Role of perception in consumer marketing

This one is based on personal experience.

Some time ago, I often used to hear from an elderly age group of people about the complexities that new technology has introduced. Say an ATM machine. Those people were introduced as oldies or outdated people. But today such complains have decreased substantially or to put it in other words those complains have escalated one more generation gap. The people in their mid ages have mostly got adapted to such technologies. Due to which marginal people of next level has also followed.

Now interestingly the fact is that there had been hard efforts to reduce complexity in using technologies, but however it alone did not help substantially to get more people using these technologies. Infact without changing the customer perception by proper marketing mix it would not have been so successful.

Its very hard to alter an established perception of a consumer. Only a deliberately thought marketing can help to make it real. The perfect marketing mix is what is needed to hit the established thought process of the consumer. Especially when we talk about Indian consumers who has their traditional and conventional products and alternatives, which they have been using for years, its very difficult to alter their taste. And majority of brands has also failed in doing so. Finally the marketeers has to adapt to the consumers, the best example being Pizza Hut with its Indian - Punjabi Menu and Mc Donalds with its Indianzied food. Still its not easy for them to get customers to their restaurant. Mc Donalds in India faces heavy competition from Vada Pav stallers, who without any strong marketting, forms the basic diet of lower working class of people of Indian metros especially Mumbai, Surat, Pune, etc.

Mc Donalds have hence evolved to a marketing strategy which serves the basic purpose of transmitting the message that the burger is yet cheap and that that the outlet is not only meant for kids or youths but to older people who has lost their love for such foods. It aims at altering the general perception that the product is expensive, and though if logically thought a visit to their outlet finally proves to be heavy on a normal customer's pocket as he end up spending more.

The basis of any marketing is to make the target audience realize that there is a neccessity of his product in his life and to make him agree to spend his disposable income on the product. The challenge was bigger in recent future. But with the increase of purchasing power of the consumers, more and more class of people has migrated towards better standard of living. Hence Air Conditioners , Laptops, Car Makers now lays more importance on middle class people as their target audience. There has been tremendous increase in advertisement of laptops from "Life is Easy, to King Khan's Compaq series". It has now been accepted trend in Indian consumers that in case you are looking for a machine for your small or big need then better go for a laptop. Needless to say that the sale of laptop has surprassed that of desktop by a huge number.

To sum it up, I would conclude that for any marketteer the most necessary thing today is to first read the conceived pereception of targeted audience and then mould the same with proper devised marketing principles and fundas.