Experiences - They vary

All of us know that no two fingerprints are the same. Maybe, we should add one more saying ‘No two experiences are the same’.

Just think about it – You must have had instances when two different friends had uploaded pictures of their holiday to Paris on Facebook, but the pictures of the two would be completely different. The pictures would be different in terms of their posture, their emotions and their expressions, etc. In fact, don’t be surprised when you notice that both set of pictures have been clicked at the same place, like the Eiffel Tower, but yet, the description put by the two people are as different as chalk and cheese.

Now why would a picture taken at the same place by two different people look so different (other than the Eiffel Tower in the background looking the same in both the pics!)? The simple answer to that is because the picture is actually telling you about the experience of that person in that moment at that place. And the reality is that the experience of each person is different due to a number of factors and place is just one of those factors that plays a role in building that experience.

In fact, if you think deeper, you will realize that not only are experiences of different people different, but even the experience of the same person is different on different occasions, even though the place may be the same or the event may be the same.

An experience is a summation of various things that are part of a given moment that come together and form what we call an experience. What that means is that even if one of those various things is different from the earlier experience, the entire experience would be different. Confusing?

Let me try and simplify. According to my hypothesis, an experience is formed with the help of a number of factors – place, time of day, your own mood and mood of others, friends/relatives who are there with you, the kind of music in the background, the quality of food and drinks being consumed, the kind of weather, the occasion, the kind of customer service being offered. (This is not an exhaustive list and one can easily add more factors that play a critical role).

The point here is that if any of these factors change either for you or for someone else, the experience will also change. Often, one hears the use of the term ‘A sense of déjà vu’. What this means is that what  one is witnessing or experiencing is coming pretty close to what one has seen or experienced before (may not necessarily be exactly the same). That is when one immediately comes up with this as the human mind knows that it is very rare that you get to experience the same thing again and again (unless it is a Monday morning blue!) and if you can manage to do that, either you are lucky or you need a change!

Demand Forecasting for Valentine’s Day

Seeing all the hearts, red colour and Valentine’s Day sale ads in the papers got me and my marketing mind thinking. One of the first thoughts that struck me was that Archies was the pioneer in India in popularizing the concept of Valentine’s Day. All others took the bait and followed suit a few years later and today everyone has jumped onto the bandwagon as it is a commercial opportunity that cannot be missed. So be it a florist or jeweler or a retail chain or a pub/lounge, everyone is out there to make a kill and rightly so….after all if you don’t take that opportunity, someone else would.

While for most others, there is not too much of a need to change their merchandise mix too much other than packaging the entire concept in a different way, but when it comes to the pioneer itself – Archies, the game changes a bit.

For Archies, planning for this activity would be a mammoth task, starting months in advance, deciding on what all gift items to procure, in what quantities and from which vendor/country.

This is where the big challenge comes in – Demand Forecasting. This is also the core idea behind my blog as I got intrigued by just thinking about it.

I mean how does one forecast for such an event?

One cannot apply a simple formula like other companies, where you assume a certain growth percentage. It does not work like that in such a scenario. Following questions are hovering in my mind:

• How does one know how many people would be in a relationship next year and how many would not? How many people who are in a relationship this year may not be in one by next year and may not be celebrating?
• How does one know how many people would have found that special someone, with whom they would want to celebrate Valentine’s Day?
• What is the number of married people who would want to celebrate this one day of love?
• Even if people are in a relationship/or have got into one, how do we know whether they would be keen to celebrate this concept or idea or not?
• How does one figure out that what is the amount that those people who are celebrating this day would be willing to spend?
• What is the number of gifts/cards that they would pick up?
• How many soft toys with love messages should be ordered? Similarly how many love or Valentine cards should be ordered?
• How do you further plan this for each of the store for each of the city? How do you know which city or which area will have more people flocking to that Archies store to pick up something for their Valentine?

The counter response to some of the questions that I have raised above could be that, the same is true for any other category or occasion. To some extent, that is right, but in most cases, the merchandise can be used even later or after the occasion is over, but unfortunately that does not work mostly in such a case.

I don’t have answers to the questions raised above, so if some of you know it, please do let me know and I would be glad to figure this out. And if you guys are also intrigued and are looking for answers to these, then maybe this is an interesting material for a case study to decipher how Demand Forecasting is done for Valentine’s Day.