Opinion: Boasting of a waiting period is brawn, not brain

A few days ago, at a conference I attended, a consumer behaviour practitioner shared that the Indian consumer has become less patient and more demanding. He shared that someone who tweets a complaint typically expects a reply within nine minutes and if it takes more than 20, the consumer is as good as gone!

What a paradox I thought. Here we have a consumer increasingly restless with response times and at the same time leading auto brands smugly declare long waiting periods for their cars. Why would someone do that?

The ‘waiting period’ is a phenomenon I encountered as I entered the automobile industry 31 years ago. Then it was a barometer of success, with the more successful product having a longer queue waiting eagerly for an ‘allotment’. The allotment letter was the second most prized possession after gold. I know people who encashed their allotments at a multiplier of the booking amount. Gradually, we made progress and those symbols of a ‘controlled’ environment gave way to getting something you wanted, whenever you wanted it.

But over the last few months, the consumer has been forced to wait, not only due to demand pressures, but more due to supply chain constraints. The world knows the reasons and the prospective buyer has been forced to wait and/or book more options in case their product of choice is not available in time.

Yet, there have been brands that take pleasure in declaring a ‘seven month waiting period’. Instead of trying to subdue it, there are even large ‘waiting period’ boards displayed at dealers as if it were marketing material. Media stories, too, multiply this and it all makes the public feel that the car is indeed heavily booked, but that may not be the case at all. The same seven-month waiting period comes crashing to two as soon as another brand launches a competing product. Or it comes down as soon as a consumer pays more to a dealer, or even switches to a higher trim.

It’s clear brands are trying to use this as a marketing tool, but today’s consumer will see through such smokescreens. In fact, it often goes the other way with some consumers simply refusing to ‘wait’ for so long and switching to other readily available models, and there are plenty of them.

So, I really find such tactics of the automakers very narrow sighted. The success of a product is not by the number of bookings, it is by the monthly sales sustained a good six/seven months after launch. Gloating over ‘waiting periods’ is just brawn and nothing else!