Human Behavior

Few days back, with someone feeble, I had a discussion on something. His words triggered anger in me. Before I could control, my anger became apparent through my words and behavior. More than his words, I didn't appreciate my behavior of losing control over myself. His words, though not favorable to me, were also not harmful for me.

Then why did I get angry:

May be because,

1) His words challenged my perceived position of thoughts and correctness.

2) I didn't like the way he talked and I took it as an effort to undermine my intellectual strength, superiority and position.

But was my anger justified?

I don't think so...

I am not intellectualizing this scenario.

Here are some of the reasons why we become angry:

 - Our perceived intellectual/spiritual/religious strength/superiority over others is challenged by someone's direct or implied behavior and action.

 - Our actual position on anything is challenged and undermined by someone's direct or implied behavior or action.

 - We or anyone close (actual and assumed- religious/sports/group/affiliation etc.) to us is threatened to be harmed or actually harmed by direct or implied behavior or action of someone. 

While last two points are not rarity, but there percentage in our anger outbursts are very limited. We often react/respond to perceptual positions of different parties, which has no strength and position to take our life in any direction, especially the negative, until and unless we make it take us there. 

I dedicated good amount of time to ponder over it and find what should I do in this situation and I got following answers: 

1) Don't embody the moment and actions which triggers anger; it is not the matter of your existence.

2) Don't define yourself with the moment; you are much bigger than that.  

3) Listen, analyse and appreciate, opposition's points, take few deep breath with smile and move away from the scene if you can do so. 

4) If you don't have the option to walk away , then listen and appreciate the points raised the your opposition, take few deep breath, remember point no. 1 and 2 and then answer in measured words.

5) When you are replied back, then folllw point no. 1,2 and 4. This may not be the correct way, but I have started following it. 

Please do write your feedback. 

 You may find this article also useful: How to succeed in the time of conflict

This article was written by Mr. Sanjiva Jha on Linkedin. Link of the article is here: Reigniting the economy

Mr. Sanjiva Jha is Founder-CEO of BroadArk Technologies Pvt. Ltd. His company owns the brand Y&NOW and works in the field of Education and Skilling. But this is just a small part of his illustrious career of around 28 years at leadership positions with LabourNet Services India Pvt. Ltd., Tata Teleservices Ltd. Reliance Retail Ltd., Boots Healthcare, Cargill India Ltd. etc. He has Masters degree in Management from IRMA and Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering from BIT, Sindri. He has led cross functional teams during growth, massive organizational restructuring post US subprime crisis and merger & acquisitions. 

Reigniting the economy 

We are witnessing massive changes in the workplace today due to the digitization wave to newer and different skill sets required to address the increasingly demanding Industry requirements. As we see, relevant skill sets isthe need of the hour and in this world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA). 

Which are some of the sectors likely to need large numbers of skilled personnel to keep pace with the transformational change ? 

A recent McKinsey report on future of work estimates that almost 50% of work that one does can be automated and that in 60% of the cases almost one-third of the jobs can be automated with technologies existing today! While the impact on various sectors in different countries could differ depending on the labour sector wages, demographics etc. but the automation and digitization is all pervasive and by extension the impact on the skills required to respond to the labour market needs. 

It is estimated that 8-9% of 2030 labour will be in new types of occupations that have not existed before. Clearly there is a need to invest in relevant skills needed to transition to the new roles.  

India has a workforce of nearly 450 mn strong with nearly half a million people joining the workforce annually, it is the second-fastest digitizing economy after Indonesia, what are the likely areas of impact that we expect? How do we future proof ourselves against those changes? A quick peek at some of the key Industries. 

One of the sectors undergoing transformational change is the Information Technology & Information Technology Enabled Services.This industry is clearly seeing changes at both ends - reskilling as well as upskilling to match the growing requirements. We are witnessing requirements in the areas of Block Chain technology, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity specialists, Robotics, CRM specialists to name a few. Many roles will be created in the AI space as it touches our lives through multiple products and services. 

Healthcare has become one of India’s largest sectors - both in terms of revenue and employment. Healthcare comprises hospitals, medical devices, clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, medical tourism, health insurance and medical equipment. It will employ 7.5 mn people from a current level of less than 4 mn. A high priority sector for the Nation, the skill sets required to manage this growth are significant considering the massive expansion and the cutting edge technology on which the industry works.  

Retail is another sector where we are seeing robust growth rates, higher consumer expenditure and unprecedented technological interventions on the move. This along with Ed-tech remains one of the few sectors which has been hiring when the reports last came in! The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced industries. It accounts for over 10 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and around 8 per cent of the employment. The market size is pegged at US$ 950 billion in 2018 at CAGR of 13 per cent. The online retail segment is growing at a fast clip of 31%. This sector thrives on online platforms, cloud-based solutions, GPS, AI driven algorithms to unravel why you and I buy what we buy! We are talking about large numbers of workforce and newer relevant skill sets here to sustain the sector growth.. 

On a concluding note - To prevent a worst-case scenario which is, Tech change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality: Reskilling and Upskilling of today’s workforce will be critical. We cannot wait for the current school going generation to learn the requisite skills as they graduate, the current work force will have to be reskilled and upskilled. The writing is clearly on the wall, we need to adapt to the new skills at the same time reskilling and upskilling of the current workforce will need to move on a war footing…

This ongoing crisis of Covid19 is already taking many jobs beyond the possibility; part of it due to the crisis and part of it due to the unknown fear of financial and economic uncertainty. A business leader or an HR-Head is also a human being and will succumb to his/her memories and heuristics. So, some very talented candidates will also lose the job during this period, as it happened during 2008 US Subprime crisis.

But this time is not the time to sit and curse this challenge but this is the time to focus on your personal brand. As some talented people may lose job during this pandemic covid19 due to the fear of uncertainty, they will be picked up again much sooner than they can expect when economy picks up steam once again. They are just needed to stay focused on building their personal brand and communicating it to the target audience.

Many neuroscience researches says that human brain receives more than 11 million bit data but can process not more than 50 bit per second and that's why, many decisions are made even before blinking the eye. Robert Cialdiani, the bestselling author of “Influence” and “Pre-suation” has rightly said that we "pay" attention of something which is important to us because we trade it off with attention on something else which we don’t find important.

The first process of brand decision involves forming the representations of choice alternatives- that is, brand identification. This entails processing of incoming information, so that different options for choice are identified. At the same time, your customer needs to integrate the information on internal states (candidate requirement to fill the position) with external states (job description and requirements).

Humans are predominantly visual creatures and most of the information we receive is visual. Even if receive the information through other senses, we try to visualize the image of the product. Milosavljevic, Koch and Rangel in their research paper in 2011 had indicated that consumers can identify two different food brands and make their mind about which they prefer in as little as 313 milliseconds or roughly one third of a second. I am not saying that you are a food brand, but what’s wrong in becoming so desirable. Just think over it.

Recent studies in neuroscience indicate the four fundamentals of attention: 1) saliency filters or bottom up features 2) Top-down control 3) competitive visual selection; and 4) Working memory. First one is saliency filters or bottom up features, which means what you have in you to offer. Bottom up or saliency filters automatically select most important information from all the available information. So, if your elevator pitch, salient features of your personal brand is not fitting in with the memory and heuristics of your recruiter, then you will definitely not be picked up despite all your talent when they are in rush. Your cognitive load can’t hold too much of information at one time and so of your recruiter’s. Economy will start picking up the steam sooner than later. Human mind can’t stay in pain for too long; it will fight back to gain control over the situation. And when it will start picking up the steam, your recruiters will be in hurry to fill the position and then your bottom up information should be ready for them to pick you up among the crowd.

How can you do that:

1) Make of list of what you stand for

2) Make a list of your destinations

3) Connect the dots of what you stand for and what where are your destinations

4) Take help of your colleagues who can critically advise you

5) If possible, talk to your boss from either current or previous organizations and discus what you have prepared

6) Create a back story and start communicating it along with your check list on the regular basis with your target audience using social media, messaging apps, direct call and one to one meetings.

7) Another option will be to take help of manpower consultants and have been doing the work of profile creation and personal branding, because they have been working in the thick and thin of recruitment work.

One time final request; don’t waste your time on cursing the pandemic; it is what it is. When it will retreat, it will leave behind a fertile land, on which you can grow the tree of your successful life.

“Unlocking the Mystery of Human Nature- The Tell-Tale Brain” is a masterpiece, written by Dr. V.S.Ramchandran, who is quite rightly, called ‘The Marco Polo of neuroscience’.

Divided in nine chapters, this book takes us to the mysterious, intriguing but very informative journey of human brain. Trapped inside the hundreds of billions of neurons and tens of thousands of synapses among each of them lives the mysterious truth of our brain and our behaviour. Each synapses can be excitatory or inhibitory and permutation of all of it presents the possible brain states, which easily exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. This very statement unravels the truth of human mind and behaviour in front of me.

But this is just the beginning. ‘Phantom Limbs and Plastic Brains’, ‘Seeing and Knowing’, ‘Loud Colours and Hot Babes: Synaesthesia’, ‘The Neurons that shaped the civilization’, ‘Where is Steven? The riddle of autism’, ‘The Power of Babble: The evolution of language’, ‘Beauty and the brain: The emergence of Aesthetics’, ‘The Artful Brain: Universal Laws’ and ‘An Ape with a soul: How introspection evolved’ unravels the mystery of human brain and behaviour one by one. Being the student of Behavioural Economics and Neuromarketing, “Introduction, first chapter ‘Phantom Limbs and Plastic Brain’, second chapter ‘Seeing and Knowing’, fourth chapter ‘The Neurons that shaped the civilization’, sixth chapter ‘The Power of babble: The evolution of language’, eighth chapter is ‘The Artful Brain: Universal Laws’ and ninth chapter ‘An Ape with a soul: How introspection Evolved’ are my favourite.

It is a must buy for everyone who are in the field of neuromarketing, behavioural economics and neuroconsumerscience. Neuroscience as a subject I have not touched despite this book falling into that genre because it is not my domain. I took out only those things which I found relevant for myself.

You can also buy the book following this link: The Tell Tale Brain

Few lines from this book which won my mind and heart:

“ We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative- whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’, and that this narrative is us, our identities.

If we wish to know about a man, we ask, ‘what is his story- his real inmost story?’ – for each of us is a biography, a story . Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us- through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives- we are each of us unique.

To be ourselves we must have ourselves- possess, if need be re-possess, our life stories. We must ‘recollect’ ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.

This narrative needs, perhaps, in the clue to Mr. Thompson’s desperate tale-telling, his verbosity. Deprived on continuity, of a quiet, continuous inner narrative, he is driven to a sort of narrational frenzy- hence his ceaseless tale, his confabulations, his mythomania. Unable to maintain a genuine narrative or continuity, unable to maintain a genuine world, he is driven to the proliferation of pseudo-narratives, in a pseudo- continuity, pseudo-worlds peopled by pseudo-people, phantoms.”

Above four paragraphs are the reasons behind infinite stories floating in the world and everyone holding those views, narratives and stories believes them true.

Oliver Sacks is a physician, Professor of Neurology at NYU School of Medicine and best-selling author of many books, this being one of them.

Four parts and twenty fours chapters, this book explores many aspects of human behavior with scientific explanations and examples which he witnessed as a physician, research scholar and professor.

I am sure you will worth buying and reading. You can buy by the book here The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

Though spiritualism had initiated in my quest of knowing the brain and how it functions, one of the initial scientific exposure about it came from the book “The Brain” by David Eagleman. I never ever felt while reading this book that it is written by a scientist, a neuroscientist because narration is so lucid and words are so simple that it looks like bed time story. It paved way for me to buy more books, pick courses on neuroscience online and dig deep to understand what I want to understand better.

Buying a book is very easy but going beyond the first few pages is very difficult. It tells you that whether you will be able to finish reading the book or not. But this book is so simple worded and lucid that not only it kept me interested in the book but it ignited y interest in the very topic itself and it is growing year after year. This kind of impact it had on me.

Some of examples are here: 

While explaining “AM IN THE SUM OF MY MEMORIES?”, he writes, “Our brains and bodies change so much during our life that – like a clock’s hour hand – it’s difficult to detect the changes. Every four months your red blood cells are entirely replaced, for instance, and your skin cells are replaced every few weeks. Within about seven years every atom in your body will be replaced by other atoms. Physically, you are constantly a new you. Fortunately, there may be one constant that links all these different versions of your self together: memory. Perhaps memory can serve as the thread that makes you who you are. It sits on the core of your identity, providing a single, continuous sense of self.”

Further, explaining this very thought, he writes, “Rather than memory being an accurate video recording on a moment in your life, it is fragile brain state from your bygone time that must be resurrected for you to remember”.

In the chapter “The Storyteller”, He writes, “Your brain serves up a narrative- and each of us believes whatever narrative it tells. Whatever you’re falling for a visual illusion, or believing the dream you happened to be trapped in, or experiencing letters in colour, or accepting a delusion as true during an episode of schizophrenia, we each accept our realities however our brain accepts them.

Despite the feeling that we’re directly experiencing the world out there, our reality is ultimately built in the dark, in a foreign language of electrochemical signals. The activity churning across vast neural networks gets turned into your story of this, your private experience of the world: the feeling of this book in your hands, the light in the room, the smell of roses, the sound of others speaking.

Even more strangely, it’s likely that every brain tells a slightly different narrative. For every situation with the multiple witnesses, different brains are having different private experiences. With seven billion human brains wandering the planet (and trillions of animal brain), there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth.

So, what is reality? It’s like a television show that only you can see, and you can’t turn it off. The good news is that it happens to be broadcasting the most interesting show you could ask for: edited, personalized and presented just for you.”

These are just few snippets of the amazing book. It is a must read for everyone who wants to know about truth, or who believe their truth is the real truth and other’s truth are lie, or who wants to know why someone behaves the way he/she behaves or the people like me who are simply curious to know about the most mysterious thing in the world; human brain. 

You can buy the book from Amazon following this link The Brain

As any Post Graduate in Marketing, core of my focus for the professional reason was always on consumer behaviour and their decision making process, which gradually took the shape of interest in Neuroscience, Neuromarketing, Neuroconsumerscience, Behavioural Science and Behavioural Economics.  

Latest in the series of books which I just finished reading is “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics at Duke University. Though this book was published twelve years back, but I became serious about this topic for last four years and I am taking one book and course at a time and I am glad I picked this book. 

Divided in thirteen chapters, this book is masterpiece which helps us to sneak behind the façade of rational mind and tells that there is nothing called ‘rational mind’ when it comes to decision making and that also financial decisions. We all are construct and reflection of our memories as we have perceived them, loosely tagged with each other defining our narrative and we don’t make any rational decision. Our decisions are captive of our biases and heuristics which are formed over a period of time by our gender, social, educational, economical and demographical set up and can be primed and anchored in one direction.  

All thirteen chapters, namely The Truth about Reality, The Fallacy of Supply and Demand, The Cost of Zero Cost, The Cost of Social Norms, The Influence of Arousal, The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control, The High Price of Ownership, Keeping Doors Open, The Effect of Expectations, The Power of Price, The Context of Our Character Part I, The Context of Our Character Part II and Beer and Free Lunches having my experiments and findings conducted by Dan himself. 

This is a must read book for anyone interested in Behavioural Economics. You can buy book from Amazon following this link Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Lockdown due to the fear of community spread of COVID19 has brought in unprecedented situation and it has led to unprecedented buying behaviour. Some of the examples are from my family itself. I reached back my native village to attend some urgent work before the lockdown. Here I am, staying with my sixty five years old mother in the village for last five months and no, my life is not difficult except I have to manage my work according to the situation of electricity supply.

As the lockdown was imposed on 24th of March and became effective from 25th March morning so to say, because by 12 of the night of 24th March, half of the nation must have fallen asleep anyway. Movement of even essential items were difficult initially because law enforcing agencies were not able to figure out difference between essential and non-essential items and they were not ready to take any chance to be called negligent of their duty. So, the vegetables grown in rural areas were not finding its way to urban and town market. Prices of vegetables fell drastically and we were able to buy things at around 35-40% of the earlier price. Though lockdown was dampening news, but not for my mother, for whom travel meant walking in our campus or on the road in front of our house. She was very happy to buy vegetables so cheap and she started buying it from everyone and anyone selling vegetables and I was emotionally manipulated to gorge on vegetables much beyond my capacity, otherwise she would have been forced to throw a big portion of it in the dustbin. For first two months, despite my cautious advice and sometime angry retort, she continued buying vegetables in huge quantity, because it was cheap. Something which was supposedly cheap cost us a lot during that period.

My elder brother living in Bengaluru got so panicked when lockdown was announced that he assumed he won’t get any vegetables to eat. So, he bought a year’s quota of salt thinking that if he doesn’t get vegetables then he will eat chapatti with salt.

Few days back I was talking to a friend, who is heading staples business of major retail chain about the news around impact of COVID19. I told him that I not very comfortable with the way news about miseries due to COVID19 fed to the entire world after locking them inside their houses and flats. They are regularly and without fail being fed with the news of death, despair and conflict. I also said that there is news of biscuits companies are doing roaring business, which means tea business must also be doing similarly good business. Upon hearing this, he said not only biscuit and tea, but savouries, mixtures, noodles etc. are also doing very excellent business.

COVID19 is having whatever impact it is having on all of us and it is visible, but what is not visible is the impact of continuous fear feeding by media after locking us inside our houses on our mind. Hypertension, stress, blood pressure, gas and acidity, arthritis, diabetes and many other lifestyle diseases will start demanding its share from our savings once this is over or there is some respite.

Another friend of mine who is with a retail start-up told me that his neighbourhood store in Thane, Maharashtra, which was unaffected by spurt in organizations dealing in online grocery retail is seeing more than 60% de-growth in customer walk in; many of them have shifted to online shopping due to the fear of the spread of COVID19.

These examples are very few among many. How can we forget the sight of couple of kilometres long queue outside grocery stores in US and European countries or people stocking years quota of toilet paper.

This period has brought out the extremes of human behaviour unlike before. COVID19 is not going away soon. There are many government administered nudge which will change the human behaviour permanently. I am sure many neuroscientists and behavioural scientists must be studying it, but retail organizations must not let this opportunity go away and they must test as many hypotheses as possible and figure out the change in human behaviour and decision making process while shopping. Analysing data may not be able to speak much after this pandemic is over. Once it is over, people won’t be able to recall the entire journey; they will remember the peak and end of the experience. This will lead to loss of many data points which can help the business in future. EEG, fMRI, Mobile EEG and eye tracking devices etc. may come to help for in-store study and placement of products on mobile, laptop and other digital devices real estate, nudges, priming and anchoring stimulus applied should be closely and critically analysed, because this phase will bring out the human decision making process which will be new normal.

Though using tools mentioned above to study human behaviour is the domain of experts from neuroscience, but we can offer our services in setting parameters and calculating outcomes free of human bias.

I can be reached at mukul.bhartiya@reviewboard.in. You can find the detail presentation on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Retail Analytics here. Interactive Retail Analytics Solution

Four month has passed since lockdown was imposed in Indian due to COVID 19 pandemic. We still have long road to cover before we pass this test successfully, but it has impacted our life, our behavior and our decision making process emphatically. We all have started looking at life from completely different perspective. Our buying behavior of daily grocery items has undergone tremendous change. I requested Shri Suresh Pillai, Head- Merchandising, Retranz Infolabs Pvt. Ltd. to share some of his observations with my readers.

Mr. Suresh Pillai has worked with top retailers like Big Bazaar, Tesco, more., Reliance Retail, Godrej Agro vet and start ups like Shresta and Ion Exchange Envirofarms. Mr. Pillai is M.B.A in Marketing from Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management and M.Sc. in Agriculture from College of Agriculture, Nagpur. He has also completed One Year Special Management Programme from IIM- Kolkata.

Here are his observations; in bullet, short and succinct…. 

What the Consumer is buying: 

Consumer is basically focusing on Essentials, even in grocery consumers are not spending heavy on discretionary products (Ex: In Vegetables you can find more preference to spend on Basic veg, Basic fruits)

•They are focusing on Products rather than brands, so the brands that are able to make the product available is winning the game will capture market share 

•In essentials going for bulk packs

•Preferring Packaged rather than loose 

Where the Consumers are buying

•Formats: Local kiranas, Supermarkets, Online is the preferred channels where the consumers are buying (Also preference to local kirana, supermarkets doing home delivery)

How the consumers are buying: 

Purchase frequency has reduced

•Not willing to venture out in public places

•Not easy to get delivery schedule on online e commerce

•Uncertainty on product/brand availability 

•Frequent changes in lockdown 

How the Trade is behaving (Ex Mumbai) : 

Trade is Slow or not seeing rotation of Stocks 

Wholesale: Wherein a broker used to book 3 to 4 vehicle (20tons load/vehicle) daily is now hardly books 1 vehicle (20ton load) as there is no movement from wholesale market ( one reason can be attributed to , Restaurant industry not operating , no floating population, migration of people, Kiranas closed, kiranas not able to operate at its full)

Migration of People: One Classic Example can be Rice Like masoori, parimal which was low price point rice there is slow down, indicates the segment consuming these variants has moved out

Kiranas: 

Many Small Kiranas which use to be run by migrant population is not operational as paying the rentals was not viable, labour availability is a concern.

Even operational kiranas are also not stocking up, as due to social distancing, time restrictions, odd even working days slowing the stock rotation at their end. 

You can read his earlier observations here: Supply Chain Challenges of Essential Food Items during COVID 19 in India

In the second part of winter of 1999, I went o buy a watch in one of the shops of South Extension in New Delhi. For a medium range budget, there were limited brand choices, probably only two (HMT and Titan), if I remember correctly. Decision to buy the watch was already made, budget was set, and brand choices were also not many to confuse me, so my top down control of decision making was all set. Only thing needed was the bottom up saliency filter of products to match my representation of expectations and gain my attention and assure me of matching my predicted value.

I entered the shop and my dorsal visual pathway started scanning the watches available on display and sending the messages to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex via primary visual cortex VI. My entire decision making and purchase process completed in less than five minutes. My decision making completely conformed to the research of Milosavljevic, Koch and Rangel (2011) which showed that consumers makes a purchase decision as quickly as within 313 milliseconds.

Shopkeeper told me that I am his first client to compete a purchase so quickly, otherwise other customers, especially woman sucks even last drop of blood from his brain while choosing and buying a watch. Not only that, even after taking so much time at the shop, on many occasions, they again return next day to replace the product. We had a laugh at this behavior. 

As my MBA completed and work experience started, especially in food retail and my interaction with my end customers increased manifold, I realized that my laugh back then was not only in bad taste but idiotic as well.

Woman makes most of the buying decision of any household and these decisions have to fit on four wheels of decision making cart:

1)Who uses

2)Who chooses

3)Who pays

4)Who benefits

If there is any imbalance in any of the wheal, the satisfaction level derived out of the purchase decision decreases drastically and creates bad shopping experience. It reminds me one of the buying decisions my mother made in my childhood. I was probably eight-nine years old then, youngest among three sons. My mother used to buy identical dresses for three of us. One day she had an idea that we three will look good in traditional white ‘payjama-kurta’ and she bought one set each for us. My mother was my favorite person, so I put that dress on sportingly. Middle one wore it grudgingly but the eldest one, who was in his early teen, threw the fit and decided not to wear it at all. Even few slaps on the face couldn’t convince him. 

Coming back to my decision to buy a watch and complete the buying process so quickly, If I lay my decision to buy the watch on this cart, then I find that I was the user, I was the chooser, I paid for it out of savings of my pocket money (it gave me the feeling of earning it) and I benefited from the features of watch. So, the satisfaction out of that decision was at peak. But I know there must have been gap in the level of satisfaction if I had to buy a watch for my sister because she may or may not have liked my decision with the same intensity as of mine. 

So, how to make a woman buy what you want her to buy? 

Decision making process of male and female brain is different. Both arrive at same result through different routes. Male brain, primarily driven by Testosterone, Vasopressin and Mullerian Inhibiting Substance is up for faster visuomotor scanning, faster physical reflexes, more risky behavior, aggressively defending the turf and restricting any woman like behavior. Female brain, primarily driven by Oxytocin, Estrogen and Prolactin is up for empathy, care, rapport, trust, bond etc. While male brain treats every issue as problem and jumps directly to find the solution, female brain starts evaluating the pros and cons of every action along with finding the solution. While male brain readily accepts the collateral outcome of its actions, female brain finds it difficult.  

Hundreds of hours observing customers walking in the stores and making buying decisions during my retail journey, I have figured out following points to be kept in mind before selling anything to female shoppers:

1)Establish rapport first and win trust: Opening pleasantries and a sincere effort to establish rapport and win trust works very well with female shoppers. . They like to put their trust in salesperson to give them honest opinion and step back. Any attempt to hard sell anything to them backfires. I remember one incident during my more. Retail days, when I was handling pulses category at national level. Before that, I was Category Manager of Staples for Mumbai zone. I was visiting stores in Mumbai to check pulses stock, pricing and promotion display and take customer feedback. In one of the store, I was talking to the store manager in the back office. Suddenly I heard a lady customer shouting at one of our CSA. I along with store manager rushed to scene. Upon asking, I was informed that the lady was sold a bag of rice which she found not of good quality. I immediately reached the ‘problem-solution mode’ and asked the lady about how she is cooking the rice because the bag she had purchased was of new crop. My question infuriated the lady even more and she blasted me with loud shout back, “I am cooking food for more years than your age, so don’t teach me how to cook”. I realized my mistake. I didn’t empathize with her by asking her about the problem, I didn’t ask her about the loss of faith and trust which she had bestowed on the CSA before making her purchase decision and I didn’t ask her about how she felt let down by making this decision which proved to be wrong. I calmed her down and assured her that I am with her in this process by making her believe that it not she but I along with my team are at fault. I took all the corrective actions then and there itself after aligning all the stakeholders, but this incident proved to be insightful to understand a customer.

2)Understand shopper’s world and objective behind purchase: While male shoppers come to the store with ‘their’ opinion in definite terms and they are mostly very clear about it, female shopper’s definition of ‘their’ is normally very broad. They try to make their decisions win-win for everyone assumed to be involved. So, after opening pleasantries and establishing the rapport, a little anchoring is required to understand the objective behind purchase and the people to be affected by their decision. 

3)Show alacrity in giving choices and eliminating least favored choices: Since a female shopper’s single decision leaves impact on many stakeholders, they need to be provided with choice. More implicit the objective of their purchase, more choices they would need and more time it will take. Though normally they wouldn’t like to be explicit in their demand and objective, but a quick zero down by the sales person is very necessary. If rapport is established, any change in behavior or opinion can quickly be analyzed and addressed. Though there may demand of more choices from them, neither their brain nor salesperson’s brain can handle this much amount of data. So, quick display of choices and even more quick elimination of least favorable choices become very crucial for successful closure of sales.

4)Appreciate their process of purchase: A little appreciation from the salesperson goes a long way in closing the sales successfully. Appreciation makes female shoppers believe that you are involved in their selection process and appreciate the effort they are making. This step evokes trust and faith in them towards you.  

I remember one incident, though not as a sales person. I went with my cousin sister to buy her a dress for a special occasion. She was to wear this dress to meet her to-be husband. We went to famous mall in NOIDA. As we enter the first shop, we saw a beautiful dress hanging in very front of the shop. She asked me whether it will look good on her. In a plain definite tone, I told her that dress is beautiful and will look good on her. She looked at me and said, “let’s try other stuff”. From one store to another, one dress to another, we spent more than four hours in that mall and nearby market. Tired and angry I sat on a bench in the mall and told her to select whichever dress she likes and once she makes her mind, call me to make the payment. In the end she chose the same dress which we had seen as first thing in the mall. After reaching home, I asked her if she had to buy this dress only, then why she made me walk for four hours. She replied, “you told me that dress is beautiful and it will look good on me but you didn’t tell me that it will look good on me for the very purpose I wanted to buy it. You were not with me there.” While my mind was focused on dress and whether it will look good on her not, I was not with her on the very purpose she was buying this dress for. I was not appreciative of the situation she was in.

5)Recognize and appreciate the decision: Recognition and appreciation of the decision they have made goes a long way winning their trust and making them your valued repeat customer. This is a very complex subject I attempted to write. 

Above mentioned points gave me success in category as generic as staples and I hope it can help others as well. There may be more points and I will appreciate the feedback.

First time I read any book on behavioural economics was “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel award winning Psychologist Daniel Kanheman around six years back and I got blown over by it. Having spent better part of my life in food retail, understanding human behaviour through historical data collected through weekly or monthly sales was quite a task, because the element of biases, heuristics, noise etc. are something I had just assumptions but no authoritarial backing. Many a times, standing on the floor of the store, I could sense the consumer behaviour but could not call it a behavioural pattern of financial decision making due to not being exposed to psychology part of human decision making. Nature of the job was to achieve the sales numbers, so academic aspect of conclusions coming from data never became a topic of discussion among peers and colleagues.

As my curiosity increased in this subject, I pursued many online courses available across different platforms and read many books on it along with neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuro-consumer Science. In this pursuit, I recently found a book “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics”, written by Richard H. Thaler and published in 2015. Mr. Thaler is known as father of Behavioural Economics and won Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017.

This books describes his journey of exploring, experimenting, understanding, consolidating and presenting the role of different human behaviour behind economic decision making more famously known as “biases and heuristics”, the names given by famous Daniel Kanheman and Amos Tversky.

Written in eight blocks (Beginnings, Mental Accounting, Self-Control, Interlude, Working with Danny, Engaging with the Economics Profession, Finance, Welcome to Chicago, Helping Out) divided in thirty three chapters, this book is a revealation of a completely new dynamics of human financial decision making and revelation to read for anyone who is even not conversant with the idea of either psychology or economics.

From Endowment Effect to The List to Value Theory to The Gauntlet to Bargains and Rip-Offs to Sunk Cost to Buckets and Budgets to The Willpower to The Planner and The Doer to Misbehaving in the Real World to What Seems Fair to Fairness games to end with Save Money Tomorrow, Going Public and Nudging in U.K, this book is the journey of Behavioural Economics with the father of very concept himself.

I simply love the concept of “Endowment Effect”. We overvalue what we have regardless to what is its market value. If we are asked to pay surcharge to facilitate credit card transaction cost, we frown over that, but if that surcharge is included in the product cost, we don’t mind because that’s not obvious to us. While two are one and the same thing, but not getting discount is just a lost opportunity cost for the consumers while paying extra for credit card transaction looks like direct cost. This is not only true for the economic decisions but for ideological view points as well. People value their opinion more over others and they go out in public just to confirm their opinion. “Endowment Effect” coupled with “confirmation bias” becomes “myside bias”, the reason behind big ideological divides.

Mental accounting is another topic which I find fascinating. Recently I bought a laptop for Rs.39.450/- for multitasking of a little lesser known brand. I got a Rs.1500/- instant discount due the tie-up between my credit card issuing bank and seller. Few days later, another Rs.1250/- cash back was credited to my wallet. Along with the features, company offered two years service warranty as against of one year given by other known brands and I got one year Microsoft 365 subscription free as well. I had done good two weeks research before buying the laptop and had seen umpteen videos and read thousands of reviews of different brands before making this decision. Laptop of known brands with similar features and warranty were at more than Rs.65,000/-. So when I made this decision, got this product, set up my device and Microsoft account, I found it very smooth in operation. It proved to be great bargain for me. After that whomsoever I told about the purchase, I not only explained the discount and cash back, but also the cost of one year Microsoft 365 Subscription, cost of 1 TB storage on cloud, and cost of one extra years’ warranty. Before that, I was against the idea of having cloud storage space, because I not only found it costly but leaving the responsibility of my data on someone else. Hard Drive Storage meant complete control over my data to me. But after getting it along with Few days back, I had almost made the decision to buy a laptop for Rs.61,000/- with the same features but somehow I ended up not buying it. So, my satisfaction level from making the purchase decision which I made is like absolute bargain.

This book is full of real life experiments and examples and is a must read for everyone who wants to know the science behind financial decision making.

You can buy the book following this link Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics