F-Factor – Packaging a Product

Importance of Packaging is well understood these days! Glamorizing the product in order to attract the consumer’s attention seems to be catching up all time high especially in tier-1 and tier-2 cities. Most of the customers look for aesthetic appeal to judge a product before buying. Its quiet logical that attractive packaging can beguile the first time buyers. This idea was well received mostly by retail industry but these days, even hospitals and small clinics have started concentrating on packaging, more than often, the use of f – factor (Female / opposite sex) is in high-flying. I certainly meant fascinating factor!
More than a year back, I went for a cosmetic treatment to one of the well reputed homeopathic treatment centre. Receptionist had a cool and suave look with a gorgeous smile. Her vivacious way of answering to my queries with great deal of attention made me feel like listening to her more and more and I wished she was my doctor. She guided me to doctor Shireen (who turned out to be a stunner!) to diagnose for an appropriate treatment and all important cost details. Dr. Shireen doesn’t need to be in the spotlight on TV to shine. I found her highly gracious. She had a very endearing way of explaining the treatment good enough to convince a person to shell out a good amount of money for a cosmetic treatment. In other words she was simply fetching!
After I made the payment, I imagined Dr Shireen to be similar to a cactus plant. She looks beautiful and loves to embrace the people of the earth (Good treatment). Nevertheless, when someone hugs her, she may pierce him or her with her deadly thorns (money!)I ended up paying a good amount for a two year long treatment. Interesting thing is beyond a point of time, I started getting treated by a not so good looking doctor nonetheless I must admit that the treatment did show a good impact on me. Converting leads into loyal customers appeared to be their main goal and packaging proved out to be the door to it. Entire episode did go on to show that members of opposite sex are often highly influential to make a sale / business deals. Genuine product would not tap the market potential unless it is winsomely packaged!

Manias, Panics, and Crashes – BPO and IT Services

Indian youth start earning as early as 18 – 22, thanks to liberalization of the Indian economy and globalization. BPO industry found its way in for certain reasons leading undergraduates and even teenager’s dream of lucrative salary. BPOs provide a golden opportunity for youngsters looking to financing their future studies and day-to-day expenses. More often than we might think, BPO is breeding sense of self sufficiency and pride among young population that they no more need to be dependant on their parents for money. To a great extent even the IT population which is largely young and are under late twenties come under the same category. Burgeoning middle class is highly receptive of BPOs and IT services opportunities.
Having said most of the positives, I ponder about the credibility of BPOs. BPOs and most of the IT firms take up maintenance and customer / product support related functions. For an employee in an IT firm or BPO, it’s a matter of getting acquainted with the process and procedure which does not take a long time to master. Beyond that, the job becomes mundane and employee cannot look for a change in profile mainly because of attractive salary slip he gets every month. Global players continue to remain delighted outsourcing mundane and procedural IT functions to India and our major chunk of educated population continue building their career in the same path which is assumed to be safe and most respected. Today, people in the age group of 18-26 are hired and fired by the BPOs. Future of the nation cannot be habituated doing mundane tasks!
Where would this land us into decades down the line? Are we moving in the right direction?
Would this sustain under any given scenario like Wall Street Crash of 1929, 1990's stock market bubble and the current economic crisis threatening IT and BPO chain?
In three words, this phenomenon could be described as “Manias, Panics, and Crashes". Do we have a way out of this vicious trap? Yes, certainly we do! We need to groom innovation…. Innovation to make products that would be sellable across geographies. We need to emerge as a global player in products and technology innovation to help us sustain on a longer term. For short term benefits, BPOs and IT services are paradise however on the longer term this could prove out to be nightmare because by the time “CRASH” happens, we would not be able to innovate anything for survival. Recent financial crisis, quality of life a BPO worker lives, health hazards of employees working in IT services are good enough a wake up call to motivate the educated population to innovate for products instead of being satisfied doing boring outsourced functions. China has smartly projected itself as leader in hardware while blocking BPOs to a good extent. Its time for us to adapt to futuristic approach!!!