Academia is the backbone of a country's wellbeing. If the global trends are analysed, notable innovation can be observed in the academic curriculum to facilitate better performance in the important areas. It is time for Bangladesh to focus on such areas of interest and keep up with the world. For instance, an emerging subject that holds immense potential to be a game-changer in Bangladesh is behavioural economics.
Behavioral economics brings about a ripple effect that induces slight changes to result in massive consequences. In a country like Bangladesh, impact and result are crucial for implementing changes. Policy-makers are constantly working with biases that could be greatly instigated using behavioural economics. The popular campaign of 2010 carried out in Bangladesh ran by the slogan "Rege gelen to here gelen" (You lose when you are angry) was an extraordinary application of this subject. Marketers have been unknowingly or knowingly exploiting the laws of behavioural economics to induce consumers.
As history suggests, the National Board of Revenue had a spectacular success with a similar set of rules. It had created the desired buzz around the country with its billboards regarding tax.
Drawing references from the most recent idea generation platforms, a2i (Access to Information) campaigns of the government are basically designed to increase people's reliability on the government to gain further credibility of their actions. Another effective example of using Nudges to create bias among people is the government's role in controlling population obesity. A direct interference would involve with tampering supply, whereas an indirect interference could be as simple as altering taxes or imposing highest shelf rules. Successful policymakers in India have tweaked the savings habit among the working-class citizens with a deceptively small change. They have incorporated envelopes while handing out salaries. This has substantially played with the psychology of people. Now they are more concerned about not wasting money and have built a natural tendency to save.
While sharing the merits of behavioural economics K.M. Saqiful Alam, lecturer, School of Business and Economics, North South University stated, "Behavioural economics has applications everywhere. It is an essential element that could be implemented rigorously by policy-making strategists, as well as investment analysts. It sheds a whole new perspective on understanding individuals, which makes the process of creating an impact simpler and more objective. Economists are in need of behavioural economics at a micro-level for a more comprehensive understanding."In addition, proper understanding of behavioural economics can also abstain us from falling prey to stereotypes, particularly regarding financial investments.
On another note, business students aspiring to be future marketers of Bangladesh constantly have to put up with difficulties regarding the practicality of education. Most study materials comprise of global examples and brand-focused essentials, whichhardly contribute to agency-focused jobs, practical implementation of assignments or build understanding of local contexts. Leading international business schools offer curriculum based more on industry opportunities, media and advertising agencies and local case studies rather than on theoretical knowledge. Students at those business schools gather real-life exposure to creating a brand by designing full-fledged marketing campaigns.
In elaboration, students should not be limited to areas of marketing that only comprise of consumer behaviour and ATL (above the line marketing), BTL (below the line marketing) activities. Further segmentations offering extensive preparations on content marketing, social marketing, and digital marketing are imperative. The future marketers need good knowledge on how to use the paid, owned and earned media platforms of this dynamic era. Students need more practical exposure and understanding of the local context and industry. On commenting about the dynamic scopes of marketing, Mashfique Khalid, a digital marketing specialist stated, "In this era of visual-based marketing, future brand managers must possess visual sense to understand the effectiveness of brand communication. In order to nurture a complete marketing personnel, optional courses of visual arts and basics of graphic designing must be incorporated with thecurrent courses."
The enormous data management in digital marketing brings the inevitable complexity that could be tackled with efficient data visualistion techniques to make the data representation interesting and understandable to clients. It would empower marketing personnel with a strong hold of marketing analytics and ease the understanding process for clients at the same time. These are crucial limitations that business students are struggling with in this ever-changing world. Marketing education should not only comprise theoretical aspects, but also should include emerging concepts, local industry relevant cases-studies, practical assignments, and must be holistically designed to prepare the students with the skills and up- to- date knowledge of their dynamic business fields.
The writer is a final year student of BBA at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka.
nabeela-mobashwer@live.com
Behavioural economics and the dynamic themes of marketing
Nabeela Mobashwer | Published: December 03, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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