Can a user make a purchase of an educational product without connecting with a human? The EdTech industry is known to be sales led. This might be restricted to the Indian target audience. But in that case, why is the Indian audience comfortable to buy apparel, electronics, food, and services like insurance, hyperlocal, travel, hospitality online via a marketplaces — but not educational services?
Trust in the Seller, Confidence in the Product, Search for Best Offering, & A very Clear Need
There are some peculiarities about the Indian audience which we can learn by watching how the apparel, electronics, and likes are selling. For instance, Indian audience waits to gain trust before purchase — this trust is linked to gaining social proof, trying a sample, identify exit strategies like cash on delivery. The second characteristic might be the confidence — Indian audience might take more time in ensuring if a product is right for them, if the exact use cases are mentioned on the website or not, what will the society think of their purchase.
The level of the Trust and Confidence requirement will proportionately increase as the price of the purchase increases. After a certain breakthrough price, the customer might want to gain this trust and confidence by touching, feeling, seeing the product or experiencing the service with their own senses.
A Mackbook Purchase
I recently purchased a Macbook and I made the purchase offline. It was a big loan worthy purchase but I was willing to make this purchase online at first, I think this was because the Trust in the Seller was intact. Why then I ended up visiting a shop? The primary reason was that there was no extra benefit for me to not go to the shop and close the purchase online. Student discount was available online but then no cost emi was not available so the discount was rather nullifying, besides few thousands extra and getting the product instantly when purchased online felt a good idea.
The reason of my flip was neither lack of confidence in product, and that was because I experienced using a Macbook at work.
Given that both trust and confidence were checked at my end, it seems we should consider Offering as an additional pivotal reason.
Protein Powder Purchase
Another example, Amul recently launched Whey Protein Product, I made this purchase online that too on a amul portal which I had never used before. Let’s explore why:
Trust in the Seller - Check - Although the product was of a comfortable pricing, I was making the purchase on a platform never used before and it included delivery. Having trust in the seller and comfortable price range solved for this.
Confidence in the Product - Check - Had not used it at all but there was a social proof available in form of youtube video reviews, I would not have purchased it without going through atleast some social proof. Apart from Youtube, social proof came from Twitter, where some product enthusiasts were discussing on where Amul was going next. None of the social proof were promotions — it was simply people talking. People talking is enough social proof sometimes and we don’t need to spend $ everytime for influencer marketing or other similar tricks.
Though for being the talk of the town, need to achieve a certain brand or product knowhow within the community, which might not be possible for small brands, and hence marketing $ might help.
Search for the Best Offering - Check - It was not the extra discounting or any special offers this time, simply the fact that there was no other known way to make this purchase. Singular distribution can save you discounting bucks. Or have a high friction in all other ways of purchase.
A very Clear Need
PS: I just realised there’s another reason that made above two purchases possible, A very clear ‘Need’. I won’t event listed to an unskipable advertisement if there isn’t a need. I think in the age of abundance we humans have mastered the art of only processing information that satisfies the Need filter.