MBA number crunching

The biggest advantage of doing MBA is to fool the high level corporates about the kind of number crunching that is involved. This is ok from a operational point of view....but corporate level, the kind of number crunching maximum should be related to ROI & profits.

These people go down till the revenue they are most likely to learn from the customer in God forsaken part of the country and even calculate the amount of revenue he will give through out his life time. Lets say if the person Daler form a village in Punjab may be contributing Rs.5 on a purchase of a day. The marketing officer is likely to tell you how much will he contribute till he dies or till the product stays in the market.

Now, this is only important for the marketing manager to get funds sanctioned from the CFO. But here one needs to understand at the corporate level that numbers can be taken care by the tactical level but at the strategy level one needs to find the CHANGE. The change that is happening in the external environment, preference that the customer has, gaps in service level & things that delight the customer.

The point i want to make is that, market research is very important form. Instead of outsourcing your research to some market research agencies, the decision maker needs to come down to the field and see the difficulties that are being faced by the customers. It is like giving your eyes and ears to the research agency, who see something and report what they perceive the management wants. No wonder why niche markets pop in, when small attributes are not taken into account by the big guns!!