Have you fooled or got fooled, corporate

Will more advertisement on a product generate more business? These days, most corporate invest heavily on advertisements, with a conviction of more returns and business. This working style or the approach is widely followed by the FMCG industries across the globe. The FMCG industries aggressively promote their products through such an approach both in print, audio and visual media.

The question is, do consumers easily get influenced by the advertisements or their purchase choices are rationale and scientific. Consumers may get tempt once and may purchase the product once. But the repeat purchase of the products is definitely determined by the quality and how the 'products' are meeting/fulfilling the consumer needs. Otherwise, the consumers may not re-visit the products again. Irrespective of the cost of the 'product', whether, it is costly or cost-effective.

Corporate and the business 'pundits' might have gained this 'wisdom' recently, but the nature knows this management principle ever during the creation of wide variety of flowering plants. It means, nature knew this principle several thousand million years ago. The message to be remembered is that while giving advertisement, keep the quality and how the product meets the needs of the consumers as well.

This truth is known to all the flowering plants that are pollinated by several insects. The flower that offer 'more' nectar are the one, attract the insects competitively. For the pollination event to occur, just the 'visit' of the insects to the flower is not enough, the insect must stay and move around within the flower, only then the complete transfer and or the collection of pollen grains would occur. Having very little nectar in the flower may not help the plant to keep the interest of the insect to the flower for a longer duration of time and hence the flowers have to have sufficient quantity of nectar.

Research studies have proven that the flowers of many plants produce nectar if it were removed artificially. That means, when the insect draws the nectar, do get nectar again from the same flower. Since the nectar is continuously available, the insect would prefer to stay in the flower and move around within for longer duration of time.

In some flowers, nectar replacement doesn't seem to occur. From such plants, when the nectar is removed, although the insects may visit them but quickly recognizes that the nectar is not available. Hence, the insects quickly move away from it without doing the job of pollination for the plant.

Consumers can be easily compared with the pollinating insects. Insects visit flower after flower only for nectar. Whenever they see a flower, they move towards them. If the nectar is not there, they reject such flowers. The beauty of flowers although catch the attention of the insects but they primarily come for nectar only. Similarly, the consumers buy a product only with a purpose or need in mind.

Corporate should realize that advertisements will do little if the product lacks quality and superiority. If they think that they can 'buy' consumers through eye catching advertisements, they are terribly mistaken.

Look at the nature; you can learn many things for your business success and business planning. Let nature be your management teacher.

Ref: Management book – Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from university of nature by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan