Exclusive | How religion impacts consumer behaviour: Ambi

Ambi Parameswaran, an advertising veteran and passionate writer has come out with his latest book ‘For God’s Sake’ published by Penguin India. It deals with an adman’s perspective on the business of religion. The book was formally launched at an event at Crossword Book Store, Mumbai, recently.

Combining his thirty-five year experience in advertising with his interest in religious studies he attempts to answer several questions in his book. Some of them being: Are Indians becoming more religious and more consumption-driven at the same time? Why has the bindi disappeared from advertisements? How did Akshaya-Trithiya become such a big deal? What makes Lord Shiva so cool? How did a Chennai-based department store start the New Year Sale phenomenon? Are Muslims more open-minded shoppers? Why do people who have no interest in using an MBA degree still get an MBA degree? How did Manusmriti do a tremendous disservice to Indian women and what can Harvard Business School learn from the Kumbh Mela?

He has spent a large part of his working career in advertising at Draftfcb Ulka where he rose to be Executive Director and CEO. An engineer from IIT Madras and MBA from IIM Calcutta, he completed his PhD from Mumbai University in 2012. 

Speaking at the launch event of the book ‘For God’s Sake Prakash Iyer, CEO of Kimberly Clark Lever and author of best sellers ‘The Secret of Leadership’ and ‘The Habit of Winning’ said “Ambi draws on years of consumer-watching to bring you up close with how religion impacts aspects of our behaviour, our thought processes and our business even today. Never mind what your personal take on religion is, if you want to win with consumers and customers in India, read ‘For God’s Sake’. Or pray.”
In conversation with Adgully, Parameswaran shared his thoughts about his latest book. He has been writing for a few years now; but this time round his book 'For God's Sake' is a little different from his previous works.

Defining the rationale behind the book, he said, “I have written / co-written six books over the last 14 years. All of them have been on topics such as advertising, branding and consumer behavior. Most of them were based on the brands that our agency Draftfcb Ulka works on. In 2012 I completed my thesis from Mumbai University. The topic of the thesis was on “Religiosity and Consumer Behaviour”. Once I finished my thesis, I realized that this topic was ripe for becoming a book title. When I started collaborating with the Penguin publishing group and its editors I realized that I needed to recast the scope of the book. In order to appeal to a larger number of readers I virtually had to develop a new way of writing.”

As against an academic style of writing he had adopted in the past, the new book is a lot more personal and anecdotal. This has been noticed by his readers and he has received some very positive comments on the same.

According to him consumer behaviour is being influenced by myriad factors, specially focused on religious beliefs and practices. So which other factors in his opinion, are influencing consumer behaviour today? Answering this he said, “It is interesting to note that religion gets scant attention in International text books on consumer behaviour. My research revealed that in the US even the census does not ask respondents to reveal their religious faiths. Apparently this is seen as invasion of privacy. There have been some studies done to understand the relationship between religion and consumer behaviour, but very little.”

“I think religion along with family and society, are three key pillars that support the cultural structure of any society. In India religion plays a very important role since we are among the most religious people in the world. Even the young claim to be very religious,” he adds.

“Obviously there are many other sub-cultural textures that we study in research including the role of the family structure, the role of religion, the food habits etc; but I think due to the excessive American bias in our consumer research, we are not giving enough attention to religion,” he avers.

His earlier written works have spoken about brand building at length. So explaining what  people in business should do today in this direction, keeping in mind the constantly changing media and ad environment, he said, “Brand building is becoming more and more challenging given three broad trends: the increase in competition in every sphere, the increasing complexity in media space and most importantly the changing Indian consumer.”

In his view it is here that understanding cultural trends and religious biases will help us a lot in the future. We need to invest more in understanding consumers better. This will have to be done through a combination of modern tools like ‘netnography’ and social media analytics as well as depend more on tools like anthropology and ethnography.

He has authored/co-authored six books on topics ranging from Brand Building and Advertising to Consumer Behavior. When he is not busy at work, reading, writing or teaching, you can find Ambi Parameswaran at a music concert.