Your Brand's Worth?

A funny conversation with a friend today led to the realisation that I have fought/argued with several companies/brands due to bad service delivered. I could recall ten of those, and here they are!

Airtel

Vodafone

HUL - Pureit

Spicejet

HSBC

Barista

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

Pizza Hut

Adidas

Hair & Shanti/Madonna/Meghna - all are hair salons in Delhi

The first five were pretty severe wars.

The food/beverage places tend to mess it up a lot more anyway!

Adidas, well, once each shoe of a pair broke into two within a few months of purchase and they offered no help whatsoever!

And the rest for giving me bad haircuts on several occasions. :-|

On the other hand, some brands that have been great experiences in terms of quality of product as well as service are...

Dell

Converse

Costa Coffee

Samsung

Gati

Marks & Spencer

DTDC

Bata Power

Timex

And some doctors that I have been visiting for a long time now. :P

Tell me how often do you fight for the exorbitant service taxes and mad MRPs you pay?

Nostalgia, eh?

Over the past two weeks I have had the word 'miss' flash on my Facebook and Gtalk a gazillion times. People are expressing the sentiment about college getting over via their status updates and new photo albums. Me, something somewhere has died. Or maybe I am too busy feeling other emotions to have space for that sentiment. God knows!

But hardly a week out of college, and I have a point to associate the 'miss' word with too. The marketing classes, what else! I just finished watching Lessons in Marketing on CNBC TV18, a show where the top 12 B-schools of India fight it out in front of some of the best in the industry, for the best of rewards. It was nothing different from sitting in marketing classes back in college - analysing each recommendation that the presenting team makes, having an opinion of our own for everything, and actually feeling every single bit of the total process!

People on the show today might have been from the best schools in India, but I saw for myself that they are nothing different or better than some of us who do not qualify to be in the same league because of some stupid reasons, luck for one. They did not seem to have studied anything different from what we did, and their ideas were nothing out of the world either. It was exactly the same as I experienced over the past two years - some absolutely brilliant ideas, and some that were laughable. Nothing different. Just a matter of a tag.

And while as of today nothing seems to be working in my favour, I know I will even it out in the years to come. And the gods of marketing management and marketing research, Dr. V.V.R. Sastry and Dr. Prantosh Banerjee respectively, will remain just what they are! Them, and their classes, I miss.

P.S. - In the post written on March 17th, there was a horrible typo that was pointed out by a friend. I am still not over it. Did not want to change it there 'coz it would have then flashed on your readers again. But yes, it was not 'heals'. I meant 'heels'.

Thanks! :)