Commitment for Consistency

Floods and landslides are common natural calamities in my country. Last year, many people got displaced by floods, so my social organization, Index Nepal, decided to help flood victims by raising funds. We asked people to voluntarily donate money and used clothes. Everyone was aware of the situation of flood victims, so people were willing to contribute in whatever way they could. The results were overwhelming. We were able to raise about 25,000 rupees and many used clothes. Again, this year, many places of Nepal were hit by flooding. We first approached to our previous donors and this time we got even bigger support. Their only concern was whether their support reached the intended people or not. This result can be explained by commitment consistency theory, which says people’s likeliness to comply with larger requests increases with the compliance of smaller requests. Also, the consistency of donors’ behaviors can be attributed to their commitment to involve in philanthropic activities. People generally throw their used clothes, so asking people to donate used clothes do not add cost to them.

In marketing, commitment consistency theory can be applied in ‘donate for cause’ campaign. However, research has shown that consumers are not willing to pay extra for the cause and the company should manage it from its generated revenue. The success of this technique depends on how companies persuade customers to use their products and change their behavior so that substantial revenue is generated to donate for cause.

With the growing competition, it is very difficult to persuade consumers for buying products. Persuasion, in marketing, can be defined as the process of making consumers buy something by explaining them clear reasons such as benefits of the product and satisfaction achieved by using that product. It is very important that successful marketers not only clearly explain the reasons behind persuasion but also make his/her followers committed to the goal, such as environment protection, so that favorable behavioral changes result.

References:

Vaidyanathan, R. & Aggarwal, P. (2005). Using commitments to drive consistency: Enhancing the effectiveness of cause-related marketing communications. Journal of Marketing Communications, 11(4), 231-246.

 

Why Motivation?

Competitors can easily copy your products, services, technologies, and strategies. However, it is difficult to copy your human resources management practices. This means employees are your greatest strengths and you must constantly motivate them to get best results. When employees are dissatisfied, they tend to be less productive on the one hand and on the other hand, they are likely to leave the organization. When this happens, it not only increases your recruitment cost but also affects your daily operations, because new employees require time to know about the work. As Robert Owen proposed, we need to take care of employees as we do for machines, because both of them perform efficiently when we properly care and maintain them.

Motivation is the internal driving force within an individual to achieve a goal. We motivate our salespeople by giving them additional commission if they exceed the set targets. We gradually increase their service areas based on their performance, which is compensated by increase in salary and incentives. We also promote them to managerial positions upon completion of fixed working years. Besides this, each employee receives a birthday card and a gift on his/her birthday. We focus on Maslow’s “Need Hierarchy Theroy” to understand the hierarchy of the needs of employees and focus on satisfying those needs by monetary and non-monetary rewards. In addition to Maslow’s theory, we consider McGregor’s “Theory X and Theory Y” because employees generally attempt to avoid work. My organization also follows Jeremy Bentham’s “The Carrot and the Stick Approach”.

To summarize, motivation is all about making your employees happy so that they love their work.

Shah, K & Shah, P. (n.d.) Motivation. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.laynetworks.com/Motivation.html.

 

 

 

 

Know Your Listening Skill

I was wrong! I used to think myself as an “involved listener”, but according to LSI assessment, I am a “passive listener”. Passive listeners listen with bias, impatience, inattention and a closed mind (Kumuyi, 2008). I have now realized that a person’s communication skill is not only judged on how he/she speaks but also judged on how he/she listens. I generally make judgments before the speaker completes his/her message. The next thing is my limitation to observe non-verbal cues of my team, while talking with them on the phone and sometimes poor mobile network affects communication. These weaknesses and medium-related problems have created misunderstandings and poor execution of marketing activities. When you don’t listen carefully, you don’t understand the message and you can not properly initiate actions. Paraphrasing the sender’s message can be of great help in such situations.

“Listening competency requires successful adaptation to different situations to achieve an intended or desired communication result (Lu, 2005)” It is similar to adapting different emotional intelligence styles. However, listening competency is also dependent on sender’s ability to communicate effectively. Other factors include relevance of message to the receiver, channels to be used and their possible noises, feedback and cultural differences of sender and receiver. Cultural differences determine whether the message should be modified or not and how message should be communicated.

LSI assessment is a great tool in assessing one’s listening skill. I know my weak areas, so I will be working on them. “Active listener” is what I aspire to be.

Lu, J. (2005). The listening style inventory (LSI) as an instrument for improving listening skill. Sino-US English Teaching, 2 (5), 45-50.

Kumuyi, William F. (Dr.) (2008, June). Sir, listen up! New African, 48-49.

 

 

Basics of Goal

When I was a kid, I used to follow a daily routine – wake up at five, study till eight, go to school, come back from school and play till six, complete homework before eight, and go to bed at nine. My goal was to become a good student. Goal is what you want to become or achieve. It should be consistent with our values so that we strive for achieving it.

We must have clear goals in different areas of life – family, spiritual, social, cultural, financial, career, education, and health. Neither of goals, in these areas, should contradict each other; otherwise conflicts arise affecting the achievement of several goals.

Writing a goal and thinking of it are not sufficient. We must have clear vision of how and when we are going to achieve our goals. Time is very important in goal setting because it sets a deadline to achieve those goals. Without a deadline, we will think goals as something that we can achieve at our convenience. We may lose our interest to achieve goals when specific time is not determined.

We should clearly determine our goals.  Changing a goal is not a good idea because it costs resources and time; however, we can change ways of achieving goals. Goals must be periodically reviewed according to the changes in the environment.

Donohue, G. Goal setting: Powerful written goals in 7 easy steps!

http://www.topachievement.com/goalsetting.html

 

50 Days Away From Home

With a dream of becoming a successful marketer, I left for the United States for my MS in Marketing on 08/08/08. The day holds a special significance for me because I began my journey for some good reasons on the day, which comes once in a millennium “A triple 8 day”. This is the reason why China had scheduled its Olympics’ opening ceremony on the same day. Number 8 is considered a lucky number in China.

I had not been to other countries before except my neighboring country India, so I was very much excited to be in the United States, the country where many people in the world want to be. I have seen big cities of America in movies but to experience those being here myself is a different excitement. During the flight, I was lost in my own imaginations of America. I had not thought that America would be so far and the Earth would be so big. It is because information and communication technology (ICT) has brought the world closer.

After about 11 hours of flight from Japan, I finally landed at Chicago airport. I knew that Chicago airport is one of the busiest airports of the world. Every minute many planes take off and land. As soon as we landed, we were informed that Chicago customs’ computers were crashed and we would not be allowed to get out of the plane until the system was fixed. I was surprised to know that even system get crashed in the United States!!! What we generally think is that the United States is a perfect country. Everything works in a perfect manner but yes, these things happen once in a thousand times.

We were finally allowed to get off the plane in about 45 minutes. There were hundreds of people in the immigration department queuing up for the immigration process. Looking at them, I realized that I would definitely miss my connecting flight to Columbus. The same happened as I envisioned. I had to take another flight and I finally reached Columbus at midnight.

With no friends and relatives in this new place, I was very much worried that whether my host family would come to receive me at midnight or not. Franklin had arranged 3-4 days of my accommodation with them. What if they didn’t come? Where should I go? How should I go? Hundreds of similar thoughts came in my mind. As I was collecting my luggage, my eyes kept looking for them. “Ah! There they are with my name plate.” I had a sigh of relief. Dave and Lois are associated with International Friendship Inc. (IFI) and volunteer for arranging accommodations to international students. “You have a friend in the USA!” says IFI and helps international students.

I haven’t experienced the time difference earlier. Amazingly, I used to feel sleepy at two in the afternoon and generally used to go to bed at five in the evening. Sun was shining there, everybody was working and I was lying in my bed. How ridiculous?

Dave and Lois are very helpful. They helped me a lot in finding a place to stay. I still recall that day when Dave and I were tired of looking for apartments. We were frustrated with the same question “Do you have job?” for which my answer would be always “no”. “Unless you have a job we can not rent you an apartment” is the common reply to my answer. We also went to apartments for students near Ohio State University but most of them were already occupied and some of them were not furnished. Dave understood the pain I was going through and consoling me with the hope that we would found it soon.

I like the way Americans make a pray before they have their foods. That night Dave and Lois prayed to God for finding me a place to stay. Surprisingly, the next day I found a place to stay in the house of a very nice and helpful landlady. We are now four people staying in the same house. We do not only share our cultures but also share our foods. It is like being in a family and having a home away from home. Had I stayed in an apartment, I would have definitely become more home sick because I found people living in apartments strangers. Though they live in the same apartment building, they hardly interact with each other. Living a lonely life in the group of people!!!

There was a power outage in Columbus few weeks ago. It is again the same thing as “once in a thousand times”. In Nepal, we are having 35 hours of power cut in a week and I experienced the life without power here in Columbus as well. Life is really difficult without power. I still remember the day when there was sudden power shut down in New York in 2003 causing losses of billions of dollars.

Now life seems going in a normal way. Classes and assignments are regular stuffs. With classmates and friends from different walks of life, I have gradually adjusted to the new place. I often participate in programs organized by IFI where I can make lots of international friends. Recently, IFI arranged Columbus tour for international students and I enjoyed it.

Life is not always the same. You have to lose something to gain something. That is why I am here in Columbus to become a successful marketer after my graduation, and to realize this I have to miss my families and friends. I know this distance between me and my family, friends is only for few years. Everybody knows that time flies. It is already 50 days I have been here!!!