The Persuaders

Oh the video is finally over! It was very long and I did not enjoy every part of the video. The part that grabbed my attention the most was when an African American man was being surveyed for bread. I think his expressions were absolutely worth watching!

Dr. Rapaille’sThree-stage Technique

Dr. Rapaille’s insights were great. He believed that his three-stage process allows him to understand the customer’s actual needs. I really enjoyed the way he described the three-stage process which includes: (1) Past reason, (2) Through emotion, and (3) Primal core.

First step in the three-stage technique is the “Past reason” which starts out with the cortex part of the brain. As we see in the video Dr. Rapaille starts out the first step by organizing a focus group. To break the code for “luxury” he involves an activity and asks all the participants to say any words that come to their minds when they hear the word “luxury”. As Dr. Rapaille said, people think they are very intelligent and by conducting such kind of an activity, he is giving a change to all the participants to show their intelligence. At this stage the answers do not matter as they can say whatever they want.

Second stage is the “Through Emotions.” At this stage Dr. Rapaille asks all the participants to think from a different perspective and to do so he asks all the participants to tell him a story as if they were talking to a five year old child from a different planet. At this stage participants are not trying to be intelligent or logical, they just think from a five year old perspective. At this stage they don’t understand what they are doing anymore. While all the participants are confused Dr. Rapaille does his observation.

Third stage is the “Primal Core.” This is the most important stage of the three stages. This is the stage where all the decisions take place. In this stage Dr. Rapaille removes all the chairs from the hall and replaces them with pillows. He switched off the lights and asks everyone to relax and think about the first experience they had with what they are trying to understand. After a while he switched the lights back on and asked all the participants to write about their first experience. This step of the process takes the participant years back and thus creates the primal core.

An example of his finding was the code word for the SUVs. After his intense research he comes with the code word for SUVs which was “domination.” He advises the SUV makers to make the vehicle big and tint the windows. He tells them to give the customers what they are looking for. When I think of this car example I do agree that people want bigger space in car. I prefer my car to be spacious so that when more then one person sits in the car it is not too crowded. I also prefer to have a car that has tinted windows.

Song Airline

I think that all the ideas Song Airline had were great. They tried a lot of new things and as always it’s a big risk when you start something new that differentiates from the current trend. Their target market was mainly women. They provided great services such as organic food, Dish Network Satellite TV, and low fares. Because their target market was women, they focused on children as well by making the seats bright and colorful. The way they hired their employees was different. Instead of interviewing the applicants they auditioned them to see how well they fit in the “Song.”

With all these great and new features I think Song Airline should not have emphasized on women only. If this airline had still existed, I would have definitely wanted to try it once, but I don’t think I would fly in this regularly. With the ads I saw in the video, it seemed like its going to be some airline only designed for mothers and their children. I don’t think I would want to spend the entire time on the flight with kids making noises, as it is the plane is noisy it self. Because of this image, I think a lot of the travelers ignored the airline. They could have emphasized on the women but they should have also considered other travelers as well.