Absence of Personalization in Decisions: The Major Loophole Used in Marketing

Do you remember that moment, each time you see a cool movie (like 3 idiots, YJHD in India) and you automatically start thinking- you should live your like the main character or want to be with such characters, each time your friend or sibling does something significant- you feel you should go that way too and maybe even feel your life is not good, what you're doing is not significantly good- at-least for few hours, this is one of reason why most suffer, let's deep dive

According to Statistica Soft Drink Reports- An Average person in United States consumes about 14 ounces (400ml) of soft drink per day- with coke and pepsi having 70% of share- avg 400ml soft drink is expected to have 40g of sugar.- An average person should not consume more than 38g of sugar (25 for women) according to American Heart Association Guidelines- by consumption of soft drink itself, an average American is exceeding their daily sugar in-take- How's that sugared water based companies managed to create and Ace the billion dollar industry is by a small loophole in the human psychology- the absence of personalization in decisions.

Why do we need to be personalized?

For the matter, let's consider US and India

1. In United States, The helpers are limited, In India even a middle class family employs maids and cooks
2. In United States- The floors are wooden or covered by carpets- In India- its marble/ vitrified tiles
3. Indian foods are mostly made- while american foods are processed or fast food 

Why?

1. The Helpers in united states is lot lesser because an average helper makes about 35000$ an year in united states- roughly 50-60% of what white collar people make- United states is a nation where most of the jobs are salary that's comparable to average- so employing 2 maids in US is almost as good as giving your salary to them - which's not feasible. while in india- you can find maids at about 15,000INR per month- while you can still earn 1.5L per month, that's because of population- In India, its better to hire maids than have machines for dishwashing, floor cleaning etc.

2. United states is more cooler than India- Also the Indian air quality is on lower side compared to united states- carpet flooring doesn't go good in India

3. Again partly because of temperature differences and other half because of self making and helpers difference.

So United states and India are completely different nations- Pizzas and burgers might need be right food for Indians, Completely Vegetarian foods might not be right for US Temperatures. Morever india is dominated to <25y people while US is uniformly distributed till 60. So Brands spend good time understanding these changes and adopting to the nationality differences so that they can succeed in each markets.

The Constant urge to adopt to the western lifestyle (without understanding the differences) is one of the major drawbacks in developing nations.

We all are Different as per psychology

What a person likes to do/ what's more comfortable to a person depends on certain factors

• The Genes: According to the NCBI's Research paper- Genes plays major role in decision making of humans

• The Life Experience: The set of events person would have experienced, reacted, people they grew around with, current set of people would've strong impact on their what they believe to be right- or whats correct for them as a person

• The Current Thought Process: What do they think at the moment, the current status of their emotions, thoughts, financial conditions also has an impact on deciding what's best for them

In-short, everyone's different- what works best for you might not work for the whole world 

So Where's the Loophole

The loophole is most of the people's decisions isn't based on what works for them- Infact most of people don't believe what works for mass might not work for them  Most of people follow the crowd /trends that's set my movies, perceived cool people than their intuition.

The Sweet spot of number of options for human mind is between 8-15 (Reason why most e-commerce sites have 8-12 top level categories)- less than 8 feels limited and more than 15 seems too much. So more than 15 options of shoes in Amazon and you decide the shoe with best rating and most number of reviews in sub-category you choose.

Human research is usually limited-

• You'll believe that healthy youtuber who doesn't take money from brands to promote products rather suggests best ones
• You rely on google- if all 1st page results says good reviews- you're convinced
• You rely on E-comm reviews
• You rely on what your friends says

Let's say if a brand manages to hit most of the above- you'll believe product as good- even if it doesn't bring incremental results. Its unusual for humans to reject what's considered cool by society.

In-essence if you make 1,000 people percieve its cool, its good product, then its easier to get to 1l consumer base. if you have the best in mass (people with followers) as your early consumers, you make them perceive your product/service to be good either naturally or by partnership- you have the mass, the rest are followers of the sole decision makers. This is why TVC Ads (before digital media) and now influencer led ads works the best. Most of brands use these loophole to establish their foothold in the market.

Are you sure your perception of happiness isn't set by society and is set by yourself?