Recently went to attend the marriage of a friend of mine in a small city in Kerala called Calicut (or Kozhikode ) ... i had decided to travel alone in train (good time to read books/introspect was what i thought) . Anyways i finally landed up in Calicut (as i like to call it) after a journey of 20 hours ... actually i was landing up in Calicut after a journey of 15 years....
When i was a kid ( my parents were getting transferred every 4 yrs to another location at work) i had spent 4 yrs in Calicut ..that was between age 9-13 of my life ...so when i think of childhood .. this is where the rewind lands ... we lived in an apartment complex (rarity in those parts in early 90s) , lots of kids to play/hangout with , tht school , traveling by buses alone for first time in life , playing cricket / football in the play ground we had ... there were lot of memories ...
During the journey , i was reading this book called "Istanbul" by Orhan Pamuk , in which the author reminiscences about his childhood in Istanbul , so promised myself tht maybe i will just go and re-visit these places i last saw 15 yrs back ... a couple of times i had passed through this city , i was always tempted to those parts of the city i grew up in .. but never went ... infact i have never re-visited any place of my childhood or previous years ... thats something people who grew up in same place may not understand .. every time u shift ur base to a new place u leave lots of things behind and start afresh and then again leave it behind and move on .. thts what we did and i actually liked it .. its a bit sad . But again things are never same even if u stayed in same place as my friends tell me ... even if u don't physically move ... things around you will change
Anyways this time i was in Calicut the day before the wedding and i had reached much before even the wedding party had arrived .. so i checked in to the hotel and after debating internally whether to actually make the visit or just stay in the bed watching cricket on tv ... my friends were supposed to join me there in the morning called up to say they wud arrive by afternoon only ! so there u go .. i showered got ready and stepped into the heat ... it felt good to back in this place .. the sun ,the heat , the bustle .. the language ... the shops .. all so familiar ... locked away in a corner of your memory ... occasionally i wud see a building/landmark which i knew from childhood days... the hotel was located in a place i used to visit frequently earlier , so easily located the bus-stop and got into the correct bus which wud have taken me 'home' 15 yrs back ... now its another place, just an address .. took the ticket till last stop as i ddnt know from where i wud start my 'back to past' tour .. how much i wud cover ... there were so many places (2-3km radius tht kids of 10-12 yrs explore ) to see .. so many memories to revist ... before i knew it i was in familiar land .. things had definitely changed ... but heart warmed up whenever a familiar house , building came ... the bus was moving in a cruise mode (there were stops every 500m) finally reached the last stop ... it was bang opposite my School ... the school was located in a house/palace once owned by the erstwhile ruler of the place the Zamorins , the school had expanded with main building being the 'palace' like one , but most of the classrooms were in proper concrete buildings built nearby in same sprawling compound ... whenever i think of my school i always remember the huge building and big wide open space in front of the main building ...we used to play cricket there and scoring a boundary / hitting six then was very tough as it was really huge... So I got out of the bus and headed to the school .. it was a Sunday , so the gates were shut ... the walls which were huge and intimidating then were just my chest height now .. the playground looked pretty normal ... infact school was looking much smaller , cramped as opposed to a spacious sprawling palatial building tht was residing in my memory ... i somehow couldnt go in .. it was looking strange n different in someways unsettling .. anyways no one was around and the gate was closed ... i turned back and decided i shuld probably walk as sometimes i used to from school to home ... i knew a lot of shortcuts ... while walking on the main road .. i cud see a lot of such smaller roads i used to take as a kid , roads leading to some friend's house ... seemed familiar , but cudnt recall ... so i stuck to the main road as i was not sure whether i shud venture down those lanes ... after walking for 5 mins , the heat got better off me ... i hailed a rick and reached the area where i used to live earlier , got down and saw the video library there had become a VCD/DVD shop ! my barber shop was still there , so was the bakery and the grocery store , some things hadn't changed ... i walked to my apartment complex ... there was a security gaurd there ! What do i tell him ? My house address ? i used to know a lot of people there and almost all of them were locals who owned the flats surely there must be people i know over there still ... as i paused outside , the gaurd just got up and went out ... should i go in or not ? ... finally had a good look from outside ... took a walk down the road remembering the good old days .. flood of memories rushed by when i took in familiar sights the house nearby where cricket balls used to disappear if we hit a six from the playground (it was six and out as balls were tough to retrieve !) ... decided to check out the playground on the backside , wall on the other side was pretty low so cud see the apartments more clearly ... they looked different now with a different shade of paint ... i saw the playground of my childhood where we used to play cricket and at times soccer / badminton ... in my memories it is a sufficiently big ground ...but as i looked over the wall at tht ground suddenly things seemed to have changed just like my school .. the ground was so small ... it took a while for it properly sink in .... what had happened here ? what had changed ? How did it reduce in size ? why is it all different i wondered , got back to my hotel room without any further exploration ... then the obvious answer came to me .. nothing had changed .. it was just the perspective ... the boy who was looking at these things had grown... maybe thats how the world changes ... u just grow bigger !
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Some thoughts on PWYW model
Recently read a couple of posts on Freaknomics blog about 'Pay What you Wish' model , originating from this story of someone starting a taxi service where you can name what you want to pay.
In India also we have similar non-fixed price service , but only issue is the taxi driver doesn't easily agree to your price and we haggle and arrive at what is mutually deemed as the 'right' price.
But what is the right price for any product or service ? who decides it ? isnt it a great step in Customer satisfaction (delight ) to let her/him name the price for the service she/he enjoyed ?
Pay what you Wish Model hence is an interesting model , something which is very bold ,daring, risky , but still if cleverly implemented will be a very successful one !
Recently when i was studying in Singapore , we used to visit this Indian Restaurant called "Annalakshmi" in ChinaTown , which used to serve really good South Indian food , the ambience was also very nice , it was part of a group of charitable institutions in India and was run by volunteers. This restaurant in Singapore , implemented PWYW model , there used to be buffet system , the food was really tasty and of good quality. But they didnt have any price printed in the menu card , the price you wanted to pay for the food consumed was left to you.
Whenever i visited , there was a lady who used to enquire if we were satisfied with the food and service and used to ask us the total number of people , before accepting the money. We used to visit the place often , still by our estimate we used to overpay most of the times as the entire experience was too good that you loosen your purse strings without second thoughts . Again here we didn't mind because the 'profits' from this restaurant was used for charitable purposes only.
It is the social element which is a key factor in this model , we don't want to be seen as the guys who dont pay properly by the patrons of the restaurant . The system works best if you dont know what others are paying for the same service. Also the service/product needs to be good goes without saying !
Another set of people use a variant of this model very successfully in India , the guys who come to collect money for festivals /temples ... they never quote any specific amount as the donation for these causes is always a voluntary one by the public. Though you hardly have a choice and rarely do people say no to a donation for religious cause . These guys were pretty enterprising they always used to carry notebooks / receipts printed with names of certain people who had paid say Rs.100 , when you actually wanted to pay only Rs.10 to the guy. Now even though the guy has not quoted any price for the donation and just asks you money ... you see what some other folks have paid and the social pressure ensures you never underpay him and actually in more instances really overpay !
Tipping in a restaurant , is another PWYW service - the guy never demands it , but its a social convention . The amount of tip depends majorly on the experience in the restaurant.
In normal PWYW model , this tendency to overpay is one bad thing about this model - u logically want to pay as less as possible but you feel guilty about it and your conscience makes you overpay. But is it really overpaying ? We actually end up paying what we think/conclude (at that point of time) is the 'right' price and often there is a satisfaction in paying whatever we wished to pay and even if we got conned into paying that amount ! On top of this there is a tremendous 'goodwill' associated with the concept too , the very fact that someone trusts you to evaluate their performance/value and empowered you to decide the right price itself makes this little extra shelled out worthwhile !!!
It would be really interesting to see this model being extended successfully elsewhere for what is deemed conventional services too . How would it be if you could name your price for whatever you purchase and same way get paid for your work at prices deemed right by others and what if all parties concerned are happy with the arrangement? Possible ? Well then we would be at Utopia right ?!
In India also we have similar non-fixed price service , but only issue is the taxi driver doesn't easily agree to your price and we haggle and arrive at what is mutually deemed as the 'right' price.
But what is the right price for any product or service ? who decides it ? isnt it a great step in Customer satisfaction (delight ) to let her/him name the price for the service she/he enjoyed ?
Pay what you Wish Model hence is an interesting model , something which is very bold ,daring, risky , but still if cleverly implemented will be a very successful one !
Recently when i was studying in Singapore , we used to visit this Indian Restaurant called "Annalakshmi" in ChinaTown , which used to serve really good South Indian food , the ambience was also very nice , it was part of a group of charitable institutions in India and was run by volunteers. This restaurant in Singapore , implemented PWYW model , there used to be buffet system , the food was really tasty and of good quality. But they didnt have any price printed in the menu card , the price you wanted to pay for the food consumed was left to you.
Whenever i visited , there was a lady who used to enquire if we were satisfied with the food and service and used to ask us the total number of people , before accepting the money. We used to visit the place often , still by our estimate we used to overpay most of the times as the entire experience was too good that you loosen your purse strings without second thoughts . Again here we didn't mind because the 'profits' from this restaurant was used for charitable purposes only.
It is the social element which is a key factor in this model , we don't want to be seen as the guys who dont pay properly by the patrons of the restaurant . The system works best if you dont know what others are paying for the same service. Also the service/product needs to be good goes without saying !
Another set of people use a variant of this model very successfully in India , the guys who come to collect money for festivals /temples ... they never quote any specific amount as the donation for these causes is always a voluntary one by the public. Though you hardly have a choice and rarely do people say no to a donation for religious cause . These guys were pretty enterprising they always used to carry notebooks / receipts printed with names of certain people who had paid say Rs.100 , when you actually wanted to pay only Rs.10 to the guy. Now even though the guy has not quoted any price for the donation and just asks you money ... you see what some other folks have paid and the social pressure ensures you never underpay him and actually in more instances really overpay !
Tipping in a restaurant , is another PWYW service - the guy never demands it , but its a social convention . The amount of tip depends majorly on the experience in the restaurant.
In normal PWYW model , this tendency to overpay is one bad thing about this model - u logically want to pay as less as possible but you feel guilty about it and your conscience makes you overpay. But is it really overpaying ? We actually end up paying what we think/conclude (at that point of time) is the 'right' price and often there is a satisfaction in paying whatever we wished to pay and even if we got conned into paying that amount ! On top of this there is a tremendous 'goodwill' associated with the concept too , the very fact that someone trusts you to evaluate their performance/value and empowered you to decide the right price itself makes this little extra shelled out worthwhile !!!
It would be really interesting to see this model being extended successfully elsewhere for what is deemed conventional services too . How would it be if you could name your price for whatever you purchase and same way get paid for your work at prices deemed right by others and what if all parties concerned are happy with the arrangement? Possible ? Well then we would be at Utopia right ?!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)