of the best papers presented at the conference and was nominated for the global award for excellence. It was a very proud moment for all of us because the two best papers selected at the conference were both authored by MICAns!

Listening to the sounds of silence was presented by Shobha Prasad from Drishti, India. This was a very out-of-the-box presentation and was very much appreciated by all. She said that in qualitative research, most of our analysis is based on what respondents “say”. However, she explained that more often there is a lot of valuable information in the “silences” of consumers, what they leave unsaid. Silence may play a role to convey opinions and feelings. This gave me a fresh new perspective towards qualitative research.

There was also a great line of panel discussions spanning across different topic areas. One interesting topic that was covered was about how can research be done on “hard to reach” respondents especially when the universe size is very small and obscure. This panel discussion was moderated by Pravin Shekhar from Krea, who is also the ESOMAR India Representative.

I also got an opportunity to meet some key people from the world of marketing and research. I got an opportunity to interact one-on-one with the one and only Don Schultz – The Father of Integrated Marketing Communications! I have been reading books written by him and we have been learning the definition of Advertising and IMC as defined by Don Schultz. It was an immense pleasure and a dream come true to come face to face with such a personality. He is a very warm person and very supportive to young students who want to achieve something big in life. He gave me some recommendations about further studies and career paths when we all sat together and had lunch at the same table.

Me with Don Schultz- The father of IMC

I also got an opportunity to interact with the chairman of TNS worldwide, Mr. John Smurthwaite. He was very keen on playing a role in helping students kick-start their career and to help them develop a good future in the market research industry. I received a very warm welcome into the MR industry by the senior members and it further boosted my enthusiasm and respect towards the MR industry.

What I have gained from this experience

This was my first trip outside the country, and I went all alone. It was a very liberating experience for me as I got to experience a whole new world all by myself. There was a certain level of fear at the back of my mind about going to an unknown country all by myself, but the entire experience has made me a much stronger and bolder person. This was the first time I got to interact with many people from different ethnicities and nationalities and it instilled a greater confidence in me to understand the global culture much better. It made me realize that no matter what country we are from, all humans share the same feeling of passion towards innovative ideas and self development. We all worked together as one team, as one fraternity. Personally, it was very beneficial for my future career growth as well since I got to network and build connections with the who’s who of the MR industry.

I must say that we were literally “pampered” by all the senior members of the research fraternity because we were the only four young “talents” at the conference. The entire MR fraternity is very supportive and welcoming. I can’t wait to complete my studies and be a part of the MR industry.

My profile, my views towards the furure of Market Research and my future career plans can be viewed at ESOMAR's website in Future Talent Meets the Industry section here.

Kabir laments the pitfalls of 'Language'

If we ask ourselves one question, "What is language?", we would get a simple answer that language is a set of symbols that we use to communicate with each other. It may be either verbal or non-verbal. Since ages we have created signs and symbols and have assigned 'shared' meanings to each of them. Many of these signs seem to continue to depict the same meaning through out. But some other signs mean different things at different times.

The purpose of communication is to communicate a message clearly to the receiver. But when the signs we create start becoming contradictory to their own meaning, the whole concept of language starts looking funny.

Kabir, the great Indian saint and poet, laments about the vagaries of language:

Chalti ka naam gaadi

Maal ko kehtey hain khoya

Rangeen ka naam narangi

Dekh Kabira roya

[What moves is called interred/ vehicle

Commodity is called lost/ desiccated milk

What is colorful is called colourless/ orange

On observing these, weeps Kabir!]

Source: The Tenth Rasa by Michael Heyman

Whoever had assigned the meaning of the colour "orange" to the word "naarangi", must have had some mischief in her mind. These words can mean completely opposite things at the same time. This makes us think and rethink the level of importance we give to words in our daily lives. Are words mere carriers of literal meaning or they carry a lot of other hidden motives? Do words actually add meaning to our lives, or are they mere illusions? The language needs to be created with responsibility to make it more understandable. Otherwise, it will fill the society with contradictions and myths. But who takes the responsibility of shaping language in first place?

A Consumer is a Temporary State of Being

How do you define a Consumer? Is she a person who buys your products? Who consumes your products?

The person whom we consider to be our consumer, also does one million and one other things throughout the day. She is not our consumer 24/7. If we look at the person from the inside, we can clearly see that this person is not the same person in different contexts. She adorns different avatars when surrounded by different discourses. These avatars, or "Moments of Identity" as Virginia Valentine from Semiotics coins it, are contextual and volatile in nature. They are temporary states of being. Similarly, only when the person is in the context of our brand, and she consciously immerses herself in the context, does she adorn the avatar of our consumer.

So, the lessons brands can learn from this perspective of looking at consumers is to make the brand discourse culturally immersive for the person to transform into a consumer. It is more important for the person to see herself as our consumer instead of we falsely assuming her to be one.

Inspired from 21st Century Consumer by Wendy Gordon & Virginia Valentine

Sir Ken Robinson - Animated!

Excellent piece of work by RSA Animate. Must watch.

Choiceville - Conjoint Analysis in a new Avatar

Click on the image to enlarge

Market Research enters the world of gaming. The respondent creates his own “desired” avatar by choosing from the available options similar to the choices available in conjoint analysis - but in the form of an interactive game. She can pick up products from the shelf after looking at their price tag and attributes using her aforesaid budget. The Avatar created by a person symbolizes her "Ideal Self", driven by her needs and wants.The options available will be real brands and real products. This idea is applicable especially in identifying extrinsic motivation factors and self congruity with brands. What brands do consumers want on themselves? What brands do consumers want others to see on them?

Maybe, this can be the next idea to measure consumers' needs and wants...

This poster is my entry for the NewMR Virtual Festival and it can also be viewed here.

GeneticMR - Could it be a possibility?

We all have witnessed how MR has used Neuro science as a tool to gauge what is happening inside the consumer's head. But the consumer is not just made of his head. She has a lot of processes happening all over her body that plays a role in her moods, emotions, behavior, feelings, needs and desires. Could it be possible to study the holistic DNA structure of the human genome to find alleles that influence needs? Maybe we can identify universal patterns and also individual differences. One major advantage is that there will be zero respondent fatigue because we would just need a strand of her hair!

ShweePea - A new brand I cooked up

We had a course on 'Visual Literacy' recently at MICA where we worked on an interesting assignment of creating a new brand for any product or service category. So, we thought of launching a new chain of playschools across the country and name it "ShweePea".

The underlying idea that guides our brand purpose emerges from Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk below:

Each kid has tremendous talent. Kids are not frightened to make mistakes; they are ready to try everything. But the world teaches them to be scared to make mistakes. Creativity, which is the process of having original ideas of some value, comes from seeing things differently and that’s what ShweePea would help kids do.

Based on the Montessori school of thought, we nurture innocent naughtiness in your child and ensure that he doesn’t lose the capacity to think creatively. The brand elements are colorful and safe with smooth rounded edges. We have made all elements including the fonts, shapes and colors reflect innocent naughtiness. :)