Daily Blogs!

Original post date: September 17, 2006. Mysteriously it never showed up, so trying to post it using a different method. Here goes:

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We humans are, by nature, very fickle, impatient and unsatisfied creatures. Sure, some are better than others in some of these, but there’s only so much that one can take.

One economic theory goes this way: Market value of a commodity is the currency (or barter) amount that I am willing to pay for said commodity. There may be other market forces at play, but the value of any product is only so much as what the user of that product feels. [For example, the MRP of cream of mushroom soup may be Rs. 25/-, but this new swanky mall offers you a discount of Rs. 5/-. You are still getting the same chicken soup, but you would still prefer to buy it from the mall (all things otherwise same), because now the value of the cream of mushroom soup has reduced to Rs. 20/- for you. You would certainly have no reason to buy from a dealer who sells it at the MRP. (Again, assuming that you can get it from the mall with the same convenience as that from any other place.)]

This is especially true for services, because there isn’t a quantifiable or tangible product that you can measure.

So when you get to creating value, how do you ensure that the user understands that a certain feature is going to improve the value of the product, and that this value-addition is going to be absolutely essential for the user? That’s marketing. Ask Apple. They somehow manage to do it every single time.

Commerce aside, this applies socially too. You have a friend. In all probability, you won’t realize the depth and influence of this friendship till you, one fine day, don’t have it anymore. The value attached to it will only be written down when you finally realize that you had something which you no longer have, and that you’ve done a reality check, an evaluation of you intangible assets.

But what if you can’t do that? What if you don’t even realize that you’ve lost something? What happens then?

Worse, what happens when someone at some later time comes along and makes you realize that you’ve indeed lost something. Makes you feel rather lousy, doesn’t it?

There are infinitely many times when we think about the way things could have been. But they are not. What makes you realize that they should have been that way, and that you are losing out on something because they are not the way you think they ought to have been? What about the other infinitely many times when you don’t know you are losing out because you just don’t realize it?

This kinda sucks.

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All the world’s a masquerade
made up of fools and philosophers
Were it to rain on our charade,
all washes away, except for our true colors

If any people bothered looking for truth, please,
STOP THE WORLD from spinning ’round
instead we choose to follow footsteps of fools, please
STOP THE WORLD from spinning ’round
If nothing’s new under the sun for me and you
Won’t somebody please…

STOP THE WORLD
STOP THE WORLD
I WANNA GET OFF

(A hundred brownie points to anyone who finds me the lyrics for Stop the World by Elcho (Aquatint mix))