The Marketing lesson in how Jet Airways got me to buy Josy’s book.

Since the time I’ve known about Josy Joseph’s book, ‘A Feast of Vultures’, I’ve been meaning to buy and read it. I didn’t do the buying for a while as I was immersed in Simonsen & Rosen’s brilliant book ‘Absolute Value’. Then the Jet Airways lawsuit happened. I decided it was time to buy Josy’s book. If the book had got a corporate house to go to court, it’s gotta be a must-read. A neat discount at an online retailer sealed the buying click.

I don’t know if Josy should thank Jet for getting me to buy his book, but tell you what, the airline’s lawsuit was the trigger. It sealed my decision to buy and got the ‘buying click’ done. So here’s how you should see my buying act and here’s what you can learn from it. Until Jet’s pushback on Josy, I was inclined positively to the prospect of buying the book. In behavioural parlance that means two of the three components that make up attitude, namely the cognitive (belief element) and the affective (feel element) were aligned firmly in favour of ‘A Feast of Vultures’. Yet the buying act (the final conative element in attitude) didn’t go through. That push happened with Jet’s lawsuit.

You see, for an actual buy to happen the three elements (cognitive, affective, and conative) that make up attitudes we harbour towards products and brand must fall ‘positively’ into place. Many times (as in this case) we may ‘feel good’ and ‘believe the rights things’ about a brand, yet a buy may not still happen. For that, a final trigger must be pulled (the legendary Joe Sugarman taught me that)!

Figuring what that trigger is for a buyer or a particular set of buyers may be the difference between making a sale and losing one.

P.S. – What about Josy’s book? Take my word, if you are courageous enough to want to know the ‘real India’, read ‘A Feast of Vultures’.